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Comment by jfim | Hacker News Reader

> Many of those streets, to be fair, have bike lines that are shifted 3+ feet away from the parking lane, with stripes to indicate the door zone

That sounds pretty great. Unfortunately in my area the bike lanes are straight into the door zone (see for example https://goo.gl/maps/nMnKZEVZduEfkups8) and this seems to be the general design for bike lanes in the South Bay.

In fact, the city of Sunnyvale's own bike map [0] says to avoid the four feet door zone, yet the bike lane is less than 4 feet wide and straight in the door zone.

It's frustrating. You'd think they'd favor the safety of the unprotected squishy humans over the ones in two ton metal boxes, but it seems like the opposite most of the time.

[0] https://sunnyvale.ca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?Blo...

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Actually in Germany bike lanes are typically on the other side next to the sidewalk which in my experience is much more dangerous. It gives the indication to cars that bikes are more like pedestrians, they get often overlooked at intersections, dooring is an even bigger issue, because people getting out the car to the street side tend to least look back to avoid cars coming and next to the sidewalk one also has to deal with pedestrians who don't pay attention.

In my experience, the more in the way of cars you are as a cyclist the safer you are. You still need to have clear markings, but you should always be in sight of drivers IMO, as an active participant in traffic.

Bike lanes where traffic has priority when turning across are a disaster:

- Gives cyclist false sense of security, since they need to yield to vehicles turning across "their lane"

- Little notice given to drivers that they need to take care, since they have right of way

- Cyclists have to stop at every side road, which can make taking the bike path as slow as walking

Experience cyclists won't use them and novice cyclists are given an unsafe and slow route; they will drive instead. What a waste of public funds.

A better solution, as seen in NL and some parts of London, is to make the motorist give way or even remove the vehicle entrance entirely. The transport mix you get is the transport mix you build for.

> In my experience, the more in the way of cars you are as a cyclist the safer you are. You still need to have clear markings, but you should always be in sight of drivers IMO, as an active participant in traffic.

I definitely agree with you that people on bikes should be in the way of cars because that's what gives them the most visibility, but I'd disagree with the marking parts. See the commute post I have a little bit below, the only markings on that commute on streets are a few sharrows, no bike lanes at all.

What needs to happen is for bikes to be perceived as slow moving vehicles, not unlike tractors in rural areas. People overtake the tractors as soon as it's safe to do so and don't honk at them. That happens as soon as there is enough of a critical mass of people on bikes on streets.

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