> 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 'bike' lanes on 45+ mph roads. The average driver is reckless and much too distracted to effectively spot the occasional cyclist.
Yes I would say you're right and this stuff should be obvious immediately to any adult, especially one who also knows how to drive a car.
But watching the behavior of "people on bikes" who are not "established cyclists" it seems as soon as everyone gets on a bike they initially go through a period of forgetting everything about how the road works, probably because they are super afraid of the cars. I don't think you really can blame them, fear is a very real & serious thing and it makes us all forget how to think things through. You have to get through a period where someone educates you and you get your bearings enough to get rid of the fear and have the basics ingrained enough you can start to think clearly about your behavior. It's no different than the process someone goes through in all kinds of other activities which can be super dangerous without training. People go through this process for sure with swimming for example.
I had the correct way of doing things drilled into me from an early age as I am not the first generation of my family to decide it's fun & worthwhile to ride thousands and thousands of miles/yr. So by the time I was an adult I just had to learn the extra stuff around big huge multi-lane roads and city intersections. I'd gotten all the basics drilled into me from at least a decade of riding on suburban roads and being told when I was doing it wrong.
I am trying to gradually introduce the rules of the road and correct cycling behavior to my own son now, that started right after he got off training wheels.
>Yes I would say you're right and this stuff should be obvious immediately to any adult, especially one who also knows how to drive a car.
>But watching the behavior of "people on bikes" who are not "established cyclists" it seems as soon as everyone gets on a bike they initially go through a period of forgetting everything about how the road works, probably because they are super afraid of the cars
You're being too generous.
There's a subset of the population that is simply lacking the ability to think about what other participants in traffic are doing and what they're trying to do and adjust their behavior accordingly. These people shit up the infrastructure for everyone else regardless of whether they're walking, on a bike or driving. They tend to leave near misses and accidents that are their fault but technically not their fault in their wake.
> But watching the behavior of "people on bikes" who are not "established cyclists" it seems as soon as everyone gets on a bike they initially go through a period of forgetting everything about how the road works, probably because they are super afraid of the cars. I don't think you really can blame them, fear is a very real & serious thing and it makes us all forget how to think things through.
How do new car drivers deal with driving around trucks and buses? They're told that they need to obey the rules of the road and some additional things like not passing a truck on the right. We need to take the same approach with new cyclists (follow the rules of the road, signal your turns and lane changes, yield when don't have the right of way, don't pass turning traffic on the side their turning, etc).
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).
8? 10? Surface roads change in character significantly throughout the city and often have discontinuities, intersections vary in anxiety level, etc. Cycling the geometrically simplest route is a recipe for pain. You want to be on streets that are quiet but don’t have too many stops, have the protection of traffic signals when they cross major roads, avoid hills, etc. It’s a balancing act.
> 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.
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.
These people say otherwise about left-turns [1]. What you're suggesting only works if you're able to first cross the intersection safely on the right (debatable due to cars turning) before the light switches. A car would queue in the left-turning lane, which is usually deep enough so you can squeeze over if the light is already red up ahead and catch the signal. Left typically goes green just before the straight goes green again, so in most circumstances, a cyclist on the right hand side would have to wait for two light intervals. You also have to navigate twice the amount of lanes of traffic. Turning left in a car, you only have to navigate 1/2 of the perpendicular traffic on a stretch of road. If there's no light, this might be very difficult and dangerous to do on a bicycle.
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 'bike' lanes on 45+ mph roads. The average driver is reckless and much too distracted to effectively spot the occasional cyclist.