SF resident here.
I've had quite a few close calls, and the same holds true for many of my friends who bike.
These typically happened on these "shared bike lanes" - it's where the city takes the right-most car lane, draws a bike sign on it, and tell cars and bicyclists to "get along" (since cars are still allowed full use of it).
This, of course, doesn't work.
Cars are much faster than bikes, and asking these two vastly different transportation methods to share a lane is nuts.
Should the cars just drive 6mph? Should they go around, try to merge and hope they don't misgauge the distance?
The problem here is that the city didn't put any real thought into the bikes lanes, and the result is a terrible and incredibly dangerous system.
Personally, I've given up on bike lanes in many areas of the city. It's simply not safe.
" … try to merge and hope they don't misgauge the distance?"
This isn't a rant at you eiopa, but FFS! Would anybody accept a driver merging into another car (or a bus or a semitrailer or a pedestrian) with some poor attempt at evading responsibility by saying "Sorry, I 'misgauged the distance'"? Is it somehow "acceptable" to "misgauged the distance and merge into a bicycle"? Or is that, as I see it, a completely negligent action for which losing the privilege of having a driving license a completely appropriate response?
I don't think this site is "the right answer" (as admitted by the owner/developer in a seperate comment), but "the right answer" involved holding people responsible for what they do in their cars - which is going to be an outrageously difficult political sell, unless _someone_ does the job of collecting the data to show a) that this is happening, b) that it happens a lot, and if it's true c) that a small but identifiable number of car drivers are responsible for a significant number of incidents.
As a friend of mine keeps saying (mostly in regards to motorcycle and mpotorcycle/car "accidents"):
There's no such thing as an accident. There are only fuckups. Crashing because you got hit by a meteorite - that'd be an accident, everything that actually happens in the real world is a fuckup. Calling things "accidents" is purely a way of shirking responsibility on someone's part.
It doesnt matter. Cars always think they can push the bike away on the right side of the street if they arent fast enough to return. Happens all the time. And indeed the bike will move (or.crash/die so the bike always moves)
I'm astonished at how ignorant otherwise intelligent bicyclists often are of the rule common in most US states that they can and should take the traffic lane (and should take the center of the lane to block cars from edging around to their left) when they are stopped at a red light where there is a shared right turn/bike lane.
I often see bikers who have helmets, lights, visibility vests, etc., all signs of being clear thinking riders, parking themselves squat in the middle of the shared turn lane at a red, when they should be in the main stream of traffic for the duration of the wait (in fact the recommendation is to ride with traffic if your speed matches it, absent bike lanes).
When the light turns green, cars are stationary, and bikes accelerate plenty fast in the first few seconds. One or two turns of the pedal gets you over back into the right side, and onward into the continuing bike lane as you cross the street. This can happen in a couple of seconds without significantly slowing down any cars (unless it's a Tesla P85D, maybe).
Joining the main stream of traffic in front of a car at a red light (assuming you beat that car to the red) may miff some ignorant drivers (ignorance all around, right?) but they'll be pleasantly surprised that you are out of their way in no time when the light turns green. Obviously this doesn't apply if you're a super slow rider... in which case, people just need to be patient for a few seconds. The point is, if you are blocking a shared right turn lane, you are doing it wrong.
I had to educate my wife on this one while we were living in the UK. If you are going the speed of the traffic, use the lane just like any other vehicle. Doing anything else is dangerous. A good example is when turning right (in the UK, left in most of the world). Get into the proper position before your turn so that you don't have to cut over a whole line of traffic in order to turn.
We've returned to Japan now, but unfortunately the laws here are different. You must be in the left side of the lane and they even encourage you to ride on the sidewalk :-P. If you want to turn right, you have to wait at the left side of the road until there is a break in traffic and then cut across all the lanes of traffic. I wish someone would update the laws here...
On the other hand, scooters are have a speed limit of 30 km/h where as push bikes have no speed limit :-) I'm a bit afraid of the day that the powers that be realize that cyclists often go faster than 30...
