Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#91

Post by btrettel » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

jxcl wrote: post #2

As a commuting cyclist I usually prefer to ride in the street than in a bike lane. Protected cycle lanes are great only so long as nobody turns to the right directly in front of you. When there are cars parked in between the cycle lane and the car lane it's much easier for the driver to miss the cyclist, and few people check the cycle lane before turning right. I was definitely guilty of this until I started cycling.…

> Protected cycle lanes are great only so long as nobody turns to the right directly in front of you.

Yes, many bike lane advocates seem to think bike lanes are some panacea, but the vast majority of them don't address this basic issue. I think this is because strong bike lane advocates tend to be less experienced cyclists if they are cyclists at all. The more experienced cyclists have more nuanced views in my experience.

In Austin there are several protected bike lanes that I simply don't use because drivers far too frequently turn across them without looking. I'm confident enough to ride in the normal travel lane there, but I recognize that many cyclists aren't.

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#92

Post by anyanswers » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

foota wrote: post #27

gpm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wearing a helmet increases your chance of death on a bike according to the statistics. I personally don't, I feel less safe wearing one. I can't locate cars as accurately with audio with one on my head, the extra weight makesy head turn slower, and I think subconsciously left often. Drivers pass more aggressively and illegally (most drivers passing break the law here that requires a meter seperation when passing a cy…

Fairly certain that's bullshit. https://www.iihs.org/topics/pedestrians-and-bicyclists

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/24/bike-helmet-...

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#93

Post by btrettel » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

nogridbag wrote: post #72

jtms wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - I also find it safer in NYC to just ride with traffic. I have had several collisions with pedestrians who decided they would just step out right in front of me into my “lane” and nearly door’d on a couple of other occasions

That makes me feel even worse now. The other day I stopped behind a cyclist at a red light on a major avenue in NYC. He was in the left lane and the bike lane is simply one more lane over. When the light turned green he took forever to get going and even after 20 seconds he was still going dangerously slow so I honked him and felt like a jerk. I did not understand why he simply didn't use the bike lane. The cross str…

> When the light turned green he took forever to get going and even after 20 seconds he was still going dangerously slow so I honked him and felt like a jerk. I did not understand why he simply didn't use the bike lane.

Cyclist here. My experience suggests that when a cyclist takes the lane, they're doing so because they decided it was the best option for them. I wish more drivers would give them the benefit of the doubt.

There are many reasons not to use the bike lane: debris, drivers turning into the bike lane without looking, pedestrians walking into the bike lane without looking, cars illegally blocking the bike lane, needing to make a left turn (it's typically illegal to make a left turn from the far right), a cyclist keeping up with traffic, etc.

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#94

Post by jtuente » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

pedantsamaritan wrote: post #90

ben7799 wrote: post #40

As a long time long distance cyclist an awfully lot of these lanes, both protected and painted/"sharrow" are really frightening. There is an anti-car/pro-bike lane group of researchers who want to push this style of road design super hard right now at all costs. There are still major problems with their designs though, they are working from the assumption cyclists won't learn to follow the rules of the road. Tell me…

What specific style of road design are you talking about? There are a variety of bike lanes with various compromises. I've seen DOT presentations consider the situation, not pushing a certain design at all costs. There are multiple methods of left turns: https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/a/54628/37462 . From the bit I can gather from your post, I might use the "cross, stop, and pivot".

For simplicity, the left turn is a "traffic circle" for bicyclists around the automobile intersection.

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#95

Post by btrettel » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #40

As a long time long distance cyclist an awfully lot of these lanes, both protected and painted/"sharrow" are really frightening. There is an anti-car/pro-bike lane group of researchers who want to push this style of road design super hard right now at all costs. There are still major problems with their designs though, they are working from the assumption cyclists won't learn to follow the rules of the road. Tell me…

> There is an anti-car/pro-bike lane group of researchers who want to push this style of road design super hard right now at all costs.

