The Scarsdale Democrat is proposing the three-foot rule days after Greenburgh cyclist Merrill Cassell died when he was sideswiped by a bus and fell under it.

I’m looking for people’s thoughts on the idea. So if you think it’s a great plan, an awful idea or something in between, let me know. Give me a call at 914-696-8255.

Thanks. Now here’s the text of Paulin’s press release:

Paulin Announces Introduction of Safe Passing Bill in New York

Today Assemblywoman Paulin announced the introduction of a bill that will require motorists to remain at least three feet away from cyclists on the road.  This clearance will give motorists a margin of error when passing cyclists in case either the motorist or the cyclist is suddenly required to change course.

The need for this legislation was highlighted last week when Greenburgh resident and cyclist Merrill Cassell

was crushed under the wheels of a Westchester Bee-Line bus.  Merrill, a tireless advocate for making cycling a realistic transportation option, was traveling in the same direction as a Bee-Line bus on Route 119 in Tarrytown.
“We don’t want people to fear for their lives while bike riding” said Assemblywoman Paulin, “It’s common sense that we pass bills that encourage cycling, an act that encourages good health and helps the environment.”
Enacting a three-foot rule will help increase public awareness that cyclists have a right to be on the road as well as educate motorists about safe practices with cyclists on the road.
“Making roads safer for cyclists is essential in our car-centric world,” said David Wilson, president of the 1,400-member Westchester Cycle Club and co-founder of the Westchester-Putnam Bike Walk Alliance. “The three-foot rule will create a safety buffer between cars and cyclists.”
According to Jennifer Clunie, executive director of the New York Bicycle Coalition, at least 17 states have passed laws requiring motorists to give cyclists a three-foot buffer, including Connecticut.
“Cyclists may have the need-as well as the legal right-to move further into the travel lane due to hazards such as potholes and gravel, and to be more visible to drivers,” said Clunie, “Enactment of a three foot minimum safe passing law is a step in the right direction toward reducing the high number of bicyclist and pedestrian injures and fatalities that occur each year. The bill will make our roadways safer for everyone.”

The high-steppers will step off the trains about 10 a.m. Saturday to greet passengers. Then they’ll board trains for Grand Central Terminal, arriving at 23 and 25 at 11:35 a.m.

You can take photos with the dancers and there will be chances to win tickets to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.

If you don’t win, all’s not lost.  Anyone can get a discount by mentioning the code “METRO” when ordering full-price tickets to select performances of the Christmas show between Saturday and December 30. The discount will be $10 per ticket, plus a free round-trip rail ticket, good for travel to the show on Metro-North.

One side note: Kudos to Metro-North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders for use of the phrase “chorine-bearing trains” in the press release announcing the event. I admit, I had to look up the word “chorine,” which is a woman who dances in a show.

Here’s the thing: About a week ago (Sun., Nov. 1), I was riding the train out of Larchmont for Grand Central Terminal with a friend and co-worker, Stacy Anderson. The ticket machines at the station weren’t working, so Stacy was unable to buy a ticket.

Yet, when we boarded the train, the conductor told us he had to charge the full fare, with the penalty. He was not able to waive the extra fare.

Fortunately, I had a 10-ride pass, so I asked the conductor to punch out another ride on that.

If I hadn’t been there, Stacy would have had to pay $13 for the one-way trip. That’s $7.25 for the ride and $5.75 for the penalty.

I asked railroad spokeswoman Marjorie Anders about this, and she told me that if you pay the on-board penalty when broken ticket machines prevented you from buying at the station, you are entitled to a refund. You can call the customer service line, 212-672-1290, and tell them what train you were on. Representatives can check remotely to see if the machines are working.

If the machines are indeed broken, the representative can send out the reimbursement.

Now, Stacy was a little unsatisfied with that solution. She thought  the conductor shouldn’t charge in the first place. But that’s the way it’s done.

By the way, the on-board penalty varies depending on the base fare. The penalty can be anywhere from $5.75 to $6.50, which ever gets the fare closest to a full dollar amount.

The full-service MetroCard van will make its rounds in Westchester to assist riders interested in purchasing MetroCards.
Staffed by MTA New York City Transit Authority and Westchester County Department of Transportation employees, the van is a “one-stop shop” and is equipped to assist bus riders with all their MetroCard business. Riders will be able to buy a regular MetroCard, apply for a Reduced-Fare MetroCard if they are 65 and older or have qualifying disabilities and refill their existing MetroCards.
MetroCard is the automated regional fare collection system managed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.  For more information on the MetroCard Van and other MetroCard locations, call the Bee-Line Hotline at (914) 813-7777.

