L St. Cycletrack Woes this morning

[bobco85]

GreaterGreaterWashington had an article about vehicles blocking the L Street cycletrack: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/18756/whos-blocking-l-street-today-and-what-can-we-do/

@DismalScientist 51088 wrote:

Saw a near left hook collision with cyclist and car turning into a parking garage across the cycletrack. Obscenities were exchanged. Driver claimed, IMHO correctly, that cyclist was in the driver’s blind spot. At next intersection, cyclist vented to me. I responded that he was partly at fault for getting himself in this situation as the driver had his signal on for one half block before turning. Needless to say, the cyclist wasn’t happy with my comment.

Obviously I wasn’t there, but from reading your account of the situation I don’t think you communicated a helpful response to that cyclist. For assigning fault, I would argue that the cyclist has ROW and the driver is fully responsible for making sure the cycletrack is clear before entering/crossing it. Focusing on advice for the cyclist, it would help to be more cogniscant of drivers (like seeing the turning signal as an indication of the driver’s intent) and not to assume that just because he had ROW and a separated cycletrack that he would be safe, but I wouldn’t say that the cyclist held any of the blame here other than potentially exacerbating the situation through exchanging obscenities with the driver.

[DismalScientist]

I was not trying to say anything about the legal allocation of fault. As a general matter, I refuse to pass any car on the side if he has a turn signal on the side I would pass. In general, drivers often do not know how to make turns in the presence of bike lanes. Much of the problem is a lack of education. It is exacerbated by poor markings (i.e. a lack of dashed lines indication that a driver should merge into the lane before turning right) and poor design. Blind zone issues are real: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzL0Kyk4m-8

[TwoWheelsDC]

Ideally, drivers will check their mirrors, signal, slow, and wait an extra second to make sure a potential cyclist has time to emerge from the blind spot before turning. However, I will say that it sounds like the cyclist could have avoided the conflict by paying attention to the car’s signal and yielding accordingly. Too many times I’ve seen road users (cars and bikes alike) ignore signals from other cars with the attitude of “signal or not, I have the ROW!” and they plow ahead and cause needless conflict with the other vehicle. Sounds like this was less of a car-bike issue, and more of a “one user needs to pay more attention, and the other needs to respond better to signals” issue.

[mstone]

big problem is so many drivers don’t know how to adjust their mirrors. once you turn your head to the left before executing the turn, there should no longer be any “blind spot”. if there really is no way to see anything on either side of a car, it should be declared unsafe and removed from service.

[UrbanEngineer]

It’s not a good idea to pass vehicles on the side to which they are currently indicating a turn towards. Doesn’t matter who has the right of way. Doesn’t matter that they are not in the proper lane. If you see a signal that says vehicle is coming your way, and they show no signs of yielding to you, I’d believe that signal and let them go. Annoys the crap out of me that this is the case, as I would expect drivers to know the laws and to yield to cyclists in the cycletrack, and to change lanes into the bike lanes so they don’t turn across them…but they don’t.

[bobco85]

@DismalScientist 51101 wrote:

I was not trying to say anything about the legal allocation of fault. As a general matter, I refuse to pass any car on the side if he has a turn signal on the side I would pass. In general, drivers often do not know how to make turns in the presence of bike lanes. Much of the problem is a lack of education. It is exacerbated by poor markings (i.e. a lack of dashed lines indication that a driver should merge into the lane before turning right) and poor design. Blind zone issues are real: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzL0Kyk4m-8

I agree with you that poor sight lines, blind spots, subpar markings, and driver/cyclist ignorance/inattentiveness do contribute to vehicle-cyclist accidents. I also agree with being aware of drivers when they signal their intent to turn and choosing to avoid passing in those instances. I do not mean to argue on the legal ramifications should the driver and cyclist have collided.

My reaction was more for that you said that you told the cyclist that he was partly at fault for the incident which seemed like blaming the victim instead of giving him advice for avoiding future incidents like that.

[jnva]

“L” is for “Lefthook”

[video=youtube_share;1E3Si42ks-4]http://youtu.be/1E3Si42ks-4[/video]

[dasgeh]

The law is that the cyclists have the ROW. The driver should turn his or her head, pay attention and/or wait to ensure there’s no one in the blind spot. The driver here was clearly in the wrong. (Presumably the driver had passed the cyclists, so should have known they were there).

That said, on a practical level, you don’t want to be hit, so I agree with the advice that you should slow and be ready to stop (and yell at) cars illegally turning across the cycletrack. You don’t want to be the victim of an accident.

But the driver should have yielded*, and it sounds like the cyclist was trying to inform him/her of that fact. Maybe the cyclist could have chosen words/tone that would have been more effective. But it sounds like there wasn’t actually a collision, so kudos to the cyclist, who no doubt had a part in avoiding it.

Another point – to make a left turn into a mid-block parking garage, a car must also cross the sidewalk. If the driver isn’t stopping and looking, he/she will almost certainly miss pedestrians on the sidewalk. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been walking along a sidewalk WITH A BABY IN A STROLLER, and cars have come flying into or out of parking garages. It’s extremely dangerous. So even more reason why the driver was in the wrong here.

*For example, imagine a 4-lane, 2-way street. Car one is headed eastbound and wants to turn left. Car two is headed westbound in the right lane, wanting to go straight. Large truck is also heading westbound in the left lane, but more slowly than driver two. Once car two is right beside the truck, car one can’t see it. If car one turned left in front of car two, forcing car two to slam on brakes to avoid the collision, would you say “but car one had its turn signal on”?

