Midlife Meditation

If you've been out on a country road in Oregon anytime in the last few years, you've probably seen this sign: The sign's design and wording single out bicyclists as the travelers most in need of understanding and patience on the part of motorists. The main reason for making this distinction is that cyclists have fewer accident-avoidance options than walkers or runners, who can usually step off the road surface without risking injury (though, as I've pointed out in a recent post, this is not always the case, especially in areas with raised road surfaces and limited shoulders). The sign does suffer from a lack of specificity, however. An especially aggressive driver might interpret it to mean it's up to the cyclist to do the "sharing" by getting out of his or her way. In fact, Oregon law specifies exactly what a driver must do when overtaking a bicycle: ORS 811.065 Unsafe Passing of a Person Operating A Bicycle (1) A driver of a motor vehicle comm...

My last post, on the dangers of running or cycling on Germantown Road, generated a response that had me scratching my head and, ultimately, doing some research. One of the nineteen people who read the post put up a comment on Facebook to the effect that, under Oregon law, all those cars attempting to trim my arm hair were, in fact, in the right, and by obstructing their commutes with my soft body, I was actually committing a traffic infraction. As proof, he cited ORS 814.040. Oops. Wrong statute. That provision is only about crossing the street in town. It's Oregon's crosswalk law: pedestrians have the right of way if they're crossing the street at an intersection, whether or not there's a marked crosswalk. If there's a walk signal, they're supposed to obey it, but otherwise, the crosswalk is implied, and cars must yield to them. Crossing in the middle of a block ("jaywalking" in the vernacular), pedestrians must yield to vehicles; if they don'...

Let's start with the disclaimer: roads are for cars. That's why they're paved and marked the way they are. Engineers design roads to accommodate drivers, not walkers, runners, or cyclists. Now for the rant. This morning at 7 a.m., I headed out the door of my suburban home for a summer run. Amy and I live at the far north end of Bethany, an unincorporated area within the Beaverton School District. Running or cycling, it takes me just a minute to leave the spec houses of my neighborhood and be on a lovely country road, looking out across pastures, fields, and valleys to the hills beyond. This morning I surprised a trio of young bucks, and snapped pictures of one before continuing my run. My runner's high was kicking in early as I breathed the fresh air, drank in the long sunrise shadows, and celebrated all the best things about rural life. I was planning a run around the "block," a loop that includes Kaiser Road, Germantown Road, NW 185th, and f...