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Don't know if this is new up and I am at work so no time to check. However you can't have too much increased safety for bike commuters so...
There is a Downing Street Petition you can sign to try to make it law to allow reasonable space when overtaking a cyclist in a motor vehicle. The highway code guidance is just that...guidance so the police avoid getting involved when they witness close passing. The petition calls for it to be made law to allow 1.5m passing distance. The petition can be found at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/5feet-or-more/
It's currently the law that you should overtake safely. Specifying a distance is pointless.
How do you police it.
How do you measure it while actually doing it?
If you didn't use the 5 feet, how would anyone prove you didnt?
If there IS an accident you can assume that there wasn't sufficient safe distance left, so it doesnt matter what distance you set.
Waste of time, better off just trying to change attitudes, not laws.
I see a chap riding the roads of Manchester with what looks like a football pitch corner flag strapped to his rear pannier rack, which sticks into the road a good four feet.
He looks like a tw*t and presumably likes sitting in queues of traffic, unable to filter (one of the most effective tools of riding a bike in urban areas).
It's a silly idea to make such a thing law. Much easier to adopt the approach that if a vehicle is within touching distance, then you hit it. I find this very effective.
Waste of time, better off just trying to change attitudes, not laws.
there was a thread last week about this petition but can't be bothered looking for it as above says it