Some people can ride in the road, others just can’t take the harassment they’re given. Bikes lanes are heaps good in the right areas. Yehuda will make the right decision.
It’s impossible to avoid harassment in life. No matter what you do, somewhere somewhere is going to harass you about something. So my thinking is, if you want to ride a bike, just accept the fact that you’re going to get harassed once in a while and, when it happens, deal with it. Trust me; you get used to it.
Besides, as you gain experience riding PROPERLY, you’ll find that the harassment becomes less and less common. I am rarely, if ever “harassed” when riding anymore. Oh sure, I encounter stupid drivers fairly often but as for people actively trying to HARASS me, no, very rarely.
This is exactly what came up yesterday on my ride home. I was riding up the hill and I saw this guy walking his bike on the wrong side of the road. I caught up to him at the top and I yelled over to him, “You’re going the wrong way!” and I smiled and waved. He waved back and I rode on home, about 6 miles away. About 1520 minutes after being home, my wife and I were playing badminton in the front yard and I am telling her about how I saw this guy walking his bike on the wrong side of the road and then right there he is walking his bike again up our road on the wrong side. I say, there he is! And then I asked him if he walked his bike the whole way. He said, no and that he rides part of the trip and walks the other parts because the roads are just too “treacherous”. And then he asked me “do you get any respect?”
I said, “I have been riding that route for 2 years and I just make the drivers give me room.”
Later on I was thinking, I bet you there are a ton of people who would ride there bikes if they felt safer.
I am just very accustomed to riding with traffic and it doesn’t bother me at all to have cars pass close by me (at least 3Ft).
A large section of my commute is a 4 lane road with a painted bike lane. The city has just grated the surface of ashphalt for resurfacing so the painted lines are now gone. The road is just as wide as it was last week but now the cars come closer and honk and harass. The worst part is all the sewer and storm drain covers along the curb side now stick up sharply by 2-3 inches, meaning I need to take more lane to avoid these hazards. What a difference a little painted lane really makes….
Our cycle campaign Wolves on Wheels [ http://www.wolvesonwheels.co.uk/ ] doesn’t campaign for cycle lanes everywhere. The UK public say they want cycle lanes like in the Netherlands to encourage them to start riding. However our highway authorities when they install them put them in at such a narrow widths it makes matters worse. An uphill crawler cycle lane is one location we support; contraflow lanes are important and sometimes an advisory lane through a pinchpoint works. Otherwise ask for them and you’ll get a white lane painted 1 metre / 1 yard from the kerb – about the width of the cyclists’ dynamic envelope ie across shoulders plus wobble width! Our drivers drive according to the territory marked out on the road for them in white lining. But a cyclists’ position needs to vary to account for conditions. A cycle lane width on the other hand is inflexible! “Get back in the cycle lane!” shouts the car passenger. So our campaign, while covetting riding conditions in Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, preaches the gospel of St John [Franklin] in Cyclecraft [ http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/ ] our version of Effective Cycling .
I have read JF’s Effective Cycling. All is well and good, until you take into consideration; the total lack of proper driver training AND the fact that the laws of physics still apply. It was also written BEFORE cellphones, text messaging and other added distractions became commonplace in the automobile. Yes, the techniques are useful, but so is proper cycling infrastructure.
I have been thinking on this for a while, bike lanes *can* be a help, but it depends on where. Most roads and roadway systems do not lend themselves to good bike lanes, to be truly effective, you need to go the whole hog as the Dutch have. I recently saw a small series of slides with a short talk, the system the Netherlands has in place is incredible, the refinement in design and engineering is out of this world. But they have developed that from a strong bike user base, how do we get there from where we in NA are? When we have 40% and higher on bikes, we will have the incentive and political will to do it, but we won’t get to 25% without it. Chicken and Egg.
=v= To @Michael Kahrl (Yesterday): Yehuda just lost his rain poncho. Maybe he could call up John Forester to order another one, and see whether he’s still ornery.