I agree with this, at least for activists as I don't have much experience with researchers. Many people view bike lanes as some sort of panacea, and they sometimes end up making the situation worse than it would be otherwise for the exact reasons you mention.

Just to give an example, I'm a cyclist. I live in Austin and cross I-35 on a daily basis. Recently I was trying to reach a city traffic engineer to understand why where the bike lanes there cross the highway exits and onramps are so dangerous. Some of the locations have two signs saying to yield to cyclists in the crossing, but in my experience many drivers don't even seem to notice those signs. I was put in contact with some bike program coordinator. The coordinator told me that they plan to convert those bike lanes to protected bike lanes. I told them that the problem was the crossing between the bike lanes and the highway exits and onramps, not that the bike lane wasn't protected. Whenever Austin makes a protected bike lane, they don't protect the crossings, so a protected bike lane can't address the problems I have. Fortunately, the coordinator did tell me they'll inform me when the next planning meeting is for improvements to those bike lanes. But my experience suggests that my concerns will fall on deaf ears.

So, as you said, most of the risk is from intersections, not being hit from behind. Protected bike lanes won't fix the intersections.

> This stuff is plainly obvious when you've rode 10s or 100s of times more miles than the researchers.

Yes, as transportation cyclist for over a decade now, it seems clear to me that experience matters. I have a friend who has been riding for probably over 20 years now and we both have far more nuanced views than the more green cyclists who tend to view bike lanes as a panacea.

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#96

Post by at-fates-hands » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:49 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #43

ben7799 wrote: post #40

As a long time long distance cyclist an awfully lot of these lanes, both protected and painted/"sharrow" are really frightening. There is an anti-car/pro-bike lane group of researchers who want to push this style of road design super hard right now at all costs. There are still major problems with their designs though, they are working from the assumption cyclists won't learn to follow the rules of the road. Tell me…

> This stuff is plainly obvious when you've rode 10s or 100s of times more miles than the researchers. I'd argue, the points you make are 100% obvious if you've ever been through any intersection on a bicycle and needed to go straight or left from one of these lanes. You don't need 'research' when something is obviously stupid, but that seems to be something we've forgotten as a society. Around me, they put these 'bi…

> Around me, they put these 'bike' lanes on 45+ mph roads. The average driver is reckless and much too distracted to effectively spot the occasional cyclist.

I stopped commuting when I almost got run over twice in two days when cars felt like using the "protected" bike lane I was in to pass other cars during rush hour.

I'd rather drive and park 20 blocks away and walk instead of taking a chance biking in the city where a majority of people have no idea how to drive or observe basic rules of the road.

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#97

Post by pagnol » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #80

framebit wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a bike commuter who's not exactly in Tour de France riding condition, I whole-heartedly love what few physically protected bike lanes there are in my city. They've greatly extended the range of places I feel comfortable riding my bike. I don't know if I'll ever be in good enough shape to feel comfortable claiming a lane and riding in traffic anywhere but neighborhoods and steep downhills. Yeah, it's a pain to turn…

If I have to get off the bike at most of my intersections and turns, I might as well take a bus, because I'll get there faster. It might make seem to be reasonable to have these protected lanes for slower? cyclists in addition to allowing vehicular cycling, but there are two problems with this: a) it encourages car drivers to assume bicycles should not be in the lanes; b) it discourages cyclists from joining the flow…

> a) it encourages car drivers to assume bicycles should not be in the lanes

This is something I’m struggling with right now. The city where I live has a lot of mediocre or downright dangerous lanes for cyclists which are often very narrow and next to a column of parked cars so that riders can get hit by a suddenly opened door. When I then ride on the road instead, I often have to contend with car drivers who seem seem to purposefully pass by very closely at high speeds, seemingly in an attempt to ‘teach me a lesson’ and get me to ride on the bicycle lane again. That’s my interpretation at least. Has anyone else here noticed something like this?