Monday, Oct. 19
New Rochelle, Huguenot St./North Avenue, 10 a.m. – noon
Mount Vernon, August Petrillo Plaza, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Tuesday, Oct. 20
Peekskill, Peekskill Library, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 a.m.
Tarrytown, Wildey and Cortlandt Streets (near McDonalds), 1:30 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 21
Yonkers, Getty Square/S. Broadway, 10 a.m. – noon
Yonkers, Cross County Shopping Center (opposite Sears), 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 22
Yonkers, Getty Square/S. Broadway, 10 a.m. – 11:30 p.m.
White Plains, Galleria Mall, Main St./MLK Blvd., 12:30 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 23
Yonkers, Will Library, 1500 Central Park Ave./Tuckahoe Rd., 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Monday, Nov. 16
New Rochelle, Huguenot St./North Avenue, 10 a.m. – noon
Mount Vernon, August Petrillo Plaza, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Tuesday, Nov. 17
Peekskill, Peekskill Library, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 a.m.
Tarrytown, Wildey and Cortlandt Streets (near McDonalds), 1:30 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Wednesday, Nov. 18
Yonkers, Getty Square/S. Broadway, 10 a.m. – noon
Yonkers, Cross County Shopping Center (opposite Sears), 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 19
Yonkers, Getty Square/S. Broadway, 10 a.m. – 11:30 p.m.
White Plains, Galleria Mall, Main St./MLK Blvd., 12:30 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Friday, Nov. 20
Yonkers, Will Library, 1500 Central Park Ave./Tuckahoe Rd., 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Monday, Dec. 14
New Rochelle, Huguenot St./North Avenue, 10 a.m. – noon
Mount Vernon, August Petrillo Plaza, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Tuesday, Dec. 15
Peekskill, Peekskill Library, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 a.m.
Tarrytown, Wildey and Cortlandt Streets (near McDonalds), 1:30 p.m. – 3 p.m

Wednesday, Dec. 16
Yonkers, Getty Square/S. Broadway, 10 a.m. – noon
Yonkers, Cross County Shopping Center (opposite Sears), 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Thursday, Dec. 17
Yonkers, Getty Square/S. Broadway, 10 a.m. – 11:30 p.m.
White Plains, Galleria Mall, Main St./MLK Blvd., 12:30 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Friday, Dec. 18
Yonkers, Will Library, 1500 Central Park Ave./Tuckahoe Rd., 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.

In all, 328 passengers rode the double-decker NJ Transit trains brought onto Metro-North tracks by Metro-North crews.

“It was not a full train, but it’s just the beginning,” Metro-North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders told me. “You have to start somewhere.”

More than half the riders — 197 — took the second train, the one ridden by former Jets wide receiver, who was brought in by Metro-North to pump up the publicity. It left at 10:18 a.m.

The first train, leaving at 9:17 a.m., carried 78 passengers. The last, leaving at 11:03 a.m., held 53 passengers.

Anders said the passengers were happy with the service, and told that to the various news organizations who reported on the experimental service.

“They did my job for me yesterday,” she said. “They really did.”

It was a historic moment for Metro-North, as well as NJ Transit. I didn’t ride the trains, but I stood on the platform at Larchmont at 6:25 a.m., awaiting the usual red line train, when a NJ Transit train cruised north on a central track, headed for New Haven. It was a strange sight, the double-decker cars finished in steel with a swath of blue, red and orange down the middle.

Metro-North doesn’t use double-deckers because they can’t get into Grand Central Terminal. That wasn’t an issue for the football trains, which curve off the Metro-North line onto Amtrak tracks just south of New Rochelle, to head toward Penn Station.

Anders rode the train herself, and got a look at the Amtrak line where Metro-North would someday like to run some trains for commuters. That service, if it comes to be, could include creating three new stations in the Bronx. So Anders was thrilled to see two old station buildings, abandoned, but still standing, left from a time when stations existed there.

“What I saw was fabulous,” she said. “They were there, and we want to put them back.”

The football service will run for nine more Jets and Giants games, all of them with 1 p.m. Sunday kick-offs. Find out more about the service here.

But that wasn’t the oddest response I got to the articles I wrote about texting and the many other things people do behind the wheel that make other drivers uncomfortable. One somewhat brazen reader related this tale:

“I got pulled over once for using a cell phone and when I went to court I bought a small tape recorder that was the same size as a cell phone and told the judge I was a salesman and part of my routine was to make verbal notes about my last call while driving to my next one. There is no law against talking into a device other than a cell phone so the judge had to throw it out. The trooper was not happy.”

