9 ms·

So according to this law, you cannot practically drive in a lane beside a bike lane because you will be less than 3 feet? If there is a lot of traffic somewher

by mahyarm 12y ago

So according to this law, you cannot practically drive in a lane beside a bike lane because you will be less than 3 feet? If there is a lot of traffic somewhere and a bike lane, will you slow down the entire road to 10mph around you because of this law? It will have the same traffic effects as a rubbernecking accident on a highway. " Will the law apply when passing a bicyclist who is riding in a bike lane? We were originally told that it does not, but upon closer examination there is some grey area in how the law was worded which will probably not be worked out until a case goes to court and a judge rules on it. However, there is no language in the law which specifically says that bike lanes are not covered, so for now we are advising drivers to always pass bicyclists with at least a 3 feet buffer in every situation"

revelation 12y ago
That won't be a problem as there are no bikes on the highway. 3 feet is the minimum passing distance. It doesn't particularly matter if there's some white paint on the ground, that doesn't magically make it safer. Of course few sane people cycle in the bike lane, because its really more of a 'car driver exit' zone.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "Of course few sane people cycle in the bike lane, because its really more of a 'car driver exit' zone." That depends tremendously on where. Historically, bike lanes were quite often entirely in the "door zone" - or even outright obscured by parked cars. It's still by no means universal, but cities are increasingly painting better bike lanes.
- ojbyrne 12y ago
  I wish I could downvote this more. To quote from the Effective Cycling book below: "cyclists should consider themselves drivers of vehicles in traffic. That means obeying the rules of the road, because when all drivers obey the same rules, they don't have collisions. Forester explains why cyclists should not be afraid to cycle in traffic, and he urges them to resist being shunted off into government-sponsored bike paths as if they were incompetent children."
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    The rules of the road generally specifically require bicycles to do things differently than cars, because the rules applicable to bicycles are different, because bicycles have different physical dimensions and operational characteristics than cars.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Your first sentence would lead me to think you are disagreeing with the parent comment, but I'm not seeing where the disagreement lies. Both of you seem to advocate foregoing bike lanes.
- jackmaney 12y ago
  > That won't be a problem as there are no bikes on the highway. You've never been outside of a city, have you?
drivingmenuts 12y ago
In general, I think it's a good idea. The specifics leave a bit to be desired: Since bicyclists want to own the lane, they'll ride to the outside, which means I have to be three feet from the outside line - which puts me into the other lane at times. Great time to be a police officer. Occasionally, one cyclist will be in the lane and their partner will be in the car lane, riding beside them. Thus, I am stuck driving 15 mph while they merrily tool along. If I pass them, well, another great time to be a police officer.
- dcherman 12y ago
  I understand that not all bikers share this mentality, but I do often feel like "sharing the road" means "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" when I see people doing things like this. This does not help driver/biker relations.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  You can pass precisely like you can pass any other vehicle, and like any other vehicle they're required to get out of your way when they're holding up 5+ cars (and it's discourteous of them to block even one car for a significant duration).
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Actually, except in specified circumstances in CA, bikes are forbidden from taking the lane in the first place, as they are required to ride as close as practical to the right-hand edge of the roadway.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      Yes, but those specified circumstances are pretty broad. If you don't feel safe biking along a strech without taking the lane, then the middle of the lane can be "as close to the right as practicable". Being further right for the sake of being further right, where there is not enough room for a car and a bike, just creates ambiguity and makes everyone less safe, and is thus not practical.
wiredfool 12y ago
Most lanes on modern streets are 12 feet wide, most cars are in the 6-7 foot range. If you're all the way over on one side of the lane, you're going to be ok, even if the cyclist isn't completely in the bike lane. If they're right on the edge, you've got about a foot of bike, 3 feet of buffer, and 7 feet of car. Another way to look at it is that if there's no bike lane, the car is probably going to have to go outside the lane to be safe and legal.
- ojbyrne 12y ago
  12 feet wide seems to be the standard for interstates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane#Lane_width https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane#Lane_width), where there are no bikes. Surface roads tend to vary quite a bit.
  - wiredfool 12y ago
    I just went out an measured the road in front of my house, and it came out narrower than I thought. It's ~ 9.5/lane, with just over 1' for the double yellow. OTOH, if you see more than one other car, that's a traffic jam.
wffurr 12y ago
That's correct, especially if the bike lane is between a parking lane and a travel lane. A four inch stripe of paint is not an excuse to buzz a cyclist and scare the crap out of them. If slowing down or moving over is too much trouble, petition your local government to install physically separated cycle tracks instead of bike lanes.