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#98

Post by addicted » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #43

ben7799 wrote: post #40

As a long time long distance cyclist an awfully lot of these lanes, both protected and painted/"sharrow" are really frightening. There is an anti-car/pro-bike lane group of researchers who want to push this style of road design super hard right now at all costs. There are still major problems with their designs though, they are working from the assumption cyclists won't learn to follow the rules of the road. Tell me…

> This stuff is plainly obvious when you've rode 10s or 100s of times more miles than the researchers. I'd argue, the points you make are 100% obvious if you've ever been through any intersection on a bicycle and needed to go straight or left from one of these lanes. You don't need 'research' when something is obviously stupid, but that seems to be something we've forgotten as a society. Around me, they put these 'bi…

I don’t get it. How many lefts are you making in a trip? If you make 3 lefts you’ve made a circle, and there’s in most cases a better route.

You are far more likely to be biking straight than making left turns, so this is just optimizing for the general use case, while making the less frequent use case slightly more cumbersome (although still significantly safer).

This is unfortunately a common criticism faced in US cycling circles, where due to the unsafe nature of the vast majority of cycling paths, the people who choose to bike on streets in the US are self selected to be greater risk takers, and also a fairly niche group. For them, anything that makes cycling safer, Will almost by its nature be something that makes them slower, and so you end up in a situation that most existing constituencies are unhappy with bike infrastructure improvements (car drivers, and bikers), at the cost of the future constituency (people who would have bikes if it was safer like in Europe).

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#99

Post by asdff » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #40

As a long time long distance cyclist an awfully lot of these lanes, both protected and painted/"sharrow" are really frightening. There is an anti-car/pro-bike lane group of researchers who want to push this style of road design super hard right now at all costs. There are still major problems with their designs though, they are working from the assumption cyclists won't learn to follow the rules of the road. Tell me…

These issues have been solved from the proper protected lanes I've ridden on.

>Tell me how I'm supposed to safely take a left

You pull up and stop in front of the cars to your right on the perpendicular road. You turn your bike 90 degrees. You wait until they get a green light, and you ride straight ahead. This is painted on the road for you to follow sometimes.

>Also how do they expect me to safely go straight

I've seen a light for the bike lanes and a light for the right turn lane. When the bike lane is green, the right turn lane is red.

>It seems they think all cyclists need to dismount

Not the case, you just need to learn what the bike lane asks of you, which is pretty simple when you figure out what you need to do for left turns, and if there are bike onlyu lights for you to follow.

Re: Roads with protected bike lanes make both cycling and driving safer: study

#100

Post by asdff » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #43

ben7799 wrote: post #40

As a long time long distance cyclist an awfully lot of these lanes, both protected and painted/"sharrow" are really frightening. There is an anti-car/pro-bike lane group of researchers who want to push this style of road design super hard right now at all costs. There are still major problems with their designs though, they are working from the assumption cyclists won't learn to follow the rules of the road. Tell me…

> This stuff is plainly obvious when you've rode 10s or 100s of times more miles than the researchers. I'd argue, the points you make are 100% obvious if you've ever been through any intersection on a bicycle and needed to go straight or left from one of these lanes. You don't need 'research' when something is obviously stupid, but that seems to be something we've forgotten as a society. Around me, they put these 'bi…

I think people just have to realize that they can't act like a car on a bike, especially in the bike lane.

Take the left. In no way are you supposed to merge over into a left lane, wait for cars to clear, and move left on a green or yellow like you would in a car. That's just not what's supposed to be done, but everyone does it because we aren't educated on biking laws or even best practices like we are when we take our drivers test at 15 or 16 years old.

To take a left, you don't leave the right side of the road at all. You pull up in front of the stopped perpendicular traffic on your right side, turn your bike 90* to your left, wait for the green, and ride as if you were coming straight off that perpendicular road. No lane changes, no yielding on left, and you are in front of the traffic pack and visible.