How to Not Get Hit by Cars

Regarding number 4, "Don't ride against traffic."

Seems pretty obvious, but in my local area they've started building bike lanes for both directions on a single side of the road [1]. It's great that they have nice wide bike lanes with some separation from the cars, but quite frankly it's an accident waiting to happen at the junctions with one of the bike lanes running opposite to the expected flow of traffic.

Cars pulling out of side roads on that side now how to cross the double bike lane first, (which means looking both ways when you would only expect to have to look in one direction) before reaching either car lane. It's also not signposted that bikes can be coming from both directions. Cars going straight over a cross roads have to cross the double bike lane after the double car lane, so have to switch and look both directions twice at different times.

Worse, as a car, if you are turning off the main road and down the side road (either to the left or right), you now also have to watch for bikes coming up the bike lane from behind you which is very tricky.

Both of these situations goes against the well established norms of the road which I think makes for a very dangerous situation.

And finally, when the double bike lane crosses a more major intersection with traffic lights, they actually narrow it to a single lane running only with the flow of traffic. Bikes moving on the lane opposite to the natural flow are directed to cut across the other half of the bike lane and navigate the whole junction on the pedestrian pavements, crossing the roads at crossings. On a bike this significantly slows you down, unsurprisingly I've frequently seen cyclists ignore the guidance and attempt to navigate the intersection against the flow of traffic on the now single track bike lane. That's crazy dangerous as the timing of the lights pretty much guarantees that you are going to be passing in front of a turning or crossing car. I don't endorse the behaviour of cyclists who do this, and to some extent it's their fault if they get hit when not following the rules of the road, but given how awkward and slow they've made it to follow the 'correct' route, I'm not at all surprised to see it being ignored.

[1] Something like these: - https://www.buffalorising.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/202... - https://www.buffalorising.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/202...

I've done my share of BMX, mountain biking, and winter riding (where minor wipeouts can be common).

My last commuting wipeout was a couple years ago when I failed to register a speed bump while going pretty fast. I hit it, my front wheel turned sideways, and I slammed myself into the pavement pretty hard.

> But, naturally, that list doesn't include all the times that a cyclist successfully swerved around the door and nothing happened.

It also doesn't include all of the times cyclists crashed into a door and got back on the bike with nothing but some bruises and a damaged ego. Or any times they crashed and received a noteworthy injury but didn't die.

Like with many safety statistics unfortunately the only data we have to work with is the most severe cases - we have a mountain of data on when things go wrong (deaths), but safe behaviour is invisible since its outcomes are never logged.

Regardless one thing is clear - if you want to avoid either cycling at speed into a person or a heavy metal object, or swerving wildly into passing traffic, always take the lane instead of cycling in the door zone.

Both are. I've done both for a long time, forcing everyone to go at 30 km/h in a 50 zone is inconsiderate. Not as inconsiderate as not being careful around cyclists when you drive. This looks like a system design problem to me. The needs of the cyclists don't match the needs of the drivers. This is why we are fighting over this. There has to be a solution, but I know nothing about civil engineering.

Same in Germany: https://www.nw.de/_em_daten/_cache/image/1xekc0SVN5N2FSQ295T...