This varies a lot by country even in Europe. In Denmark it is not legal for a cyclist to enter the car lanes to make a left turn (unless it's a road with no bike lanes at all). The standard left-turn method is to stay in the bike lane on the right, continue straight across the intersection, then stop on the other side, turn your bike 90º to the left, and line up to go straight across in the other direction when the light changes. This is sometimes called a "Copenhagen left" or a "box turn" [1]. It feels a lot safer to me than having to merge across car lanes to make a turn.
Maybe safer but also a way to tell cyclists to be very patient and don't think of going anywhere quickly. Cycling on sidewalks is only a little worse than that.
I prefer doing like cars, waiting in the middle of the road. There are usually cars waiting there too and they act as a sort of shield. Obviously on large roads it can be difficult to make it to the center of the road and in that case I do a Copenaghen left myself.
In Belgium, you are allowed to do this. When I moved to Copenhagen I was seriously annoyed for the reasons you mentioned when I realized I had to first cross, wait and only then go on with my ride. However, I started realizing that the Copenhagen way actually works very well, and it is a LOT safer, and so much more relaxed (not slower). Merging into traffic and crossing the street to get to the lane to turn left can be a stressful affair. I used to bike in Brussels and I can assure you that is a jungle over there: you have to be reckless as a biker (and so I was) if you want to get anywhere at all. On the upside: a fast morning ride through Brussels from home to work was one big adrenaline shot. Once behind my desk, I was awake, sharp and ready to start working :-)
Additionally, cars going for a left turn usually have a separate traffic light which is red when the main direction has green. The time you gain using that lane compared to the "box turn" is minimal as such.
A lot is also context: Copenhagen has a very extensive bicycle lane network that does not involve any cars that is constantly expanding. Cykelslangen is a nice example of such a bike only short cut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmKXYZZy6dI, http://www.dw.dk/cykelslangen/, http://classiccopenhagen.blogspot.dk/2014/06/cykelslangen.ht.... When going around the city, you are just faster with a bike because you take more direct routes (away from car lanes) with less traffic lights. If I have to take a left turn on big busy car street, I couldn't car less if I had to wait for making a box turn: I am faster anyway, and the properly tuned and fast switching red-green lights minimize the wait.
I agree the quick light cycles are a big help, also for pedestrians. You rarely wait more than 15-30 seconds on the other side for the light to change, so it's not really much of a delay. I do find the really long light cycles in many American cities annoying as a pedestrian.
Another reason few people in Copenhagen mind the "Copenhagen left" is that since cycle lanes are usually physically separated from the car lanes, it doesn't even occur to anyone that entering the car lanes to turn would be an option. You'd have to physically cross the barrier separating the bike and the car lanes (sometimes a row of parked cars, sometimes a curb, occasionally bollards), which would not be an obvious or convenient thing to do. That part of the arrangement also seems much safer to me. I don't like riding in a bike lane that is essentially just a repainted shoulder, lacking any means to physically exclude cars from the lane.
That's the way cars turn right in some major intersections in the CBD of Melbourne, Australia. In this application it's called a hook turn[2]. They're used in Melbourne because the city streets are unusually wide and it stops trams from being blocked.
Do you even bike? I don't want to cross over a lane of traffic right out of an intersection. That sounds like the most dangerous thing I could do. I'll happily sit in the turn lane during a red light. If someone wants to turn, they can wait to till it's green. I'm not going to risk my life so that someone can get to their destination 1.5 seconds sooner. If someone has an issue, they can get out of their car and confront me about it.
Ultimately, this is the fault of whoever planned the streets so badly.
What? No one said anything about “crossing over a lane of traffic”. You start in front of the cars in the regular go-straight lane, and then when the light turns green, you ride straight across the intersection. If there’s a bike lane on the other side of the intersection, you aim for the bike lane.
This is safer for everyone involved than your suggestion of parking your bike in the turn lane.
I think you misunderstand him, he saying if you are proceeding straight then you shouldn't wait in the right turn lane to proceed straight. which makes sense
I worry that by the time you merge back in, a car from the right could take you down. Merging is terrifying as a bicyclist.
Those "shared lanes" are a disaster, and even the non-physically separated bike lanes are dangerous, since you can both get door'd by a parked car from the right, and you can hit on the left by a car.
