Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

From a cyclist's perspective, intersections are basically death traps, where right-turning drivers threaten collisions at any moment.

A bike can travel on the right near an intersection only when it's passing traffic that is completely stopped. If traffic is moving at all, you shouldn't be on the right, you should be in the lane. If you still want to pass, pass on the left, although if there's only a single lane of traffic in each direction you should probably just ride in the lane and wait to pass until after the intersection.

I appreciate attempts to solve real problems like this, but I doubt this design will be an improvement. The most dangerous thing a cyclist can do at an intersection is blast off the sidewalk into the crosswalk. Such a cyclist is more dangerous than properly-crossing cyclists, because from motorists' perspectives he appears out of nowhere instead of simply continuing to travel in the street. He is more dangerous than pedestrians, because he's moving much faster. This new design appears to force all cyclists into that situation: traveling quickly and appearing, to motorists, out of nowhere.

Another problem with this design is it prevents large trucks from turning right.

Not sure of your familiarity with biking in major metro's, but separated bike lanes are getting more and more common. These bike lanes put you on the right side of the road and cars often times turn right into the path of the bike lane without looking for bikers.

My city is getting more of these and I always check before turning right. But last week I witnessed a car-bike collision that I'm unsure how to ever avoid: traffic in my lane was backed up to a standstill, but oncoming cars were flowing freely and one took a left into a restaurant parking entrance (between two stopped cars in my lane) just as a bike was passing the stopped cars in my lane on the right (NOT in a designated bike lane but even if it was, the left-turning car would have had no way of seeing the bike coming because all cars were stopped and blocking view.) Bike hit side of turning car at full speed. Neither saw each other coming. Bicyclist was seemingly ok and kept riding after 30 seconds. Do you just outlaw left turns in the presence of bike lanes?

As I said in this case there was no bike lane and my understanding is that this is a known danger and the cyclist should not have been passing all the stopped cars on the right. See example #8 on this page: http://bicyclesafe.com/

Indeed, passing on the right is unsafe for bikers and for car-on-car scenarios as well

In the bay area the bike lane becomes dashed at intersections meaning anyone can go anywhere.

The disadvantage with going into the lane is that cars have much shorter stopping distances. I had an accident a few months ago where I had just managed to merge into the lane (had to be going at the speed of traffic to do this) when all the cars in front of me slammed on their brakes and skidded to a halt -- I hit the back of the car with my head and smashed my helmet (and got cuts in my head where the helmet cracked; but I'd have been severely worse off without it!).

But right hooks are much more common than what happened to me. We just have a really bad road infrastructure in the US (even for driving -- I'm amazed every time I go back to the UK and can drive for miles through densely populated areas without stopping, all because of the roundabout -- the lockless n-way intersection).

How are drivers supposed to see bikers behind them when there's a lane of parked cars between them? This makes no sense. Bikers should act as if they're invisible and should come to a full stop at every intersection.

Bikers on public roads should also be licensed and insured just like car drivers. Equal rights, equal responsibilities.

I've lived and bike-commuted in Denver, Los Angeles, and Honolulu, so I'm somewhat familiar. I don't mind bike lanes when they're just another strip of road right next to the other ones. One must be mindful that other vehicles will unlawfully enter/occupy the bike lane, but that doesn't seem to require a different sort of awareness than cycling in general. Also one should ride to the extreme left of the bike lane to avoid the door zone.

As you imply, "separated" bike lanes are another matter. It's as if one is on a pleasant jaunt through bucolic parkland, punctuated repeatedly by intersections with angry vehicular traffic that can't possibly see the cyclist before she enters the intersection. It's probably possible to design these so that don't have problems at every intersection, but the concept in general doesn't lend itself to that. My suspicion is that separated lanes are an attempt to turn cyclists into pedestrians: stop at every intersection, never enter the street, stay the !#@% out of the way of red-blooded American car drivers. No thanks! When I want to travel as slow as a pedestrian (and in many cases I do) I just leave the bike at home.

These lanes allow the biker to cross intersections with ped traffic so no problem with appearing out of nowhere unless you are running a light.

It depends on the country. For instance in France a cyclist as no business alongside pedestrians : you either share the road with cars, use a dedicated line or get off your bicyle and walk alongside pedestrians. So I can definitely understand the feeling that bikers are appearing out of nowhere when crossing as if they were pedestrians, just very very fast ones.

Here (Japan) bikes have a complete disregard for the rule of law, other bikes, pedestrians and cars. I bike everyday to work (30 minutes each way), and the most frightening are in order : cyclists, pedestrians and cars. Cars mostly follow the rules, so they are highly predictable. Bicycles just storms from anywhere at any time, crossing red lights without braking or even checking if something/someone is incoming... terrifying.

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