No bus number or plate seen... the bus went by too fast for me
I was legally operating my bicycle eastbound in the Briarforest bike lane, with two red rear lights, a front light, and a rear-facing safety reflector.
The bus came too close to me. The Texas CDL Manual says buses, trucks and other large vehicles should give bicycles at least five feet of clearance. This was more like three feet, which is OK for a small vehicle like a car, but not safe for a school bus with it's strong wind draft.
Buses should at least give 1/2 a traffic lane of clearance.
The bus made a pick-up immediately after passing me. The fact that there was a pending pick-up should never encourage the bus driver to take the wrong lane position with respect to a bicycle or pedestrian. That's "get-there-itis", where getting there is more important than getting there safely.
If he had a pending pick-up / drop-off, the driver should have just waited behind me, I was moving at a good clip, close to 20 MPH.
We had a horrible bike / large truck fatality at Briarforest and Wilcrest a few years ago, let's NOT repeat it, and not with me, please. The bike in that case was overtaken too closely by a large truck, and she got pulled under the wheels, crushed to death, and she died in the street with bystanders holding her hand while she passed.
You can still see the memorial flowers and cross on the NE corner of that intersection.
Peter Wang
REPLY:
"Graf, Nathan J"
Good morning. Chester Glaude is our operations manager, he will review GPS for this area and see if any Houston ISD buses were there (all district buses are equipped with GPS). Appropriate action will then be taken. If anything further occurs please feel free to communicate directly with Chester.
We apologize that this occurred. Thank you for sharing this information with us.
Sent from my iPhone
