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Law

Proposed New Rules Of The Road For Bicycles

There are mixed reviews over the North Carolina Department of Transportation's new recommendations for bicycle safety.
Daniel Oines
/
Flickr Creative Commons
There are mixed reviews over the North Carolina Department of Transportation's new recommendations for bicycle safety.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation is getting mixed reviews on its new recommendations for bicycle safety rules.

Cyclists’ groups support a proposal that would require cars to give them more room when passing, but they oppose another that would restrict them to one side of the lane.

In the latest legislative session, the General Assembly asked the DOT to create a study committee to come up with the new recommendations in order to cut down on the hundreds of collisions between bikes and cars each year. It included bicycle safety advocates, researchers and representatives from the trucking and farming community, among others.

But the DOT rejected some suggestions from that committee, including one that said there should be no change to a provision of state law that says bicycle riders should stay "as far right as is practicable." Instead, the DOT's proposal would require cyclists to stay in the right half of their lane.

Host Frank Stasio talks with WUNC's Will Michaels about the DOT's new suggestions for bicycle safety.

Will Michaels is WUNC's Weekend Host and Reporter.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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