- nokiaman 12y ago
  What about cyclists buzzing pedestrians? I see cyclists constantly breaking traffic rules, speeding through red lights, mounting onto the pavement, and they never get punished. If cyclists want to be treated as a road vehicle, perhaps they should be registered like one with a license plate?
  - bincrosby 12y ago
    There's a certain amount of chicken and egg at work here. Yes, there are cyclists who run red lights and behave badly just because they can. On the other hand, there are traffic laws that I regularly break while biking to stay alive (crossing onto sidewalks, stopping in the road, even ignoring stop signs to get away from large vehicles). Having been hit by a bus while on the sidwalk, I'm acutely aware of how frail and unlike a car I really am. In short, my choices aren't made based on traffic laws. They're based on trying not to get hit on a minute-to-minute basis. In places without decent bike infrastructure, strict enforcement just presents a choice between tickets and death.
    - aroch 12y ago
      You can't have your cake and eat it to; either everyone follows all the traffic laws (including you) or no one follows all the traffic laws.
      - malyk 12y ago
        Or you could have more reasonable traffic laws.
genericone 12y ago
I think this is an intermediate step for bicycle advocacy: Step 1. Convince people that bicycle transportation infrastructure is sub-standard in all parts of America and is the underlying cause for accidents. When cyclists ( total weight < 200 lbs, slow acceleration, fast deceleration) and motorists ( total weight > 2000 lbs, fast acceleration, slow deceleration ) are expected to use the same roadways and are expected to follow the same traffic laws, there will be problems for everyone. Step 2. Introduce "reasonable" legislation to improve safety for cyclists. "Reasonable" legislation encroaches on motorist's existing feelings of entitlement on the road. Step 3. Begin discussions on how to compromise: a. Ban all bikes from everything except mixed used paths - No b. Revert the "reasonable" legislation, implying cyclist safety is not a concern - No c. Introduce more bicycle lanes - Maybe d. Physically separate the bicycle-paths and motorways - Difficult, but not impossible: http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/cycle-super-highway/ http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/cycle-supe... e. Introduce a bicycle tax, so motorists can't lord around the idea cyclists are freeloading roads - Maybe We're at step 3 now, what real solutions are there?
- chc 12y ago
  3c wouldn't help, since bike lanes do not keep bikes three feet away from cars. 3d seems prohibitively expensive for most places in the US. 3e wouldn't really help anything unless the tax was ridiculously high and could pay for separate bike paths. Given how few people actually commute by bike in most places, this would make a bicycle about as expensive as a Benz, so this doesn't seem very reasonable to me and I'm sure it wouldn't make me happy at all if I rode a bike. 3a and 3b seem like the most practical solutions, honestly. Not because cyclist safety is not a concern, but because we do not have good options available to protect it. They don't make cyclists happy, but I mean, tax laws don't make me happy. If it's unreasonably expensive to give someone special accommodations, sometimes you just can't even if you'd like to.
  - j10t 12y ago
    You might be surprised. The cost of a bike lane averages $130,000 per mile. The cost of an urban road averages $4,000,000 per mile, per lane. Not to mention better bike infrastructure reduces car traffic: more bikes means fewer cars, the bike infrastructure is not simply additive. Plus secondary economic benefits: civil density, reduced parking costs, reduced healthcare costs, reduced environmental costs, reduced oil & gas imports, ... Did you know a parked car takes up 10 times as much space as a parked bicycle? Did you know there are approximately 10 parking spaces per car in America? Take away the driving subsidies and everyone would be riding bikes demanding better infrastructure.
bincrosby 12y ago
The "slows to a reasonable speed" exemption is significant here. Bike lanes aren't actually enough to bicyclists from getting hit, particularly by large vehicles (buses, widened pickups, etc) that crowd the bike lane. Given a narrow road and bike lane, it's awfully nice for cyclists to have people slow down as they pass. That said, all of this is going to depend on sensible application, and I'm glad to see there won't be a strict-enforcement campaign. It goes on already-massive list of traffic laws that most drivers break every day - it's hardly surprising to see a traffic law that's impractical and dangerous to follow in all cases. Used well, these laws are about giving cops options when people take dangerous actions. Used strictly or vindictively, they make driving an impossible task.
jfmiller28 12y ago
I commute by bike in city traffic daily. With a standard 13' lane a passenger vehicle can pass a bicycle riding comfortably in on the right edge of the road with 3 ft' clearance and without going over the lane line. You may need to move closer to the lane line then is typical, but you will be in your lane and have 3 ft. 100s of cars a week pass me safely and I'm not the only bike on the road. The situations that cause problems are drivers who don't see the cyclist or who try to "make a point" by not yielding the right hand edge. It also effects large vehicles who may need to change lanes to pass a bike safely. City buses and big rig trucks are quite good at this. Super-sized SUV's and box trucks not so much. I and everyone else knows that recreational road bikes and cars are going to continue to have trouble on narrow country roads with no solder and no passing visibility. But that problem did not just come with this law it came with poor road design.