I've noticed that they've been adding physical separation on Market st, but most of the bike lanes here are still incredibly dangerous.
Why would there be a car on the right? When you are in the go-straight main traffic lane (or the rightmost main traffic non-turn lane) then any car on the right is in the right turn lane, and is therefore, by definition, turning right, away from you. How would that take you down? I think you are misunderstanding the scenario.
In the UK we quite often have a designated cyclist area across all lanes in front of the cars at traffic lights. This makes things much safer since you can position yourself correctly for the turn and most drivers are sensible enough not to attempt an overtake as you turn.
Yea, you're not wrong - there's a very real issue around respecting cyclist spaces on roads and this is just another example. It's probably just another example of people considering themselves exempt from the rules though, you see it when drivers stop carelessly at box junctions or cyclists ignore a red light because nobody's crossing.
Unlike the myth that the Netherlands is 100% covered in separate bike lanes, such constructs are perfectly normal. Here's an example of a busy Amsterdam street that doesn't even have as much as a dotted line on the ground: http://media.schlijper.nl/high/07/03/30/070330-raadhuisstraa...
No, it's not "nuts" to expect drivers to behave with caution, certainly a lot less nuts than to expect gun owners to act responsibly and not use unarmed civilians for target practice. It's a matter of law, culture and common sense.
Driving a car should not give you the right to run over cyclists and civilians. It's not that complicated. And although well designed streets are incredibly important in increasing safety, they are also a red herring when it comes to addressing the #1 problem: drivers. (Second only to the complete BS about cycling being unsafe without helmets.)
Also, once you make drivers responsible, there will be broader support for better infrastructure, because drivers themselves feel way more comfortable when bikes lanes are separated.
Amsterdam has way more separate bike lanes than SF.
Also, Amsterdam roads tend to be a lot calmer compared to SF.
The street in the screenshot is one lane per direction with a lot of curves.
San Francisco roads are often straight and 2 per direction (so higher traffic + speed), which dramatically increases the friction on sharrows, with a culture that's unused to bike traffic, so they are unsure about how to behave.
You're right, driving a car does not give you the right to run over cyclists, but the city could put more thought into the bike handling. I've been to Amsterdam a few times, and it's NOTHING like here.
Sharrows are misused almost everywhere, and until I moved to Portland I would've agreed that they were a stupid idea. Here, there's been a lot of thought put into their use, and it shows. Specifically, they're not just thrown up to show that the city's "doing something" about bicycle safety. They're used only on certain, designated, low-volume/low-speed corridors designated as "bike boulevards."
This works surprisingly well, because it ends up that a sharrow in Portland doesn't mean "get along"--it means "bikes have priority." For the most part, drivers along the bike boulevards seem willing to drive slowly behind a bicyclist puffing up a hill and wait until they have plenty of space to pass.
Culture may play a big role here too, but I think sharrows can play a very helpful role if used carefully.
>the city takes the right-most car lane, draws a bike sign on it, and tell cars and bicyclists to "get along"
I bike commute daily in Somerville and Cambridge MA. My routes have dedicated bike lanes for about 1/2 the distance, "sharrows" (bike sign + >>> symbol) for about 1/4 and nothing on the rest. I'll agree that the sharrows don't seem to do much, but we seem to get along pretty well with cars anyway - with occasional friction. I feel pretty safe.
I rarely see bikes impede traffic. They either ride with the flow of traffic or stay right if they can't keep up. Once in a while when the road is very narrow or torn up they might slow traffic a bit, but then get right ASAP.
In 2 years of daily commutes I've seen only 1 instance where a bike impeded a car for more than a few seconds, and that's because the road was so torn up on the right hand side that it wasn't usable, forcing bikes into the middle of the lane for about 10-20 seconds. The driver tailgated closely the whole time and started honking - in ignorance of the law that bikes have 100% right to the lane if there's not room to share it with a 3 foot margin.
Bikes often won't go super close to parked cars for fear of being "doored", but they generally seem to ride at least 10 mph, especially where they need to occasionally weave into the main traffic flow, e.g. for double-parked vehicles.
