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Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

theguardian.com

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Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#61

Post by Angostura »

leetcrew wrote: post #51
Angostura wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Don't. You may "try to minimise danger", but one day you will hit someone and injure them. You also make it difficult for nervous or timid pedestrians. I absolutely will walk in your way and give you a mouthful.

if a bike hits you at a typical walking speed, how much worse is it than just bumping into another pedestrian?

Cyclists who claim to ride slowly on pavements very rarely actually cycle at 3-4 mph, bikes are pretty unstable. Get a handlebar in your got at 8mph and you'll know about it. Even as low speed a piece of tubular metal in your abdomen is more painful than someone brushing a hip.

Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#62

Post by mruts »

Grue3 wrote: post #57
mruts wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biycling on the sidewalk is illegal in most places. And for good reason. In cities the differential between the speed of bikes and cars is smaller than between bikes and pedestrians.

>In cities the differential between the speed of bikes and cars is smaller than between bikes and pedestrians. I find that hard to believe. A bike can easily move at a walking speed among the pedestrians, while a car would never drive at a bike speed unless forced to.

In New York bikes are often going faster than cars.

Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#64

Post by dmurray »

jessaustin wrote: post #49
C1sc0cat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As some one who used to cycle a lot in London - the problem is the use of the reserved space at stop lines for cyclists as it teaches cyclist to aggressively undertake cars to get to the front. An before you down vote me - undertaking and getting hit causes 90% (aprox) of the fatal casualties in London.

Could you define that term? All I'm getting are "a formal pledge or promise" and "the occupation of an undertaker".

Undertaking = passing on the left, in a system where traffic is meant to drive on the left and pass on the right. By analogy with overtaking, for passing on the right.

Cyclists (in a bike lane or not) undertaking heavier vehicles certainly are involved in a lot of serious accidents. However it's a very twisted view of reality to say that this causes accidents. The proximate cause is the heavy vehicles turning left or pulling to the left without regard for the cyclist in their blind spot.

Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#65

Post by leetcrew »

Angostura wrote: post #61
leetcrew wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if a bike hits you at a typical walking speed, how much worse is it than just bumping into another pedestrian?

Cyclists who claim to ride slowly on pavements very rarely actually cycle at 3-4 mph, bikes are pretty unstable. Get a handlebar in your got at 8mph and you'll know about it. Even as low speed a piece of tubular metal in your abdomen is more painful than someone brushing a hip.

fair enough. I suspect there is usually an impedance mismatch in these discussions where each party is imagining a very different context. you seem to be envisioning a densely packed sidewalk with cyclists at a moderate speed.

when I ride on the sidewalk, it is in a small town or suburban setting where there is virtually no one on the sidewalk (if it even exists) and fast SUVs and crossovers in the street. in this situation, I usually just pedal a couple times and then coast twenty feet until the bike won't stay up. if I see a pedestrian I get off and stop until they pass me. I really don't think this should be illegal.

Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#66

Post by wayoutthere »

Angostura wrote: post #56
wayoutthere wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it’s illegal. So is driving / parking in the bike lane, but the cops in my city enforce neither. Doesn’t change a thing — I refuse not to be selfish when it comes to protecting my life.

> I refuse not to be selfish when it comes to... ... endangering pedestrians.

I mean, I’m not a moron. If the sidewalk is crowded, I’ll hop off and walk my bike.

But it’s a false equivalency to compare the two: a bike vs pedestrian accident usually ends in bumps and scrapes with the cyclist getting the worse end of the bargain. A car vs bike accident can easily leave you permanently disabled or worse (with a very high frequency of hit-and-runs).

Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#67

Post by cr0sh »

Angostura wrote: post #56
wayoutthere wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it’s illegal. So is driving / parking in the bike lane, but the cops in my city enforce neither. Doesn’t change a thing — I refuse not to be selfish when it comes to protecting my life.

> I refuse not to be selfish when it comes to... ... endangering pedestrians.

Something being assumed here is that in the US, we have pedestrians on sidewalks.

In truth, you only see this in large urban core areas, but in most places, even the suburbs, people don't walk anywhere - mainly because in many cases, there's nothing nearby to walk to.