by mahyarm 12y ago

revelation 12y ago

That won't be a problem as there are no bikes on the highway. 3 feet is the minimum passing distance. It doesn't particularly matter if there's some white paint on the ground, that doesn't magically make it safer. Of course few sane people cycle in the bike lane, because its really more of a 'car driver exit' zone.

dllthomas 12y ago
"Of course few sane people cycle in the bike lane, because its really more of a 'car driver exit' zone." That depends tremendously on where. Historically, bike lanes were quite often entirely in the "door zone" - or even outright obscured by parked cars. It's still by no means universal, but cities are increasingly painting better bike lanes.
ojbyrne 12y ago
I wish I could downvote this more. To quote from the Effective Cycling book below: "cyclists should consider themselves drivers of vehicles in traffic. That means obeying the rules of the road, because when all drivers obey the same rules, they don't have collisions. Forester explains why cyclists should not be afraid to cycle in traffic, and he urges them to resist being shunted off into government-sponsored bike paths as if they were incompetent children."
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  The rules of the road generally specifically require bicycles to do things differently than cars, because the rules applicable to bicycles are different, because bicycles have different physical dimensions and operational characteristics than cars.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  Your first sentence would lead me to think you are disagreeing with the parent comment, but I'm not seeing where the disagreement lies. Both of you seem to advocate foregoing bike lanes.
jackmaney 12y ago
> That won't be a problem as there are no bikes on the highway. You've never been outside of a city, have you?

drivingmenuts 12y ago

In general, I think it's a good idea. The specifics leave a bit to be desired: Since bicyclists want to own the lane, they'll ride to the outside, which means I have to be three feet from the outside line - which puts me into the other lane at times. Great time to be a police officer. Occasionally, one cyclist will be in the lane and their partner will be in the car lane, riding beside them. Thus, I am stuck driving 15 mph while they merrily tool along. If I pass them, well, another great time to be a police officer.

dcherman 12y ago
I understand that not all bikers share this mentality, but I do often feel like "sharing the road" means "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" when I see people doing things like this. This does not help driver/biker relations.
dllthomas 12y ago
You can pass precisely like you can pass any other vehicle, and like any other vehicle they're required to get out of your way when they're holding up 5+ cars (and it's discourteous of them to block even one car for a significant duration).
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Actually, except in specified circumstances in CA, bikes are forbidden from taking the lane in the first place, as they are required to ride as close as practical to the right-hand edge of the roadway.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Yes, but those specified circumstances are pretty broad. If you don't feel safe biking along a strech without taking the lane, then the middle of the lane can be "as close to the right as practicable". Being further right for the sake of being further right, where there is not enough room for a car and a bike, just creates ambiguity and makes everyone less safe, and is thus not practical.

wiredfool 12y ago

Most lanes on modern streets are 12 feet wide, most cars are in the 6-7 foot range. If you're all the way over on one side of the lane, you're going to be ok, even if the cyclist isn't completely in the bike lane. If they're right on the edge, you've got about a foot of bike, 3 feet of buffer, and 7 feet of car. Another way to look at it is that if there's no bike lane, the car is probably going to have to go outside the lane to be safe and legal.

ojbyrne 12y ago
12 feet wide seems to be the standard for interstates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane#Lane_width https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane#Lane_width), where there are no bikes. Surface roads tend to vary quite a bit.
- wiredfool 12y ago
  I just went out an measured the road in front of my house, and it came out narrower than I thought. It's ~ 9.5/lane, with just over 1' for the double yellow. OTOH, if you see more than one other car, that's a traffic jam.

wffurr 12y ago

That's correct, especially if the bike lane is between a parking lane and a travel lane. A four inch stripe of paint is not an excuse to buzz a cyclist and scare the crap out of them. If slowing down or moving over is too much trouble, petition your local government to install physically separated cycle tracks instead of bike lanes.