[DismalScientist]

@dasgeh 51401 wrote:

(Presumably the driver had passed the cyclists, so should have known they were there).

No, the driver did not pass the cyclist. In essence the cyclist was passing a left turning driver (with his turn signal on) on the left.
Yes, the cyclist had the right of way.
By design of the cycletrack, to safely make this maneuver a driver must simultaneously scan relatively fast eastbound cycletrack traffic and both east and westbound slow moving sidewalk traffic.

@dasgeh 51401 wrote:

But it sounds like there wasn’t actually a collision, so kudos to the cyclist, who no doubt had a part in avoiding it.

No, the driver hit his brakes before reaching the curb and the cyclist squeezed by in front of him. The cyclist did very little to avoid the collision.

[dasgeh]

@DismalScientist 51407 wrote:

No, the driver did not pass the cyclist. In essence the cyclist was passing a left turning driver (with his turn signal on) on the left.
Yes, the cyclist had the right of way.
By design of the cycletrack, to safely make this maneuver a driver must simultaneously scan relatively fast eastbound cycletrack traffic and both east and westbound slow moving sidewalk traffic.

So y’all were moving faster than traffic? That’s great, and happens a lot. I was presuming that the car had passed bikes, then slow to make the turns, so if the driver is thinking, the driver should be expecting and looking for the bike.

The cycletrack only adds one dimension here — turning into a mid-block garage always means needing to scan for sidewalk traffic, which might be coming from “behind” the driver (i.e. travelling in the same direction). cross a sidewalk safely, the driver should be slowing, if not stopping, and turning his/her head. The cycletrack doesn’t change that.

[Terpfan]

@dasgeh 51401 wrote:

Another point – to make a left turn into a mid-block parking garage, a car must also cross the sidewalk. If the driver isn’t stopping and looking, he/she will almost certainly miss pedestrians on the sidewalk. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been walking along a sidewalk WITH A BABY IN A STROLLER, and cars have come flying into or out of parking garages. It’s extremely dangerous. So even more reason why the driver was in the wrong here.

I think this is a key point. Blind spot or not, drivers should proceed extremely cautiously when traveling across other lanes of traffic or sidewalks, or, in this case, both. When changing lanes (crossing a lane of traffic) one is supposed to check over his or her shoulder because blind spots exist on nearly every vehicle. Similarly, before crossing a sidewalk, he or she is supposed to check to make sure pedestrians aren’t crossing.

Folks are actually pretty good about this on the 15th St Cycletrack. Sure I get cut off every few days, but I would wager a rough estimate of 85% of the folks turning across the cycletrack and sidewalk do check both ways and sometimes even wait in the middle of the street for cyclists or pedestrians to cross. So perphaps this is all more of a learning curve for those folks on the L St Cycletrack.

[dasgeh]

Yesterday afternoon I drove on L Street. One thing I noticed: at the “merge to turn left area”, there is no signage for cars turning left indicating what intersection they are approaching. For many intersections, you can’t actually see any street signs back where the merge is supposed to happen. If you don’t go through there often, you’re stuck thinking “um, do I want to merge now?” and left with the option of taking eyes off the road and looking at a map/gps, or guessing. I imagine some of the cars that turn left from the main lanes honestly didn’t realize they wanted to turn left when they should have made that decision.

So, can we get signs for cars? (And no, it’s not that obvious which street you’re approaching. Yes, many of the streets are just the next lower number, but there’s also Connecticut and Vermont, so if you don’t know the area, you don’t know what’s after, say 17th St)

[jrenaut]

I’m pretty convinced that the L St cycletrack needs to be redone. It’s confusing to drivers. It’s too narrow at the intersections. I rode it with my daughter in the trailer the other day and won’t again, there’s just not enough room for the trailer.

I’m not sure what the best design would be, but what we have isn’t it.

[DCLiz]

Lately there’s been construction taking up the lane AND the sidewalk. Last evening there was a bit of a hairy situation at L & 17th, where there was no place for pedestrians to go, so they were walking around the construction in the tiny sliver of lane that was left for bikes, forcing bikes to either stop, or merge suddenly into a heavily trafficked lane (the peds kind of popped up out of nowhere since they were hidden by the construction until they were right in front of you in the lane, so there wasn’t a lot of advance warning).

The car drivers seemed alert and understanding of the situation, but it should be a requirement that major construction like that offers clearly marked alternative routes for peds and bikes. They don’t just suddenly block a driving lane; there’s clear signage and a gradual shift to allow the cars time to merge around the obstruction. They’re going to have to start doing the same thing for our bike lanes.

[Greenbelt]

@jrenaut 55784 wrote:

I’m pretty convinced that the L St cycletrack needs to be redone. It’s confusing to drivers. It’s too narrow at the intersections. I rode it with my daughter in the trailer the other day and won’t again, there’s just not enough room for the trailer.

I’m not sure what the best design would be, but what we have isn’t it.

Two way cycle fully protected with cuts at driveway entrances and left turn signals for cars at some lights. They’d have to install bike signals, which would be expensive. And there would be more left hook risk at lights under the all green cycle. But I think it would be more intuitive, less likely to have a higher-speed conflict. I’m afraid there’s going to be a high-speed crash on L — one-way downtown streets lend themselves to cars speeding on green (like currently on M street) — they seem like highways to drivers, with high-speed lane switching etc. And if a cyclist makes a mistake or a driver is too aggressive…

I’d make the M street track two way also, probably. We need cross town routes, so I think they’d both be pretty well used even right next to each other.

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