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A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

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Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#181

Post by Svip »

TomMarius wrote: post #173
Svip wrote: post #133

I feel a lot of commenters are simply focusing on what signs can do or what sort of junction to build, rather than focus on the fact that on high speed primary country roads, bicycles shouldn't be sharing the road with the cars. In Denmark, a lot of high speed roads (excluding motorways, of course) out in the country have separate dual-way bicycle lanes near it but not attached to it. (Example: https://i.imgur.com/dS…

The drivers shouldn't be punished for bad design of the road. A separate bike road should be constructed.

Indeed. The main type of accident involving cyclists in Denmark are so called 'right turn accidents', where a lorry turning right at a junction hits a cyclists because they are in their blind spot. This obviously happens exclusively in cities.

The media has made a big deal about how tragic it is for the cyclists - which it is, but much less about how tragic it is for the driver. Remember, it's not like drivers want to hit cyclists or other soft traffic participants.

That's why I propose a separate bike road, even if it is quite an expensive undertaking. But it will make all the road users feel safe. Or -- at least -- safer.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#182

Post by Scarblac »

This type of "Shared Space" junction in a rural area in the Netherlands is an interesting solution: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.093333,6.2410165,255a,35y,32...

Several bad accidents happened here before this was implemented, none since 2009 when it was. Note that there are distinct paths for bicycles next to the roads, but that's standard.

There are no signs, no rules, but the roads can't be taken in a straight line anymore and it's certainly suggested that the junction is a pedestrian area. Drivers get confused which grabs their attention and makes them slow down.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#183

Post by kgwgk »

paulie_a wrote: post #177
marcus_holmes wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For cyclists, roundabouts aren't that much better unless we're given separate lanes. Motorists still tend to blow through roundabouts at speed if they can't see anything coming. From personal experience you can easily navigate a roundabout at 35+ mph.

I've been curious as to why American roundabouts include unnecessary vegetation or a hill in the middle? Why obscure oncoming traffic?

The obstruction in the middle also makes the existence of a roundabout more obvious.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#184

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

Svip wrote: post #181
TomMarius wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drivers shouldn't be punished for bad design of the road. A separate bike road should be constructed.

Indeed. The main type of accident involving cyclists in Denmark are so called 'right turn accidents', where a lorry turning right at a junction hits a cyclists because they are in their blind spot. This obviously happens exclusively in cities. The media has made a big deal about how tragic it is for the cyclists - which it is, but much less about how tragic it is for the driver. Remember, it's not like drivers want t…

> The main type of accident involving cyclists in Denmark are so called 'right turn accidents'

It's the same in London, a city with notoriously poor cycling infrastructure and narrow streets due to long history. Ok, it's the "left turn" mirror image version due to driving on the left not right side of the road, but otherwise the same.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#185

Post by underwater »

GordonS wrote: post #159
aidenn0 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 4-way stops have the same basic rules throughout the US (cars go in order of arrival). 2-way stops do not : Consider the case where the first car to arrive is turning left, but cannot do so due to traffic on the main road. Then a car arrives from the opposite direction going straight. Who is supposed to go first? In some states it's the car that reached the stop sign first, in others it's the car going strai…

When I did my driving lessons many many years ago (UK), I was told that the car turning left would have right of way, because they weren't crossing a carriage way.

You have to flip it so the car is turnin right: across the path of the second car. In Australia the first car would have to wait. You can’t turn in front of a car going straight.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#186

Post by alkonaut »

TomMarius wrote: post #180
alkonaut wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the Netherlands, a 4 four stop would lead to an instant deadlock. I.e., if you reach a stop sign then all traffic on the road you approaching has priority. In a 4 way the same priority rules apply thatwould have applied if there were no stop signs. Obviously the signs have to make clear to everyone that it is a 4 way stop, so that you don't have 4 cars all thinkning they are in a 2 way stop. This is usually done…

The issue is that you can get in a situation with a car on each road. One of the drivers then has to signal the car on his left that he gives up his right of way. This is the same across the EU.

That happens all the time. But the point is that it's no worse because of the stop signs. Even without 4 stop signs you can have 4 cars stopped. This isn't a "bad" situation or a deadlock, this is a very safe situation and just means cars will have to crawl out in the crossing while making eye contact and taking some kind of turn driving. Now, if this happens regularly then the junction is much too trafficed for being a planar 4 way - with or without stops. Should be a roundabout in this case. But 4 stopsigns does not make an automatic deadlock. You don't need a rule to decide who goes first in that situation.

The same can be seen in any intersection with red lights, as soon as the red lights don't work. You just crawl into the intersection, trying to take turns. It works.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#187

Post by klodolph »

Karnickel wrote: post #154
nraynaud wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do exist in Germany.

I won't dispute it because of the general "If you've never seen a black swan, is that proof that none exists? (No)" fallacy, but speaking as a German, I cannot remember having seen one in Germany, ever. So even if one exists it's an exceedingly rare thing. When I lived in the US I always found it unnecessary that everybody has to stop. In Germany we always have a "main" road and a "secondary" road, and those on the m…

In the places where I see four-way stop, there is some constant but not heavy traffic during parts of the day, so if you had a primary / secondary road with only a two-way stop, the secondary road would not flow well. However, the traffic was not high enough to warrant a signal.

This makes sense to me, and I don't see how other systems would be anything but worse. A signal would have a short cycle and only delay people during large parts of the day, a two-way stop would cause problems in one direction, it seems excessive to tear out a bunch of road to put concrete in, etc.

It is of course very natural that the roads in the US are built to completely different standards than Germany, given how incredibly different the layout of US cities are from German ones, broadly speaking.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#188

Post by underwater »

jdavis703 wrote: post #76
gklitt wrote: post #18

The conclusion of the article reminds me of the idea behind blameless postmortems for system outages. Human mistakes are inevitable, and it's our responsibility to design resilient systems that acknowledge that simple fact. While software engineering is an immature discipline in many ways, blameless postmortems seem like a counterexample -- they're a well-known best practice in software that don't seem as common in s…

Most vehicle collisions are not blameless though. They are caused by inattentive people; I've almost been hit multiple times by people either on their cell phone, or chatting with a passenger in their vehicle. Other times drivers are purposely driving with a priority on agressivenss over safety. If we ever get to a state of zero traffic fatalities then maybe blameless post-mortems would make sense. But there's too mu…

If you acknowledge that people are inherently inattentive or malicious then you can design a system that protects people even when someone is to blame.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#189

Post by klodolph »

girvo wrote: post #155
hamandcheese wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of situations where a two way stop would cause traffic to get backed up in the direction of the stop sign. A great example is a 4 way stop at my former high school. Twice a day, everyone came and left causing a bit of a traffic jam. A two way stop would leave people in one direction waiting indefinitely, whereas a 4 way kept things chugging along rather nicely in both directions.

Have a roundabout instead. Easy, safer, and less traffic jams. Seems objectively superior to me.

Are you just conveniently omitting the fact that roundabouts are more expensive and require more land, which may already be used by something else?

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#190

Post by aidenn0 »

GordonS wrote: post #159
aidenn0 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 4-way stops have the same basic rules throughout the US (cars go in order of arrival). 2-way stops do not : Consider the case where the first car to arrive is turning left, but cannot do so due to traffic on the main road. Then a car arrives from the opposite direction going straight. Who is supposed to go first? In some states it's the car that reached the stop sign first, in others it's the car going strai…

When I did my driving lessons many many years ago (UK), I was told that the car turning left would have right of way, because they weren't crossing a carriage way.

Sorry change "left" to "across traffic" (i.e. right in UK, Japan &c. left in mainland Europe and Americas)
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