A decorated Ironman athlete, the ever-competitive George Esahak-Gage was pumping his bright red Kestrel Talon bicycle west on Chandler Boulevard along with his equally fit wife, Jane, on a sunny morning when life as they knew it was forever changed.

The couple was crossing from Chandler into Phoenix across the I-10 overpass on that November morning in 2006, when Jose Juarez, traveling at about 45 miles per hour, exited the freeway in his 1976 Monte Carlo. The uninsured, unlicensed driver then ran a red light and broadsided George’s bicycle.

Juarez’s car then began fishtailing, striking Jane, who flipped over the back of the Monte Carlo. The impact caused George to be thrown through the air across five lanes of traffic. The pair lay severely injured in the middle of Chandler Boulevard as witnesses frantically scrambled, yelling, “Call 9-1-1!”

Paramedics on the scene, and later doctors at Maricopa County Medical Center, worked valiantly to save their lives. George underwent immediate surgery for 26 broken bones, including a fracture at the base of his skull and a torn inferior vena cava, the large vein that carries blood from the lower half of the body to the heart.

“Those two injuries alone, either one of them usually kills a person,” George says, recalling the incident with a sigh.

A fracture at the base of the skull can cause the brain to shift and instantly paralyze or asphyxiate a person. The vena cava tear George sustained can often induce massive bleeding, but George was lucky. Jane was even luckier, sustaining a concussion, a broken finger, scraped knees and five cracked teeth.

No longer able to compete in Ironman competitions, George is just thankful to be alive.

Dee Scott says she can still feel the convergence of energy and pain from her collision. Scott, also an Ironman athlete, was nearly home from a training ride on her Titanium LiteSpeed Tuscany, traveling east on McDowell Road near Recker Road in East Mesa, when Joseph Pratico, high on multiple drugs, plowed into her from behind with his lifted Nissan Titan 4x4. Rather than stop to give aid to his victim, the 26-year-old Pratico immediately drove away. He was later convicted of multiple felonies.

Jean Gorman stands in front of a memorial for fallen bicyclists, including her son, Brad.

Barely conscious and struggling to breathe, Scott says she remembers thinking to herself as she lay in shock on McDowell Road that she must have suffered an asthma attack. Instead, she had sustained life-threatening injuries — head trauma, a punctured lung, five spinal fractures, severe road rash, six broken ribs and a slew of hematomas. She was bedridden for four months, with a body brace strapped around her fragile figure.

Since their crashes, Esahak-Gage and Scott have become advocates for the state-mandated law passed in 2000 that requires passing drivers to give bicyclists a 3-foot passing distance.

The high number of fatal and near-fatal collisions involving bicycles and vehicles has brought the state’s 3-foot passing law (Arizona Revised Statute 28-735) into a controversial arena, pitting bicyclists, who believe the law provides a minimum standard, against drivers, who say the law may bring dangers of its own.

According to the Arizona Department of Transportation, there were 1,914 accidents in Arizona last year involving automobiles and bicycles. A total of 25 bicyclists were killed by motorists in 2009, and 19 were killed in 2010. For comparison, a total of 762 motorists were killed on Arizona roads during 2010, a fact Ed Beighe, of azbikelaw.org, a bicyclist activist website, says should be noted. “So while we’d all like to see bicycling be safer, bicycling represents a small part of an overall large problem,” Beighe says.

The number of injuries to bicyclists number in the thousands, however. There were 1,648 reported injuries to bicyclists in 2009 and another 1,583 in 2010.

“Most bicyclist-motor vehicle collisions occur when one or the other is making a turn movement — and not overtaking,” says Beighe, who stresses that he is not a lawyer. “But the relatively few overtaking collisions (bicycle struck from behind by a passing motorist) that do occur tend to be more serious than average.”

He says the 3-foot passing law is helpful in raising awareness among motorists. It shows drivers what to expect when overtaking and what they should see. However, Beighe says, the law itself is difficult to enforce and, in fact, “very, very few” citations have been issued outside of a collision, where it is often irrefutable that the motorist encroached upon the 3-foot right-of-way.

In many cases, when a bicyclist is struck and either injured or killed, no citation is issued for not allowing for three feet of clearance, says Sterling Baer, co-founder of Not One More Cyclist and himself an avid cyclist. The reason is that the cause of the accident often becomes a criminal act rendering the 3-foot citation irrelevant, as it takes a backseat to more serious felony charges.

