Not A Safe Week To Ride

[Starduster]

Second fatality in a week, and the 3rd collision to make WTOP NewsRadio. This was in Herndon: http://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2015/09/suv-strikes-kills-bike-rider-on-sunrise-valley-drive/

Topic

[americancyclo]

@dasgeh 123559 wrote:

What we’re missing is what the engineers should do. I don’t know this road at all – did it have street lamps (the kind that illuminate all of the street but not so brightly as to make everything else invisible)? Did it have a side path/sidewalk? Was it designed in a way to keep cars at the speed limit? Or was it dark or spottily lit? Was the asphalt the only way to get from one place to another? Was it built with wide lanes, a median, sweeping curves to encourage people driving cars to drive fast?

A man died. He would not have died had the driver avoided the collision. He may not have died if he had been wearing more reflective gear or had lights. He probably would not have died if he had a separated, safe place to ride that got him where he needed to go.

road is engineered to go fast. there is a sidepath. my bet would be “dimly lit”
image: https://goo.gl/maps/9cAMW

[mstone]

@dasgeh 123559 wrote:

What we’re missing is what the engineers should do.[/quote]

Well that’s easy: the road should be restriped with narrower lanes, and a separated bike lane. That’s true of pretty much every road that VDOT has built in Fairfax in the past 20 years. I’ve mostly given up on VDOT getting any less hostile to non-auto users until the current generation has retired.

What I’d really like to see is a formal public project after-action review to go along with the formal public project planning when VDOT puts together a new road. A chance for people to go and tell them, on the record, why what they’ve done sucks.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 123571 wrote:

Well that’s easy: the road should be restriped with narrower lanes, and a separated bike lane. That’s true of pretty much every road that VDOT has built in Fairfax in the past 20 years. I’ve mostly given up on VDOT getting any less hostile to non-auto users until the current generation has retired.

What I’d really like to see is a formal public project after-action review to go along with the formal public project planning when VDOT puts together a new road. A chance for people to go and tell them, on the record, why what they’ve done sucks.

Looking at the Dranesville district map in the Fairfax Bike master plan (passed a few months ago) it looks like a buffered bike lane is proposed for Sunrise Valley. And no, I have no idea what the priority is for it, or how the current funding levels for bike infra in FFX match the extent of items in the plan.

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/fcdot/pdf/bike/bicycle_master_plan_draft-final.pdf

see Figure 20

Note the following VDOT reps were part of the Master Plan process

Virginia Department of Transportation
Randy Dittberner, P.E., PTOE
Fatemeh Allahdoust
Rob Wilson
Khalil Askaryar
Dic Burke
Tom Folse
Mary Lou Pagano

[mstone]

@lordofthemark 123574 wrote:

Looking at the Dranesville district map in the Fairfax Bike master plan (passed a few months ago) it looks like a buffered bike lane is proposed for Sunrise Valley. And no, I have no idea what the priority is for it, or how the current funding levels for bike infra in FFX match the extent of items in the plan.

Short answer: the bike master plan is a non-binding and unfunded product of the county DOT. More telling is what VDOT is actually doing: if you look at road projects started since the bike master plan process began, you’ll see that VDOT is still defaulting to making new roads with giant lanes regardless of the speed limit or context.

[GovernorSilver]

After reading this, I’m glad I’m not bike commuting in China – speaking of bike safety….

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.html

[mstone]

@GovernorSilver 123589 wrote:

After reading this, I’m glad I’m not bike commuting in China – speaking of bike safety….

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.html

😮

[Author]

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