BIKE: bicycling and defensive driving courses

[Mark Haller]

I suspect that this has been discussed on this list before, and I poked 
around the bicycleaustin.info site to see if there was any mention of it, 
but I haven't seen anything yet.  I apologize if this is a worn topic.

Recently, I took an on-line defensive driving course at 
www.idrivesafely.com.  The course was for a ticket dismissal (i drove a 
car to new mexico and sped a bit through some of west texas - stupid of 
me).  Since I am a bicycle commuter I was paying close attention to the 
information about handling cyclists.

As you might guess, there wasn't a lot of substance to the information. 
There was basically one point - be on the lookout, which i guess is the 
central tenet of defensive driving... be on the lookout for pedestrians, 
kids, animals, other cars, everything, and yes be on the lookout for 
bicyclists.  The bicycling info in this course - about 1.5 pages out of 
120 - could be distilled the following:

-- bicyclists have the legal right to the road but usually don't obey law
-- 70% of all accidents are the fault of the bicyclist
-- bike lanes are not to be crossed unless dotted
-- cyclists can be unpredictable, particularly younger riders (the
    condition and features of roadways can make cyclists even more
    unpredictable)

That was it.  Nothing about how to work with cyclists who are obeying the 
law, what the laws are, or really any detail about sharing the road with 
them aside from slow down.  In a way, maybe this is the best thing to tell 
drivers - slow down.  If you see a person on a bike, just slow down. 
However, I think the course could have done a much better job at 
empathizing with the bicyclists of the world, and how to negotiate their 
presence.  I mean, I watched 3 5minute videos on how to pass a semi truck, 
and there were segments designed to helping the viewer identify with a 
truck driver.  If this education works at all, then a small segment 
addressing the conflicts between drivers and cyclists could do a lot of 
good.

Anyway, I already commented on this to the makers of the course, but I 
wonder if the TEA could be influenced at all in this respect.  Maybe 
someone has tried to advance bicycle education before and has some 
experiece?  I don't know, maybe I'm just full of it.  Any comments?

Thanks,
Mark