Everybody drives.

That isn't to say nobody walks, but such people are few and far between. Usually, when you see someone on the sidewalk, it's either a skateboarder, a bicyclist, or someone in a powered mobility chair.

This does, of course, vary based on the population and geographical makeup of the area (and weather), but usually, again, the only time you see more than a few people walking on the sidewalk, it's within an urban core area.

Also - speaking on the weather topic - here in Phoenix, Arizona, we don't typically have many walkers on sidewalks in the downtown area, in the summertime, because the heat is extremely brutal (even with shade). At one time, it was also a year-round thing, because there wasn't much to do downtown (and shops closed early), but things have changed in recent years (mainly due to the install of light rail).

Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#68

Post by lucideer »

robertony wrote: post #60
lucideer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having cycled briefly in a few cities in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Hague), and also in Copenhagen, I found the former cities excellent and the latter stressful. Copenhagen tends strongly towards segregated lanes: you have to be extremely familiar with the city layout to be able to pre-empt where to enter & exit, and local cyclists come across quite aggressive if you're not constantly perfectly aware of whe…

If I compare cyclists in London (and, there are a lot) to pretty much anywhere in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the cyclists are far better behaved. I don't have to worry for my life walking on a pavement that in the next moment a cyclist may decide to go on the pavement because there is a red light on the road at full speed, or almost knock me over, going across a zebra crossing when the light is green for pe…

To clarify: I don't think having as many cyclists in London as in a Dutch city will bring about the kind of culture and benefits cyclists enjoy in Netherlands; there are so many other factors there.

All I'm saying is that having more cyclists brings about marked improvement for cyclists.

For your particular example (cyclists jumping onto the pavement), this is often down to bad planning. Signals and road layouts are designed exclusively for motorists in most cities, with the question of whether it's efficient to use (not just safe) for cyclists very unlikely to even be mentioned during planning. How fast you can get from A to B in a car is a question enormouse resources are poured into, with complex models developed. The same process is rarely applied to cyclists. If cyclists could get from A to B relatively efficiently without meeting unnecessary barries along their journey, you'd find a smaller minority would be feeling the need to hop on pavements and run reds* through crowds of pedestrians.

* Though on the subject of running reds in general, there's quite a few studies advocating things like the Idaho Stop and the Parisien laws on red lights. In my experience, pedestrian outrage at this behaviour is usually exaggerated and comes down to nothing more than anger at rule-breaking for the sake of it. Accidents whereby pedestrians are injured due to cyclists running reds don't factor highly in statistics.

Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#69

Post by protonimitate »

jessaustin wrote: post #47
protonimitate wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intersections are dangerous for sure, but I think it mostly depends on the city and driving culture each has. One thing that segregated lanes help immensely with is double-parking in painted bike lanes, and bus routes that weave in and out of bike lanes to make their stops. Ideally we'd have both segregated lanes and protected intersections.

bus routes that weave in and out of bike lanes Have you really found this to be a problem? Everywhere I've lived and cycled, buses are the most predictable vehicles on the road. When they approach from behind, they leave plenty of space. They rarely go very fast. They stop often enough that you'd never get stuck behind them. Unlike a lot of other "professionally driven" vehicles, they know where they're going and don…

Yes, at least in Boston it's a major issue. I've personally seen three separate instances of a MBTA bus forcing a cyclist on to the curb by approaching them from behind, passing, and cutting them off.

They _should_ be predictable, but that does not seem to be the case in my anecdotedal experience.

And regardless, why put the onus of responsibility on the bus driver when a segregated lane would solve the issue entirely?

Re: Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer

#70

Post by einpoklum »

This is BS title. Painted cycling lanes are an important part of the cycling environment. No, in themselves, they don't make me - as a cyclist - feel safe. But _without_ them, I will never feel safe. They need to be _added_ to by education from a young age and during driver training, as well as through cultural products such as TV programming, films, books, social media etc. And by "education" I mean the education to never swerve into bike lanes, watching out for bikers, never walking onto bike lanes as a pedestrian etc.

Of course, a hard separation of a bike lane from the other lanes increases safety; but that cannot be expected to exist everywhere, or in most streets even.

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