“It actually hides or sort of skews the real statistics that show many of these kinds of events are happening,” Baer says.

Killed Instantly

The 3-foot berth statute is sometimes referred to as “Brad Gorman’s Law.” A 41-year-old Realtor, Gorman was training for his seventh El Tour de Tucson along Catalina Highway riding to Mount Lemmon on a September morning in 1999 when an inattentive driver struck him from behind at 50 miles per hour. Gorman was killed instantly.

His “killer,” as his mother Jean Gorman calls the teenage driver, received just a $66 fine.

“I have to say ‘killed’ because he didn’t just die,” she says. “He was killed. People after 12 years still look at me funny when I say that. I feel as though this is the best way to get my message across, and this is the way I feel. He did not just die or I did not just lose him. He was taken. He was killed.”

Jean Gorman says that while she and her heartbroken family could have chosen to insulate themselves by going into hiding, they have instead chosen to embark on a mission to improve safety for bicyclists. The result was a law that upped fines and established a berth for riders.

“I went right to the [Tucson-Pima County] Bicycle Advisory Committee that I knew about from Brad and asked what I could do to help make things like this better,” Jean Gorman recalls.

“I went to the local government board of supervisors. I got the memorial bikeway named. … They took me to the House and Senate where I testified in favor of a 3-foot berth.”

Steve Donaldson's riding "kit" includes an illustration of the 3-foot passing law.

Gorman, with the help of then-State Rep. Debora Norris, former State Sen. Elaine Richardson and Matthew Zoll, the bicycle and pedestrian program manager for the Pima County Department of Transportation, designed legislation toughening safeguards for cyclists. The law boosted fines to the current $500 for hitting a rider and $1,000 for a death. It also requires that passing motorists give bicycles at least three feet. (Jean Gorman originally lobbied for a 5-foot clearance, but state legislators settled on 3 feet.)

Gov. Jane Hull signed the law on April 17, 2000, and it went into effect on July 17, 2000. Jean Gorman also helped procure HURF funds to build bike lanes on Catalina Highway, part of which is renamed Brad. P. Gorman Memorial Bikeway.

Bob Beane, Coalition of Arizona Bicyclists president, explains that a 3-foot berth is the common distance in laws that have been enacted in more than a dozen states.

“So it’s somewhat become the de facto standard,” he says. “It’s the distance that people can live with in traffic engineering when they’re looking at lane widths. Five would be harder to accommodate. If you’re leaving a 5-foot distance and trying to get a car around that, within standard lane widths, it gets more challenging.”

Much to the chagrin of many bicycling activists, the law also has the effect of exempting motorists from penalty if a bicyclist who is injured is using a “vehicular” traffic lane when a designated bicycle lane or path is present and passable. Zoll, who drafted the law, says there are problems with the final version passed by legislators.

“Number one, there is no such thing as a vehicular traffic lane,” Zoll says. “That would imply that it’s illegal for bicyclists to be in a traffic lane or travel lane, as we prefer to use. In statute, bicyclists can use a travel lane. That’s a definition issue that’s incorrect.

“The second thing is it says a designated bike lane or path. We can’t actually designate a bike path. We can only designate them as shared-use path. We know that pedestrians will be there. There are two definition issues that are problematic with this subsection.”

The Coalition of Arizona Bicyclists supports the law despite its limitations — but it seems to be taking a long time for the public to become aware of it.

“I think a lot of the general public still doesn’t know that it’s out there,” Beane says. “Whenever we have a venue to talk about it — a public venue, a public service announcement — we try to mention it so that more people are aware of it. We remind people. We actually worked to get a question on the Arizona driver’s test that includes that and covers that subject. There are a few questions on the driver’s test that are in rotation. We had it added in the last year.”

Promoting Education

Steve Donaldson remembers that fateful day in September 2009 when he was almost hit by a passing driver in a Nissan Frontier. The driver was in what Donaldson calls the “suicide part of the lane.” Donaldson tried to get to the other side, but the Nissan Frontier kept coming straight at him. The driver swerved at the last second, narrowly missing him.

“I got his license plate number, and the police didn’t do anything about it,” Donaldson says. “I was shocked that nothing was done. I went home and I was so pissed I asked my wife what can I do. I started my acronym CARD.”

