https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4369934,-111.9429875,3a,75y,...
However, I do need to mention that when you choose to bike on the sidewalk, you're creating the same type of problem that cars that ignore traffic rules create for bikes. There's a reason why biking on the sidewalk is illegal in most places, and why bike lanes/roads exist.
The only bicycle riders willing to get organized and lobby the legislators are the very most serious ones. These are the people who want to race along at 50 MPH.
The resulting laws force pitifully slow riders to be out in the street. Even if you can only manage 5 MPH, you have to be in the street.
Lots of us are too arthritic, too fat, too weak, too inflexible, too limited by lung capacity, too limited by heart capacity, and too limited by cheap steel mountain bikes from Walmart.
So our choices are:
a. break the law
b. annoy drivers and risk death
c. don't ride a bicycle
Which are what? Such a broad statement doesn't seem accurate and the sidewalk shown in the map looks low traffic with excellent sight lines, as long as you're not cycling head down at high speed the danger to pedestrians doesn't seem comparable to danger posed by car driver's ignoring traffic rules.
Riding a bicycle on the sidewalk isn't illegal most places because it's dangerous for the pedestrians, it's illegal because it's dangerous for the bicyclist.
I just find it odd when cyclists out of principal decry riding on the sidewalk when the danger of riding with traffic is well known and America has an abundance of long empty sidewalks in suburbia and around office parks.
Many dedicated cycletracks have similar problems. Here in Austin there are several that I refuse to use because drivers far too frequently turn into my path without looking. I ride in the lane so that I can be seen. It's counterintuitive to most drivers, but visibility is often the deciding factor in bike safety. This would be more obvious to drivers if they spent more time cycling. If a cyclist is stuck using a path with poor visibility, I find paying attention to the cars and using light touches of an air horn when approaching an intersection to help. But I still prefer being visible to that.
More generally, intersections are relatively more dangerous (crashes per person mile or something like that) than straight segments of road for any mode of transportation using the road.
Vehicles, on the other hand, do follow traffic rules with regards to lane usage, signaling, and checking what's behind them. Even if they don't, they're still more predictable compared to pedestrians.
Agree. I'd do it anyways because sidewalks are 99.999% empty where I live. I could ride for 20 miles and not see a person on the sidewalk. So biking on sidewalks is safe as long as you pay attention to what's ahead. No idea if that's the case in this AZ location.
I don’t fully think I’m a bike I get right of way. If I see a car reversing ahead I move into the street then prepare to full stop but proceed with caution and watch the cars acceleration to see if they see me. If I get the hint they don’t. I stop. It’s scratch on the bumper for them and life for me I am more than glad to yield.
I might be exaggerating a bit.
I suppose you could have a wall that separates the bike lane from the road except for a short area where cars can cross over, so that at least there's only a small space where the bikes & cars can interact, but that introduces a bunch of new problems (cars that can't see bikes behind the wall when they go to cross over, cars that run into the wall, probably even more swerving to get into the lane because your choices are do it RIGHT NOW or you're stuck/hit a wall).
The problem is that the lane markings encourage vehicles to make turns from the non-rightmost or non-leftmost lane. One should not be crossing another lane when making a turn at an intersection. One should merge into the rightmost or left most lane in order to make the corresponding turn.
There are ways to design an intersection so that those rules are followed naturally, and there are ways to miss it. C.f. right turn lanes.
Or just do what Germany has sensibly done and split sidewalks between pedestrians and cyclists (though, cycling enthusiasts are unlikely to enjoy the experience as much)
And the majority of deaths in London is due to turning transporters/trucks. They are purposely built such that the operator sits very high above and can't even see a bike or pedestrian unless it's many meters away, only by looking into one of 10 mirrors (but of course they don't). On a work site nobody moves these things unless there is an outside instructor, but on public streets we've decided to just blame whoever died. Or, if that fails, blame the infrastructure, even though we oppose any other kind of infrastructure.
A better design for that intersection would be to keep the bike lane against the sidewalk and the turn lane inside of that, so that they don't cross, and have a "no turn on red" sign, so that the paths of bicyclists and people turning in cars never cross as long as everyone obeys the stoplight and sign.
I can do it, why can't they?
And even assuming this was simply a case of a bad driver, what policy approach would you suggest to protect the general public against such drivers? Accepting that drivers are fallible and designing our road systems to be robust against that seems a more effective approach than berating those drivers who are particularly unlucky in the consequences of their failures of attentiveness.
Sure, drivers should check before crossing a lane, but some percentage don't, so it makes sense to minimize lane crosses.
(It's hard to see a bike at speed going straight when a car is turning right.)
Here's an image that illustrates the danger: http://www.sfbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Right-Turn....
This is addressed by having a "no turn on red" sign as I suggested: you don't have to see the bicyclist at all because the bicyclist shouldn't be in the intersection at all when you're turning with a green turn arrow.
Perhaps I should have said "wait for turn indicator" instead of "no turn on red", that's a bit clearer.
Anecdata: The times I have interacted with one of Uber's autonomous vehicles at this intersection, they tend to hit the brakes pretty hard as they are about to enter the turn lane and I am around 10ft behind them. All of my interactions with them, however, have been during the day, and it was unclear if it was the human driver in control.
Human drivers are terrible.
There are exceptions, but only if there is signage or road markings. For example, if there are two or more lanes marked for right turns, then obviously you can turn from any such lane.
(A little-known fact about that: most California drivers are aware that you're allowed to turn right on a red light after making a full stop, unless there's a "no right turn on red" sign - but few seem to know that this rule applies to all the lanes marked for right turns, not just the rightmost lane.)
Most bike lane markings change from a solid white line to a dotted line about 200 feet from a corner, to give drivers a hint to merge into the bike lane before turning. But even if the line doesn't turn dotted, drivers are still required to merge into the bike lane unless there is a specific indication otherwise.
However, the majority of drivers seem to be unaware of this rule and turn right from the auto traffic lane, creating the risk of a "right hook" collision, which the law is intended to avoid. I've actually had other drivers honk at me when they were waiting in a line of cars to make an illegal right turn from the auto lane while I made a legal and proper turn from the bike lane.
The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has an excellent info page about this:
http://www.sfbike.org/news/bike-lanes-and-right-turns/
Laws on this do vary in other states. But at least in California, if you see a driver merging into the bike lane before turning right, it's not because they are a terrible driver, it's because they are following the law and (hopefully) increasing safety for bicyclists.
What's more concerning is that my state (Texas) seems to have a lot of vagueness around the laws.
Well, that's confusing to say the least.
If you still don't see the difference, here's one way you can tell. If you are stopped, waiting at the intersection, if you've merged, then you'll be occupying the bike line while you're waiting.
Please support the cause as a local citizen!
http://amp.abcactionnews.com/2064993596/tampa-will-be-home-t...
http://www.bikewalktampabay.org/featured/new-protected-cycle...
Yeah, like a line is going to protect me from run amok car drivers who are too buy on their cell phones. Or it's going to stop the bus drivers from using them as pickup/dropoff areas, cutting bicyclists off.
Long story short, I bike on the sidewalks. I can be a responsible biker on sidewalks while heeding to pedestrians. My life is more important than to be biking on a vehicle road.