nokiaman 12y ago
What about cyclists buzzing pedestrians? I see cyclists constantly breaking traffic rules, speeding through red lights, mounting onto the pavement, and they never get punished. If cyclists want to be treated as a road vehicle, perhaps they should be registered like one with a license plate?
- bincrosby 12y ago
  There's a certain amount of chicken and egg at work here. Yes, there are cyclists who run red lights and behave badly just because they can. On the other hand, there are traffic laws that I regularly break while biking to stay alive (crossing onto sidewalks, stopping in the road, even ignoring stop signs to get away from large vehicles). Having been hit by a bus while on the sidwalk, I'm acutely aware of how frail and unlike a car I really am. In short, my choices aren't made based on traffic laws. They're based on trying not to get hit on a minute-to-minute basis. In places without decent bike infrastructure, strict enforcement just presents a choice between tickets and death.
  - aroch 12y ago
    You can't have your cake and eat it to; either everyone follows all the traffic laws (including you) or no one follows all the traffic laws.
    - malyk 12y ago
      Or you could have more reasonable traffic laws.

genericone 12y ago

I think this is an intermediate step for bicycle advocacy: Step 1. Convince people that bicycle transportation infrastructure is sub-standard in all parts of America and is the underlying cause for accidents. When cyclists ( total weight < 200 lbs, slow acceleration, fast deceleration) and motorists ( total weight > 2000 lbs, fast acceleration, slow deceleration ) are expected to use the same roadways and are expected to follow the same traffic laws, there will be problems for everyone. Step 2. Introduce "reasonable" legislation to improve safety for cyclists. "Reasonable" legislation encroaches on motorist's existing feelings of entitlement on the road. Step 3. Begin discussions on how to compromise: a. Ban all bikes from everything except mixed used paths - No b. Revert the "reasonable" legislation, implying cyclist safety is not a concern - No c. Introduce more bicycle lanes - Maybe d. Physically separate the bicycle-paths and motorways - Difficult, but not impossible: http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/cycle-super-highway/ http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle-culture/cycle-supe... e. Introduce a bicycle tax, so motorists can't lord around the idea cyclists are freeloading roads - Maybe We're at step 3 now, what real solutions are there?

chc 12y ago
3c wouldn't help, since bike lanes do not keep bikes three feet away from cars. 3d seems prohibitively expensive for most places in the US. 3e wouldn't really help anything unless the tax was ridiculously high and could pay for separate bike paths. Given how few people actually commute by bike in most places, this would make a bicycle about as expensive as a Benz, so this doesn't seem very reasonable to me and I'm sure it wouldn't make me happy at all if I rode a bike. 3a and 3b seem like the most practical solutions, honestly. Not because cyclist safety is not a concern, but because we do not have good options available to protect it. They don't make cyclists happy, but I mean, tax laws don't make me happy. If it's unreasonably expensive to give someone special accommodations, sometimes you just can't even if you'd like to.
- j10t 12y ago
  You might be surprised. The cost of a bike lane averages $130,000 per mile. The cost of an urban road averages $4,000,000 per mile, per lane. Not to mention better bike infrastructure reduces car traffic: more bikes means fewer cars, the bike infrastructure is not simply additive. Plus secondary economic benefits: civil density, reduced parking costs, reduced healthcare costs, reduced environmental costs, reduced oil & gas imports, ... Did you know a parked car takes up 10 times as much space as a parked bicycle? Did you know there are approximately 10 parking spaces per car in America? Take away the driving subsidies and everyone would be riding bikes demanding better infrastructure.

bincrosby 12y ago

The "slows to a reasonable speed" exemption is significant here. Bike lanes aren't actually enough to bicyclists from getting hit, particularly by large vehicles (buses, widened pickups, etc) that crowd the bike lane. Given a narrow road and bike lane, it's awfully nice for cyclists to have people slow down as they pass. That said, all of this is going to depend on sensible application, and I'm glad to see there won't be a strict-enforcement campaign. It goes on already-massive list of traffic laws that most drivers break every day - it's hardly surprising to see a traffic law that's impractical and dangerous to follow in all cases. Used well, these laws are about giving cops options when people take dangerous actions. Used strictly or vindictively, they make driving an impossible task.

jfmiller28 12y ago

I commute by bike in city traffic daily. With a standard 13' lane a passenger vehicle can pass a bicycle riding comfortably in on the right edge of the road with 3 ft' clearance and without going over the lane line. You may need to move closer to the lane line then is typical, but you will be in your lane and have 3 ft. 100s of cars a week pass me safely and I'm not the only bike on the road. The situations that cause problems are drivers who don't see the cyclist or who try to "make a point" by not yielding the right hand edge. It also effects large vehicles who may need to change lanes to pass a bike safely. City buses and big rig trucks are quite good at this. Super-sized SUV's and box trucks not so much. I and everyone else knows that recreational road bikes and cars are going to continue to have trouble on narrow country roads with no solder and no passing visibility. But that problem did not just come with this law it came with poor road design.