I find that in some areas and situations, taking the lane results in drivers doing very unsafe things in order to pass me, e.g. veering into the oncoming lane of traffic, or pulling into the left-hand lane to make a right turn in front of me (at a light) This unpredictable driving dangerous/confusing for all road users in the area (as is a person having to swerve out of their bike lane due to parked cars)
What is really sad about this is up until the late 60s Vehicular Cycling was the norm, and drivers knew how to behave around bikes. Then somebody decided that bikes were no more than toys and should be treated as pedestrians, ridden facing traffic, etc. An entire generation of drivers learned to ignore bikes, and what’s worse that generation also learned the wrong way to ride a bike, and taught their children to ride that way, It’s been more than 30 years since the “bicycles are toys” meme was planted and we still haven’t managed to kill the misinformation.
I am ashamed….today on my way to teh Farmers Market, some dork in a full size van with a painting company logo on it nearly clipped me and I got screaming at him from the turn lane (I was turning left and caught him at the light!) My quote was “You have TWO F*&$&&G lanes and you had to cross BOTH of them to get to within a foot of me you CO$%&*&NG MORON! LEARN TO DRIVE!!!
OK, so I was badly frightened and my day yesterday was anything but good….I shouldn’t have taken it out on him….but he nearly touched my flash flag that sticks out from my handlebars.
“Knowing how to behave around bikes” and “wanting to (or needing to – by law) behave a particular way around bikes” is really what’s at stake here.
For me, the change in behaviors between pedestrians, bicycles, and motorized vehicles (mostly cars) boils down to: used to be about courtesy, now’s it about convenience.
Yes, there have always been aggressive drivers. But as the car culture has matured, a symbiotic relationship favoring convenience has grown, and the original, courtesy-based model has all but disappeared. Rules of the road seem to me (just my observation) be more organic between the three parties.
Take a pedestrian crossing a driveway that a car desires to pull in to. Used to be, that car would wait until the pedestrian crossed safely. Now, that same car calculates distance and time, pushes the envelope, and crosses in front of the pedestrian, without either party slowing down. The car does this because it knows the time it will take to do so and still won’t slow the pedestrian down (especially if the car executes its maneuver quickly enough) but also because of the line of cars piling up behind it.
The pedestrian continues crossing the drive, doesn’t slow, but also feels a rush of metal cross his or her path at 10mph. This seems to have become acceptable, to both parties.
Courtesy, on the other hand, is all about taking time to assess more than just that sliver of distance and time it will take to cross paths and not make an impact. Courtesy between these parties was about figuring whether the pedestrian might not be so keen on walking on that road again if the driver pulls that maneuver, or whether the pedestrian might decide, ‘hmmm, I’ll take care the car next time’ after a close shave like the above scenario. Courtest takes time. Convenience is about taking none.
I used the above example because I see more pedestrians on my commute than I do bicyclists. Similar scenarios have happened with me, but motorists are less apt to pull the turn because they don’t have the experience to quickly determine if they can. This leads to them moving back into a ‘courtesy’ mindframe, where they are forced to wait for me to pass. This typically annoys them, and sometimes angers them. The bicycle, because it can travel at higher speeds, can not be relegated to the same bucket as a pedestrian for drivers.
It’s hard to know what comes from lack of courtesy and what comes from lack of awareness. As the number of pedestrians and cyclists has fallen over the past 25 years or so (and probably longer – I’m limiting this to my own personal experiences), the awareness on the part of drivers has also dropped. If you’re a driver and are not used to seeing pedestrians crossing driveways that you’re turning into, you’re less likely to see them. Even if you do see them, there’s always the fear that the people behind you won’t see them, therefore won’t expect you to stop to wait for them, and will hit you.
I tend to be a proponent of VC in some situations, but also a proponent of bike lanes. I’m not shy about taking the lane and behaving the same way as a car when the road I’m on is too narrow to share safely, but painted bike lanes can help to push the cars to the left and give me more room. Not always (it’s scary to watch how many people drive with their right-side wheels in the bike lanes), but neither is VC a cure-all. Choosing the proper way to ride requires good situational awareness and lots of experience; unfortunately, these are exactly the things that inexperienced riders lack, and what tends to drive inexperienced riders to be timid about taking the lane and other VC tenets when it’s appropriate (and even necessary) to do so.
