On the day the truck passengers decided to fool with him, he was on his way to a Bicycle Collective board meeting.

It wasn't the final straw, just another one, for a man who never retreats from talking about and promoting bicycle safety. He's turned in his share of reckless drivers and had numerous "talks" with "right-hookers," the name he gives to motorists who pass a cyclist and then almost immediately turn right, oblivious that the cyclist has already caught up to them and they could have killed him.

"I know to constantly be on the lookout, always ready to brake," says Bultman, who switched from cars to bikes when he was a grad student at the University of Pittsburgh and has never switched back.

"I'm really healthy," he says, enumerating the advantages of bike-commuting. "I never even think about going to a gym ... or paying for parking."

His most serious car-bike encounter occurred in that tragic summer of 2004 when a car turned left directly in front of him — what Bultman calls a "left-crosser" — and hit him head-on. That resulted in multiple bumps and bruises and a fractured ankle that required a series of surgeries.

Rather than knocking him off his bike for good, the collision only heightened Bultman's desire to make the roads safer for cyclists.

Of course, those guys in the truck didn't know any of this when they swerved over so they could smack him.

Any more than they knew they were about to make history by becoming the first people ever to be charged with violating the three-foot law by driving too close to a bicycle.

---

Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.