"I'm seeing so many cyclists on the wrong side of the road lately that I am starting to wonder if the law has changed," says a reader from Courtenay. "It might save a life or two if they got back on the right side of the road!"
I agree with him because I almost made a hood ornament out of a wrong-way cyclist not long ago.
I had stopped at a red light intending to make a right turn. Check left, check right, look at the sidewalk and right shoulder check. All clear, so I began to make the turn.
I saw the cyclist on my right as I made another 180-degree sweep of the intersection and stopped before the far side of the crosswalk. He skimmed by my front bumper and kept going down the wrong side of the road.
It was a close call because I did not expect to see the cyclist there and was likely focused on finding what I was most concerned about.
This would be cross traffic coming from my left, pedestrians nearing the crosswalk and anything that might try to overtake me on the right. A cyclist can be hard to see because of their size and from a rider's point of view there is absolutely no sense choosing a path that increases the risk.
I expect that this is why the law requires all traffic other than pedestrians to use the right hand side of the road. The cyclist I nearly collided with would have been much easier to see and yield to if he had been doing what the rules required and I anticipated.
Yes, it's still the law that cyclists must ride in the same direction as all motorized traffic and there is a good reason for it!
For more information on this topic, visit www.drivesmartbc.ca. Questions or comments are welcome by e-mail to comments@drivesmartbc.ca. Tim Schewe is a retired RCMP constable with many years of traffic law enforcement experience. His column appears Friday.