CARD, which stands for Cyclists Against Reckless Driving, operates with the mission of promoting education and awareness about bicycle safety. Donaldson says there are far too many cycling deaths each year that could have been avoided if the drivers and cyclists involved were aware of the pertinent traffic laws.

“Some of the police don’t even know about it, which is sad,” says Donaldson, whose riding “kit” boasts an illustration of the law. “Most of the cyclists don’t know about it. A lot of people don’t know about it.”

Dee Scott, pictured with her bike and as she recovered from her collision, has forgiven the man who hit her, but urges drivers to remain vigilant in observing the 3-foot berth law.

Donaldson, who says he’s had beer bottles and soda cans thrown at him while riding his bike, says a lot of drivers don’t understand that bicycles have a right to be on the road. Bicyclists are seen as an annoyance or in the way of drivers.

“What I always stress to drivers is, ‘I’m a father. I’m a husband — just like you are,’” he says. “That’s how you need to start thinking. At the end of the day, bicyclists have the exact same rights as the car does. We have to follow all the same laws.”

 “I’m glad that the cities are getting on board now and upholding the 3-foot law,” Dee Scott says. “I’ve seen a lot of people get hurt. It happens when I’m out and about every day. They’re crossing the white lines. They’re pushing the bicyclists into the dirt. They drive past really fast. There’s a lot of yelling. There’s a lot of throwing things.”

Apache Junction Police Capt. Arnold Freeman says he agrees with Scott’s sentiments; he disagrees with the notion that the law is difficult to enforce.

“It’s not difficult to enforce as long as the officer observes it on view,” he says. “That’s the only difficulty. An officer actually has to observe that the violation was committed because it’s a misdemeanor and all misdemeanors have to be on view, with a couple of exceptions. But traffic especially is an on-view requirement.”

The city of Apache Junction recently added bike lanes on Old West Highway from Idaho Road down past Tomahawk Road.

“What that does is, when you come in and add a bicycle lane, it automatically reduces the maximum speed limit for that road by 10 miles per hour, or it did for Old West,” Freeman says. “It went from 55 down to 45 because that bike lane was installed. That is a state requirement. Any time you add a bike lane, there’s a maximum allowable speed. If it’s above that, then it has to be reduced for the safety of the bicyclists that use that bike lane.”

Supporting Bicyclists

Scott has returned to some sort of normalcy after her collision, although she will never run again. Prior to sustaining her injuries, she was working three jobs to support herself and her children; now she is unable to work. She credits her emotional and financial recovery to Sterling Baer and Dara Schulenberg, who created the Not One More Cyclist foundation after Scott’s collision to support riders who have been injured or killed.

“She [Schulenberg] was hit and she was treated so lovely by many friends and family,” Scott says. “She wanted to treat someone lovely, too. She wanted to pay it forward, pay it forward to me. She has a heart of gold.

“Both she and Sterling are amazing people. She’s an angel, let me tell you. I don’t know what I would have done. My mom had to quit her job to take care of me.”

Not One More Cyclist paid her bills for three months. They gave her children Christmas presents.

“Because I’d been a single parent my whole life, I’ve always worked very hard,” Scott says. “All the people involved — the [Red Mountain] Brumbys, and Sterling and Dara, the Mormon churches and Dara’s church — they were amazing. They are absolutely the pillars of the community.”

As for the man who hit her, Pratico, who had a previous DUI and reckless driving charges, is in prison on two felonies, serving three and a half years. Upon his release, he will be on probation for seven years. Miraculously, Scott has forgiven Pratico.

The driver who hit George Esahak-Gage and his wife, Jane, had lost his license several years prior to the accident due to a string of DUIs in California. He skipped the hearing for the third DUI and fled to Arizona.

“The irony is he probably should have been on public transport or on a bike — not driving a car,” George says. “We were the ones on the bicycles and we were vulnerable, even though we were in the right of way any way you slice it.

 “Life goes on. In a lot of ways I’m super, super fortunate that I came out of that whole thing fairly intact. That’s a lot more than a lot of people can say.”

What do you think?

Is the 3-foot berth law fair, even on some of the state’s narrow roads? Let us know what you think. Call (480) 348-0343 opt. 1 and leave your message. It will be printed in the next edition of The Times.