On my route the only place it gets a little crazy is where you're in 4 full lanes of traffic and have to cross from right to left in about 200 feet. All the bikes ride between lanes and generally weave their way over in the heavy but fairly slow traffic.
I've never had a reportable close call or seen an accident, but there are plenty of annoyances. Busses seem to make it a sport to brush close to you or cut you off - much worse than even large trucks do. Taxis are jerks. They blast by with inches of room. Expensive german SUVs are next worst. Always in a hurry. Oddly I've noticed prius drivers are pretty bad too, pedal to the metal. I don't get it. [edit - these are gross generalizations, and even then only apply to a small fraction of the driving population. The vast majority are careful and polite!]
My fellow bikers are not always prize material either. For too many, red lights seem not to exist at all and they blow through with barely a glance. There are the invisible bikers too, riding at night with no lights no reflectors, and wearing dark clothes. Freakin' morons. I look like a total dork/xmas tree, but I'm visible.
I get very annoyed at people who drive right over my bike lane when there's plenty of room not to. They'll go past me then get slowed by traffic and block my lane - which is painted bright green btw, with white borders. Pretty hard to miss if you're not on the GD phone. I've even yelled at them "bike lane!" a few times. (dumb, I know, and I'm trying hard to chill. Yelling doesn't help) Another pet peeve drivers who stop way right in the lane so I can't even squeeze by. It's only a few rare cars that do this, but it only takes one to screw you over. Drivers - please leave me at least a measly 2 feet!
All in all, I love my bike commute. It's honestly my favorite part of every day - at least when it's above freezing :). And I strongly wish more people felt safe to ride, because I like the company, and feel even safer in a pack than alone. It actually gets pretty congested in places during rush hour (a dozen bikes at a light isn't uncommon) but I say the more the merrier.
Motorists don't know the laws you're citing so to add those laws to an analysis of the actual goings on in traffic seems fairly hypothetical.
Motorists also actually don't want to kill anyone, even that rogue bicyclist running the red light. However motorists as a whole exhibit a relatively predictable behavior pattern that bicyclists usually violate. The leading cause of "incidents" IMHO is mismatched velocity vectors, and common occurances like truckers abusing their momentum vector, lane-splitting motorcyclists, and humans accompanied by insignificant tubular structures often fail to accomodate their velocity vectors to the one the flow of traffic exhibits.
My experience driving and cycling tells that the major cause for close encounters with people driving is smartphone use. People should put the fucking phone away when they're on the wheel. Otherwise, they can kill or get killed.
I totally agree. Pedestrians on foot are often guilty of this, too. As a motorist I also would like motorists to engage in the driving task so it is easier for me to avoid hitting them.
Bicycle lanes, at least in my experience in the UK, are almost universally pointless (lanes and tracks through parks are generally OK.)
Riding on the road is always safer, because the highway code actually applies there. You just become a slow car, you have right of way at roundabouts etc. Be considerate and pull to the left when you can. Sorted.
On roads that are too narrow to cycle without completely blocking traffic I generally use the footpath at slow speeds (e.g. 6-8mph, just rolling along).
On super fast roads (limit 50 and above) generally unless it's late at night and quiet I would just try to find an alternative route.
I don't think anything needs to happen other than more drivers cycling and more cyclists driving, to enable empathy. Everything else is just fluff.
I don't bike anymore ( got rid of my last bike during a move ). I certainly wasn't comfortable in high density mixed USA suburban traffic.
The cognitive load on drivers for just motorcycles is pretty high. Bicycles make it even more complex.
From just watching what people do in cars with other cars, I am skeptical that even rudimentary driving safety is widely understood. Turn signals are rarely used, nobody preserves their intervals and people form patterns in traffic they can't recover from.
I haven't been to the US, but my stereotypical picture is wide, sweeping grid like roads, which result in drivers going fast.
The UK isn't really like that especially in metro areas. In London the highway code plays second fiddle to a general 'be alert all the time and be courteous' type system.
I think that cycling properly (not just at the side forever) on roads where drivers aim to be hitting 40mph constantly is a dream, really. Too high a speed difference.