Now, I’m not repeating it here to give anyone ideas. (That one wasn’t remarkable because it was particularly creative. Anyone could have thought of it. The surprising thing was that the person actually went through with it — and then bragged about it in a response to my article on our Web site.)

I put it there to give yet another idea of how difficult it can be to enforce these laws.

So Legislator James Maisano, the New Rochelle Republican, was bothered to learn that the state law would replace the county law. The difference is this: Under a Westchester law that began earlier this year, a police officer can pull you over if he sees you typing a text message while your driving.

Under state law, the officer can’t. Instead, a cop can only write you a texting-while-driving ticket, with its $150 fine, if he catches a driver doing something else wrong as well.

Maisano raised this at a legislative committee meeting today (Monday) in the Michaelian Office Building, 148 Martine Ave.

When another legislator suggested that the law was written that way because it would be difficult to stop every driver who appeared — possibly mistakenly — to be typing a text message, Maisano said, “I want them stopped.”

Maisano wanted to know if the county could preserve its law. Occassionally, he noted, a state law will say that a local law can be more restrictive than a state law. But county attorneys told him that in this case, it can’t. (I’d gotten the same answer when I wrote the story, not only from Westchester, but from Rockland County officials, too. The law there is similar to Westchester’s and also will be replaced by state law.)

Bill Burton, the Ossining Democrat who heads the Board of Legislators legislative committee, said the legislators will bring that up with the county’s state lawmakers to see if something can be done.

As to why the state law was written the way it was, I was not able to find an answer. As you’ll recall if you saw the article, a spokesman for the head of the state Senate transportation committee pointed to the state Assembly transportation committee head. That legislator, Assemblyman David Gantt of Rochester, refused to return calls I left for him over a couple of weeks. (His staff very dilligently took down my phone number and said oh, yes, we’ll have him or someone else get back to you, but in the end, nothing.)

There’s nothing I can say about it, except watch it for yourself here.

Read The Journal News story about it here.

Expect to see more about it in The Journal News and on lohud.com tomorrow. My colleague, Aman Ali, is interviewing the Bastardi family, who lost two members and a friend in the SUV that Schuler collided with in the July 26 accident. Schuler was also killed, along with her young daughter and three nieces.

A toxicology report indicated that Diane Schuler had been drinking, and pretty heavily at that, shortly before the crash, but her husband, Daniel, and the family lawyer, dispute that finding.

OK, that wasn’t really bad. The guy was stopped, no one was behind him.

But I’ve been talking with people a lot about things we do while driving that are not really condusive to steering and keeping an eye on the road. Eating, shaving, tweezing eyebrows. One guy tells me he once saw someone playing a guitar on I-684.

This comes about because Gov. David Paterson just signed that law banning texting while driving. It got me thinking: People were doing dopey things while driving long before there were cell phones and blackberries.

If you’ve seen any of this behavior out on the roads, let me know. I’d be interested for my story.

Thanks.

On Aug. 22, we had the Scarsdale guy who chased a man 15 miles from Putnam to Danbury, Conn., after the guy in a pick-up truck allegedly struck his car on I-684. Danbury cops charged the driver of the truck with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

In Rockland, there’s another sad case: A man who is charged with vehicular manslaughter, in addition to driving while intoxicated, because his friend, a passenger in his car, died when he crashed a Ford Mustang on the New York State Thruway.

This follows the summer where a mom was arrested on a DWI charge after her daughter dialed 911 because they’d been in an accident, and where two people were hit with DWI charges for driving the same car. (They switched places before cops got to them, then admitted it.)

And of course, there was the horrific July 26 crash of Long Island mom Diane Schuler on the Taconic, killing Schuler, her daughter and three nieces and three men in an SUV she struck head-on. A toxicology report shows her blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit and she had THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in her system.

Will the strangeness end? Or at least ease up a bit?

Time will tell.

But don’t hold out too much hope, says the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Here’s the AP story on it…

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City lawmaker wants to see Michael Jackson honored at a subway station where the star made the music video for “Bad.”
Councilwoman Letitia James wants a plaque placed at Brooklyn’s Hoyt-Schermerhorn (SHUR’-mur-horn) — or even to have “Jackson” added to the station’s name.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Kevin Ortiz said Monday it’s unlikely. James — undeterred — plans a petition drive.
Jackson, who died June 25, shot the Martin Scorsese-directed music video in 1987.
Ortiz says the MTA prohibits station plaques. The agency is developing naming-rights guidelines.
Developer Bruce Ratner could pay $4 million over 20 years to add the name of his planned Barclays Center NBA arena to a Brooklyn transit hub.