News that bicycle safety legislation failed this week should not necessarily come as a surprise. The logging industry, in particular in Northern Idaho, is a powerful interest and dependent on trucks to deliver its timber from one location to the next. The Statesman on Wednesday while laying out the bare bones of the story, missed perhaps the irony of a bill designed to protect users of an environment friendly mode of transportation, losing out to truckers and loggers.

The apparent deal breaker was the three feet safety zone for bicycles, something the trucking industry found too onerous, and, they argued, represented a safety hazard to truckers and other motorists. They may have a point when it comes to trucks crossing into the oncoming traffic lane on winding rural roads, but this raises the question about just who the roads belong to. Sharing the roads should not be a zero sum game.

People have to make a living, and in the current economic climate, it is necessary to find balance. Idaho cannot afford to lose more jobs, but with seven bicycle fatalities in Idaho on 2009, surely some compromise is possible. Indeed in reading the legislation it appears that there was language in the bill that provided for a more narrow passing lane, as long as that passage was deemed to be safe. Moreover, the bill’s author, Senator Elliot Werk, D- Boise expressed a willingness to adjust the legislation. Perhaps we could start with changing the rules on city streets?

Finally, when the Statesman followed up Wednesday’s story with a Thursday piece about other bills which were allowed to die, one couldn’t help but wonder if they weren’t pointing the finger at the legislature’s inability to act. In writing “Some Idaho Legislative Bills Die With a Whisper” the Statesman echoed the words of another Eliott; Thomas Stearns, in whose poem The Hollow Men were written the lines  “Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless.” That poem, often quoted, ends unforgettably with the lines “this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.” Let’s hope that we are not witnessing the end of cycling safety initiatives in Idaho.