In inner London, though, likely you will be cycling 10-20mph while cars drive at 20-30mph. Is that not the case in NYC for example? Are your roads just too straight and easy to use so drivers gun it? (It's well known that narrow roads result in unconscious slowing).
Hi all, I am the cyclist/coder behind the site. It's clearly not "the solution" but I think it's an important part of it. If you do ride, I encourage you to sign up, the site becomes more effective as the network grows. I am also exploring a couple partnerships that should make the site more effective this summer. Appreciate the support. Thanks.
This is a great project idea. Riding in Berlin I experience close calls on almost a daily basis. Networking with other riders could be a very empowering tool in an environment that many times makes you feel helpless and without proper means of recourse.
@eezis, there is no means of contacting you on your site! Wouldn't it make sense to supply email/twitter info so people can get in touch?
Also, I held off signing up, since it was unclear to me what I can expect once I signed up to your site. I.e. what would a database entry look like? Clicking on an incident on the map only gives me the date of the incident and no further info.
When I review a report, I almost always zoom in on the map, then use the "streetview" feature to get a feel for the context (road width, presence of bike lanes, speed limits, line of sight visibility, general road conditions, etc). That helps me to get a better understanding of what the driver and the cyclist/s were experiencing when the incident occurred.
I might make the FAQ available to non-registered users . . . but in general, cyclists seem to "get it" or they don't. At this stage of development, I'm not really looking to "sell" the idea to fence-sitters, I want the core of the community built around experienced cyclists that have balanced perspective on what's happening out there on the roads.
Regarding social media, I have been reticent to engage for several reasons but now realize I probably have to . So I have started to include some of that information in the email notifications. And I am cleverly "hidden" at @eezis and @closecalldb and Kennett Peterson volunteers to keep a FaceBook page (and you might wish to follow his blog: https://kennettron.wordpress.com/2014/10/18/adelaide/).
Thank you @eezis for linking to Kennetts blogpost. What a painfully sad story. Lets hope that Adelaide recovers completely and the driver won't be allowed behind another steering wheel.
Just yesterday afternoon I had another reckless driver deliberately drive up close to a few centimeters behind my rear wheel because he saw me as an obstacle. This was just 30 Meters away from a red light. The argument through the driver window, as always in situations like this, lead nowhere. People like this know, that there will be no consequences to their behaviour, so they keep on risking other peoples lives...
You might be interested in the german project http://wegeheld.org, which mainly focuses on documenting parking offences. Sadly the interface of the app is not there yet.
Being able to use a phone to document and upload an incident report complete with pictures/videos and GPS location and GPS track info would be a great plus to any such app. Also being able to warn other cyclists of reckless drivers in a specific area or of an ongoing incident might be helpful (i.e. if witnesses are needed).
It could be useful for city planning, if there's a large number of "close calls" in a small area, that may indicate a good spot for a bike lane. Other than that I don't see the point.
Most of these bike stories are a little weird to me. Countries where not may people bike normally tend to over-think the issue. I seriously doubt that drivers and bikers are deliberately being assholes towards each other (granted a small percentage might be). The drivers simply aren't use to having bikes around, and the bikers think they're in Denmark or the Netherlands.
I ride my bike to work every day, 5km, I bike on the small road in the country side for fun (where there's no bike lane) and I never once had an issue that wasn't my fault or related to another bike. Danish drivers are use to bike, their own kids are probably riding their bike to school, so they know how to pass a bike.
The main flaw I see in how Americans are addressing bikes are the insistence that bike are cars. They're not. Bike stay in the right side of the road at all time, you never mock around in the middle of the street. As a cyclist you always yield to cars if you're not sure what they are about. You may have the right of way, but that means nothing if you lying under the wheels of a truck.
I wish I could share your serious doubt about people's capacity to be assholes toward each other. I can assure you that here in America some people have made that particular pursuit the object of their life's work. And they have pursued it with great vigor and success.