One problem with bike lanes is that they’re often added as an afterthought, so they may or may not be engineered properly. If a bike lane is less than 3 feet wide or if it doesn’t leave enough room for cars to pass cyclists with five feet of space without leaving their lane, it’s poorly placed. Likewise, bike lanes that start and stop at random (around here it’s always at intersections – the bike lane will cease to exist a hundred feet before the intersection, or worse, will exist up to the intersection but not after) are dangerous. Still, if they encourage inexperienced cyclists to ride on the street rather than on the sidewalk, and if they encourage drivers to be aware that there just might be somebody on a bike over there, they can’t be all bad.
3′ bike lanes? We should be getting 3′ of clearance and someone thinks a 3′ wide lane is sufficient? I think 7-8′ sounds more sufficient. That gives the cyclist room to have about 3′ clearance side to side for avoiding traffic/debris and room as an escape to the right. I HATE getting caught 6″ from a curb in a “bike lane” or right of a fog line and having some commercial vehicle blow past me with no room to spare…. Because someone doesn’t want them to have to cross over into oncoming traffic. Um.. they can wait and cross over to get around me in those situations, I’m not going to encourage a potentially deadly pass with me as the dead one so that they can stay in between the white lines.
A pity. In the right places, lanes can be a boon.
Some people can ride in the road, others just can’t take the harassment they’re given. Bikes lanes are heaps good in the right areas. Yehuda will make the right decision.
Yehuda for President!
No one seems to stress the value and importance of sharing outside of toddlerhood.
It’s impossible to avoid harassment in life. No matter what you do, somewhere somewhere is going to harass you about something. So my thinking is, if you want to ride a bike, just accept the fact that you’re going to get harassed once in a while and, when it happens, deal with it. Trust me; you get used to it.
Besides, as you gain experience riding PROPERLY, you’ll find that the harassment becomes less and less common. I am rarely, if ever “harassed” when riding anymore. Oh sure, I encounter stupid drivers fairly often but as for people actively trying to HARASS me, no, very rarely.
Now you could see, the councilman is plotting against the baike lane. It just politic man!
Well, well, well,
This is exactly what came up yesterday on my ride home. I was riding up the hill and I saw this guy walking his bike on the wrong side of the road. I caught up to him at the top and I yelled over to him, “You’re going the wrong way!” and I smiled and waved. He waved back and I rode on home, about 6 miles away. About 1520 minutes after being home, my wife and I were playing badminton in the front yard and I am telling her about how I saw this guy walking his bike on the wrong side of the road and then right there he is walking his bike again up our road on the wrong side. I say, there he is! And then I asked him if he walked his bike the whole way. He said, no and that he rides part of the trip and walks the other parts because the roads are just too “treacherous”. And then he asked me “do you get any respect?”
I said, “I have been riding that route for 2 years and I just make the drivers give me room.”
Later on I was thinking, I bet you there are a ton of people who would ride there bikes if they felt safer.
I am just very accustomed to riding with traffic and it doesn’t bother me at all to have cars pass close by me (at least 3Ft).
But maybe that familiarity will do me in soon.
A large section of my commute is a 4 lane road with a painted bike lane. The city has just grated the surface of ashphalt for resurfacing so the painted lines are now gone. The road is just as wide as it was last week but now the cars come closer and honk and harass. The worst part is all the sewer and storm drain covers along the curb side now stick up sharply by 2-3 inches, meaning I need to take more lane to avoid these hazards. What a difference a little painted lane really makes….
Hid ideas don’t address the fears people have to ride in the streets?
Not only they do, but also help learn and teach how to overcome them.
