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Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

To be perfectly honest, as a HUMAN driver not from this city (I should say, STATE. Where I live the driving laws are different), the self driving cars are doing EXACTLY what I would do.

I would not enter a reserved lane, but would by necessity cross over the intersection portion of that lane in order to take a right hand turn.

It sounds like San Francisco needs to modernize roadways they've improperly added 'bike lanes' to to include dedicated right turn lanes on the OUTSIDE of the 'bike lane'.

A better solution would be to isolate different types of traffic to dedicated pathways that are not directly adjacent.

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Rule one of turning was this: never ever cross a lane that goes straight as part of a turn. You don't turn from the left lane because you forgot to get in the right lane first. You don't turn across a bus lane. And you don't cross over a bike lane. Same principle in all cases.

In Oregon you don't move into the bike lane to make right hand turns - it's the law.

This brings up a related point.

Safety could be vastly improved if only there were a common standard for all drivers, pedestrians, and other users of the road.

The only problems are ( https://xkcd.com/927/ Standards ) and getting everyplace to adopt it.

Maybe we can get Google's Spinoff, Tesla, and the other self driving companies to just define one and push that in to law?

In California you do according to the DMV. I forget at what distance.

Having dedicated turn lanes isn't realistic in San Francisco. Most streets are too narrow.

> It sounds like San Francisco needs to modernize roadways they've improperly added 'bike lanes' to to include dedicated right turn lanes on the OUTSIDE of the 'bike lane'.

The city is starting to do this in quite a few spots.

The standard marking at the moment is to put a solid white line along the protected stretch of the bike lane, which becomes a dotted white line about 50 feet from an intersection. That's supposed to indicate to cars that they should merge if they want to turn right. In practice cars don't seem to realize this often.

Also, over years of consistent bullying from cyclists I honestly think drivers are in many cases afraid to enter the bike lane at all, even when they should do it to safely merge for a right-hand turn.

Anyway the correct answer is to do the full lane crossover as you suggest, but it's awkward on single-lane roads.

>bullying from cyclists

How on earth do cyclists "bully" drivers? Drivers aren't going to die if cyclists hit them.

I think he's referring to the fact that some bikers are outwardly hostile to drivers, engaging in a kind of "share the road" fanaticism if they think you are, say, driving too closely or in any way not sufficiently deferential towards them.

You're not using your imagination if the only way you can think of to bully someone is to threaten death :)

I've seen a ton of hand gestures, cyclists physically hitting cars with their fists (or open-palm slaps), lots of yelling, and on one occasion I saw a cyclist stop in front of a car, dismount, and walk around to the driver's side to demand he roll the window down in order to engage in a verbal confrontation.

When you ride your bike to and from work every day for 7 years you see a lot of stuff. Believe me, there are a lot of self-entitled cyclist bullies out there making things less safe for the rest of us.

  How on earth do cyclists "bully" drivers?

Well, there's this:

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/08/31/video-shows-crit...

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