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There is bad behavior from both cyclists and drivers but when drivers do it the results can be lethal. There is also a lot of damage done that simply results from driver ignorance; a lot of older drivers here believe it is illegal to cross a double yellow so they don't pass at a safe distance. Then there are many that simply believe bikes don't belong on the road and damned if they are going to do anything -- like slow down, or alter their course in any manner -- to "accommodate" them. In their minds, if they hit you, it's your damned fault, you don't belong on the road. And, of course, sure as there is gravity, there are drivers that do it intentionally.
I agree very strongly with your last paragraph. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should -- especially when interacting with other parties that believe what you are doing is illegal. "Taking the lane" is a cyclist action that many/most drivers in America do not understand and certainly do not like. Think of it from the driver's perspective. Drivers do not consider themselves to be dangerous. So when a cyclist 'takes the lane' to be safer, the action may appear irrational to them and can spark a bad interaction.
We have a curious situation unfolding in the U.S. where city planners and managers are encouraging people to commute by bike and engage in activities like 'taking the lane' in certain situations, but they are not taking additional efforts to educate motorists about the actual rules of the road and the motorists tend to see cyclists as "obstacles" rather than fellow travelers. I find it interesting that city planners encourage cycling commuters, then while the people are riding to work the city's own buses nearly run them down.
And when the cyclists don't obey the rules? Can we have a database for that too? Wait they don't have tags
Legally bikes have to stop at red lights, but in my experience the opposite is the norm: quick glance to make sure no one is coming, and dash across multiple lanes to turn left on red.
Wanna bike on the roads? Great! I do too. We can turn all city roads one way, making room for nice thick bike lanes. But! Get tagged like every other road vehicle so we can report on problem cyclists.
When a bicyclist dies after contact with an automobile, do you suppose that the motorist goes the rest of their life in blissful contemplation of their survival of the incident? Do you suppose that no motorist is sensitive enough to have bad dreams after a near miss?
It could actually be useful to know which bicyclists are involved in the most near misses. It could even make the bicyclist change something, if they have more reports than average.
No one pretends that drivers don't recklessly open doors endangering cyclists' lives. Or cut them off. Or engage in other dangerous behavior affecting ppl w/ bikes. It's tragic. But why do we have to pretend that the converse is not true? That cyclists' behavior is also often dangerous to themselves or others (i.e. pedestrians)!
We don't let pedestrians J-walk. We don't let cars run red lights. Why do two wheels get a free pass?
Everyone (I hope) tries to avoid cyclists. It's a human life; no nitpicking about rules and who is at fault changes the sacrosanct value of a human life. But a bike is not carte-blanche to do whatever you want.
Why? Are they more frequent? Anyway, how frequent it is, is irrelevant. Cyclists can and do cause fatalities (sometimes their own). To mitigate this they should follow the rules.
There are rules of the road for everyone's safety. I obey them when I walk, bike and drive. If we're going to go Stasi on drivers, let's go Stasi on everyone.
> If we're going to go Stasi on drivers, let's go Stasi on everyone.
That is, on the face of it, a ridiculous position. Cars, and only cars, are what matters in road safety. Everything else is less important than obscure threats like falling air conditioners.
What you are really saying is "Lets give cops the tools to harass cyclists" Fuck that. You're driving a deadly tool. If you kill someone with it, it should ruin your life. If you don't like that, wait until cars can be made safe for everyone around them.
"Cars, and only cars, are what matters in road safety."
If you believe that, you don't have a toddler. I don't either (yet), but I do remember running around the streets of BsAs like an idiot with my freaked out mother screaming, chasing after me as I dodged, ironically enough, an ambulance.
Cars matter the most. Agreed. But let's not exaggerate, eh?
These typically happened on these "shared bike lanes" - it's where the city takes the right-most car lane, draws a bike sign on it, and tell cars and bicyclists to "get along" (since cars are still allowed full use of it).
This, of course, doesn't work. Cars are much faster than bikes, and asking these two vastly different transportation methods to share a lane is nuts. Should the cars just drive 6mph? Should they go around, try to merge and hope they don't misgauge the distance?
The problem here is that the city didn't put any real thought into the bikes lanes, and the result is a terrible and incredibly dangerous system.
Personally, I've given up on bike lanes in many areas of the city. It's simply not safe.