Our cycle campaign Wolves on Wheels [ http://www.wolvesonwheels.co.uk/ ] doesn’t campaign for cycle lanes everywhere. The UK public say they want cycle lanes like in the Netherlands to encourage them to start riding. However our highway authorities when they install them put them in at such a narrow widths it makes matters worse. An uphill crawler cycle lane is one location we support; contraflow lanes are important and sometimes an advisory lane through a pinchpoint works. Otherwise ask for them and you’ll get a white lane painted 1 metre / 1 yard from the kerb – about the width of the cyclists’ dynamic envelope ie across shoulders plus wobble width! Our drivers drive according to the territory marked out on the road for them in white lining. But a cyclists’ position needs to vary to account for conditions. A cycle lane width on the other hand is inflexible! “Get back in the cycle lane!” shouts the car passenger. So our campaign, while covetting riding conditions in Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, preaches the gospel of St John [Franklin] in Cyclecraft [ http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/ ] our version of Effective Cycling .
I have read JF’s Effective Cycling. All is well and good, until you take into consideration; the total lack of proper driver training AND the fact that the laws of physics still apply. It was also written BEFORE cellphones, text messaging and other added distractions became commonplace in the automobile. Yes, the techniques are useful, but so is proper cycling infrastructure.
Aaron
Do Yehuda and Joe live together?????????
I think they’re in the Kickstand. Isn’t that the couch Yehuda dragged in here: 20080402
MT,
That’s because it would be hypocritical
I have been thinking on this for a while, bike lanes *can* be a help, but it depends on where. Most roads and roadway systems do not lend themselves to good bike lanes, to be truly effective, you need to go the whole hog as the Dutch have. I recently saw a small series of slides with a short talk, the system the Netherlands has in place is incredible, the refinement in design and engineering is out of this world. But they have developed that from a strong bike user base, how do we get there from where we in NA are? When we have 40% and higher on bikes, we will have the incentive and political will to do it, but we won’t get to 25% without it. Chicken and Egg.
Oh no, this could get ugly. VC does not just stand for the relatively uncontroversial Viet Cong.
Either they live together, or there is a nice couch in the shop
=v= To @Michael Kahrl (Yesterday): Yehuda just lost his rain poncho. Maybe he could call up John Forester to order another one, and see whether he’s still ornery.
They both commute to the shop.
If you know someone whose driving abilities are getting poor, get http://www.takingthewheel-themovie.com/ and show it to them.
I find that in some areas and situations, taking the lane results in drivers doing very unsafe things in order to pass me, e.g. veering into the oncoming lane of traffic, or pulling into the left-hand lane to make a right turn in front of me (at a light) This unpredictable driving dangerous/confusing for all road users in the area (as is a person having to swerve out of their bike lane due to parked cars)
What is really sad about this is up until the late 60s Vehicular Cycling was the norm, and drivers knew how to behave around bikes. Then somebody decided that bikes were no more than toys and should be treated as pedestrians, ridden facing traffic, etc. An entire generation of drivers learned to ignore bikes, and what’s worse that generation also learned the wrong way to ride a bike, and taught their children to ride that way, It’s been more than 30 years since the “bicycles are toys” meme was planted and we still haven’t managed to kill the misinformation.
I am ashamed….today on my way to teh Farmers Market, some dork in a full size van with a painting company logo on it nearly clipped me and I got screaming at him from the turn lane (I was turning left and caught him at the light!) My quote was “You have TWO F*&$&&G lanes and you had to cross BOTH of them to get to within a foot of me you CO$%&*&NG MORON! LEARN TO DRIVE!!!
OK, so I was badly frightened and my day yesterday was anything but good….I shouldn’t have taken it out on him….but he nearly touched my flash flag that sticks out from my handlebars.
Arrrrgh!
mark (That’s “PAPA mark” to you!
@Opus
“Knowing how to behave around bikes” and “wanting to (or needing to – by law) behave a particular way around bikes” is really what’s at stake here.
For me, the change in behaviors between pedestrians, bicycles, and motorized vehicles (mostly cars) boils down to: used to be about courtesy, now’s it about convenience.
