Hey guys, just wanted to see if anyone has any insights or experience with this.
In our city, we have a lot of good-quality bike paths that are shared with pedestrians. That’s usually not an issue since they’re often pretty quiet, but I’ve noticed they can get awkward near intersections, especially when the path runs alongside a street and allows two-way cycling.
I’m attaching an example I ran into yesterday. As shown by the blue highlight, I was riding in the opposite direction of street traffic, which is allowed because the path is separate from the road. The tricky part was at the intersection. The vehicle following the red arrow had a stop sign and was turning right onto the main street. Naturally, the driver seemed to mostly check left for oncoming traffic, and only noticed me a bit late.
Thankfully, I had already slowed down and stopped, so it didn’t get close to a crash. But it made me wonder how others handle these situations. Is the main solution just to be extra cautious at these intersections when using paths like this, especially when riding opposite to nearby traffic?
by TraditionalCourage
5 Comments
This is the exact reason off street lanes are imperfect. Cars look for traffic on the road, and you aren’t on the road.
So until public perception shifts, be extra careful
Happens to me every morning. Just understand that they won’t see you.
ugh there’s no good way around this until drivers understand what we learned in pre-k: look both ways. obviously slow down or stop. what can help is making a noise. sometimes i’ll actually yell/chant “look both ways!” some times i’ll stop and just get my face very close to their window so when/if they do look it’s a jump scare. hoping that feeling will stick with them and they’ll remember to look next time. a whistle isn’t a bad idea either
I always approach these intersections with the assumption that a car will either not stop for me or will drive straight into me. Slow down a lot and only proceed if a driver has made eye contact and stopped. even then I’m careful. Most of the time I slow down enough so that cars just go before me.
You have to be extra cautious, but I’d inform whoever is responsible for the road of the likely outcome, and raise the issue, I’d also put a recommendation, cheapest is just paint, in that they paint the cycle route with either yield to cyclists or cyclists slow check for cars. Better would be narrowing of the junction, removing the central reservation with a raised cycle crossing/ hump.
Drivers will slowly learn but in that time unfortunately some injuries or worse will occur. Can’t blame the driver, it’s the infrastructure that’s to blame.