Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

singletrackworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 522 posts

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#411

Post by brewdad »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #339
avip wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an extremely dangerous law... In bike-crowded cities you will never be able to take a safe right-turn that way.

You simply wait for a gap in the flow of bikes, and pull all the way to the curb, so there's no gap. Then you only really have to worry about the bikes in front of you, and any pedestrians in the crossing.

Portland gets this wrong in every possible way. First, drivers turning right must yield to bikes in the bike lane passing on the right (not unreasonable IMO). However, state law also makes it illegal to pull into the bike lane and establish a position to turn right. Add in pedestrians and it's almost impossible to make a right turn on some roads at rush hour.

For some reason, we seem to have a lot of car/bike/ped conflicts.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#412

Post by TomMarius »

kingosticks wrote: post #204
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.

What's the punishment exactly? Being forced to slow down at a junction where you don't have right of way to ensure you give right of way to the road traffic you failed to see?

The road was obviously not designed with cyclists in mind, it was designed to enable cars to merge into the road quickly. The punishment is exactly what you describe: "we failed to anticipate bycicle traffic and so we'll make it impossible to go fast because we made a bad design."

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#413

Post by mcguire »

cornyNetHandle wrote: post #363
7952 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most roads in the UK are perfectly well designed to handle bike traffic. But they are not designed for the massive quantity of vehicle traffic travelling at relatively high speed on roads originally designed for a different age. Danger to cyclists are a symptom of this wider problem which we have no real solution for. Also, this particular junction is terribly designed for cars and will result in collisions.

Roads in the UK have generally had some work done on them since the automobile was invented. Saying that they are designed for bike traffic, when they are continuously rebuilt to the needs of motorised vehicles, is a bit like complaining that it is problematic marching a centuria down the middle of the A59 out of York, given that is what the Romans designed it for. And we do have a solution to this problem, it is tha…

Dude, the A59 would be great! You could march XX Valeria down that thing abreast.

In fact, that may be what happened to IX Hispania: they were having so much fun, they just kept going.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#414

Post by TomMarius »

zimpenfish wrote: post #249
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.

> The drivers shouldn't be punished for bad design of the road. No excuse of "bad design" can work for blowing across a crossroaded "Give Way" at 37mph. That's reckless in any situation.

No it isn't, I do it daily in Prague together with police cars that are coming from a nearby police station. The difference is that I can be sure no bicycles are on the road. If I stopped or slowed down it would be very unsafe but this way I just merge into the traffic seamlessly.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#415

Post by cornyNetHandle »

papermule wrote: post #398
cornyNetHandle wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so licences for runners then, as you may need to have a test to see that people know the rules and presumably ban people from running if they break them.

Since running is largely recreational most runners avoid congested areas on purpose. If this changes it will have to be revisited. Nice strawman though.

Was trying more for reducto ad absurdum. I didn't come up with the idea of having laws to separate runners from walkers, you did. I was just exploring the enforcement mechanism for such a suggestion.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#416

Post by vvillena »

pafje wrote: post #304
ioulian wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Belgium. We have a lot of cyclists here, but I think 80% of them don't know their weak position on the road. As my father said, "They think they are terminators, that if a car crashes into them, the car will break and they will be OK". And that's what I almost always see on the road. We have a lot of cycling lanes, thank god for that, but sometimes they are not in a good state so all those people tend to sh…

Whatever the speed limit, you should never go 90 km/h in a blind turn if it is too fast to avoid a cyclist. You're the one responsible as long as cyclists are allowed on the road (and for good reason). For example, on the tiny winding mountain roads of Corsica, the speed limit is generally 90 km/h but it would be crazy for a non-local to go more than 50 or 60 km/h (if only because of the random encounters with wild b…

> Whatever the speed limit, you should never go 90 km/h in a blind turn if it is too fast to avoid a cyclist.

I suppose it depends on the country, but usually roads mandate minimum speeds (tipically half the max speed) in order to avoid issues like this. Anything lower than the minimum speed should be treated like a static obstacle, so maximum speed should always take into account unexpected hazards.

Given that cyclists cannot tipically maintain the minimum speed required in any country road, they cannot share the road with faster vehicles. It's either curbs or segregated roads. Anything else is plain craziness.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#417

Post by wffurr »

rwbcxrz wrote: post #23

As a driver, I do my best to slow down a bit at any intersection, but particularly ones like this. Unfortunately, that tends to frustrate anyone driving behind me, sometimes to the point that they’ll try to overtake me (illegally) before the intersection. In my mind, better traffic engineering is the best solution, but that seems unlikely, at least in the US. I’d imagine that the article’s suggested changes would cos…

Slowing down an intersections like you describe really ought to be the minimum standard of attentiveness required on the part of drivers, but instead, as you point out, many drivers are far too impatient for that.

Traffic engineering combined with a different legal standard that places greater liability on the driver for exercising due caution would go a long way towards fixing this, and hopefully doing something about the mass carnage on the world's roadways.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#418

Post by brewdad »

gambiting wrote: post #219
__david__ wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, roundabouts are the superior 4-way stops. Except on the “compact real estate” axis. A plain intersection is always going to be smaller.

I'm sorry, have you seen some of the British roundabouts? Where the "roundabout" is just a tiny circle painted in the middle? I'm sure it's not bigger than your normal intersection by any measurable standard, and at least everyone knows exactly what the priorities are, you literally can't get it wrong.

We've built something like that on neighborhood streets in the US in the name of "traffic calming". Usually, it's a planter or an island with a single tree. We still put up 2-way or 4-way stop signs though because traffic circles make our heads explode. In the end, all it really accomplishes is making it hard to see other vehicles at the intersection.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#419

Post by csours »

scottishfiction wrote: post #213
csours wrote: post #22

Unrelated, a few days ago I was thinking about this intersection: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.5075019,-96.3308952,243m/dat... Traffic on Hwy 164 does not stop, Hwy 39 does stop. However Hwy 39 has yield lanes that can be used to enter 164 via a right turn, and only slowing down, and not coming to a complete stop. A few years ago there was a lot of gas drilling in the area, and the trucks working the drilling site…

> In the case of this unsafe intersection, responsibility is diffuse - it is split between driver, cyclist, local government, and the original contractor. Arguably, the cyclist had right of way and did everything expected of them in the situation. Also, the original contractor was following the specifications given to them by local government. Therefore responsibility can really only be placed with two parties; prima…

I guess "responsibility" implies legal responsibility - I meant something more generic, like capacity or function.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#420

Post by scatters »

pc86 wrote: post #373
chimprich wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why shouldn’t cyclists need a license to ride on the road? Thought experiment: if you didn't have any motorised vehicles on the road, would you still want cyclists to have a licence? In a general case though, requiring cyclists to have a licence would reduce the number of cyclists, probably significantly. This would correspondingly increase the number of motorists. This dual effect would have a number of negative i…

You're suggesting that requiring bicyclists to be licensed would kill people?

It would have that effect, obviously. Is this not something you've thought about before?
Post reply on HN