Yes, there have always been aggressive drivers. But as the car culture has matured, a symbiotic relationship favoring convenience has grown, and the original, courtesy-based model has all but disappeared. Rules of the road seem to me (just my observation) be more organic between the three parties.
Take a pedestrian crossing a driveway that a car desires to pull in to. Used to be, that car would wait until the pedestrian crossed safely. Now, that same car calculates distance and time, pushes the envelope, and crosses in front of the pedestrian, without either party slowing down. The car does this because it knows the time it will take to do so and still won’t slow the pedestrian down (especially if the car executes its maneuver quickly enough) but also because of the line of cars piling up behind it.
The pedestrian continues crossing the drive, doesn’t slow, but also feels a rush of metal cross his or her path at 10mph. This seems to have become acceptable, to both parties.
Courtesy, on the other hand, is all about taking time to assess more than just that sliver of distance and time it will take to cross paths and not make an impact. Courtesy between these parties was about figuring whether the pedestrian might not be so keen on walking on that road again if the driver pulls that maneuver, or whether the pedestrian might decide, ‘hmmm, I’ll take care the car next time’ after a close shave like the above scenario. Courtest takes time. Convenience is about taking none.
I used the above example because I see more pedestrians on my commute than I do bicyclists. Similar scenarios have happened with me, but motorists are less apt to pull the turn because they don’t have the experience to quickly determine if they can. This leads to them moving back into a ‘courtesy’ mindframe, where they are forced to wait for me to pass. This typically annoys them, and sometimes angers them. The bicycle, because it can travel at higher speeds, can not be relegated to the same bucket as a pedestrian for drivers.
I won’t go on. Not even sure if this makes sense.
It’s hard to know what comes from lack of courtesy and what comes from lack of awareness. As the number of pedestrians and cyclists has fallen over the past 25 years or so (and probably longer – I’m limiting this to my own personal experiences), the awareness on the part of drivers has also dropped. If you’re a driver and are not used to seeing pedestrians crossing driveways that you’re turning into, you’re less likely to see them. Even if you do see them, there’s always the fear that the people behind you won’t see them, therefore won’t expect you to stop to wait for them, and will hit you.
I tend to be a proponent of VC in some situations, but also a proponent of bike lanes. I’m not shy about taking the lane and behaving the same way as a car when the road I’m on is too narrow to share safely, but painted bike lanes can help to push the cars to the left and give me more room. Not always (it’s scary to watch how many people drive with their right-side wheels in the bike lanes), but neither is VC a cure-all. Choosing the proper way to ride requires good situational awareness and lots of experience; unfortunately, these are exactly the things that inexperienced riders lack, and what tends to drive inexperienced riders to be timid about taking the lane and other VC tenets when it’s appropriate (and even necessary) to do so.
One problem with bike lanes is that they’re often added as an afterthought, so they may or may not be engineered properly. If a bike lane is less than 3 feet wide or if it doesn’t leave enough room for cars to pass cyclists with five feet of space without leaving their lane, it’s poorly placed. Likewise, bike lanes that start and stop at random (around here it’s always at intersections – the bike lane will cease to exist a hundred feet before the intersection, or worse, will exist up to the intersection but not after) are dangerous. Still, if they encourage inexperienced cyclists to ride on the street rather than on the sidewalk, and if they encourage drivers to be aware that there just might be somebody on a bike over there, they can’t be all bad.
Totally saw this coming… I Did
3′ bike lanes? We should be getting 3′ of clearance and someone thinks a 3′ wide lane is sufficient? I think 7-8′ sounds more sufficient. That gives the cyclist room to have about 3′ clearance side to side for avoiding traffic/debris and room as an escape to the right. I HATE getting caught 6″ from a curb in a “bike lane” or right of a fog line and having some commercial vehicle blow past me with no room to spare…. Because someone doesn’t want them to have to cross over into oncoming traffic. Um.. they can wait and cross over to get around me in those situations, I’m not going to encourage a potentially deadly pass with me as the dead one so that they can stay in between the white lines.