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Approaching Bellaire Elementary from the North. Today's Subject Passed Through the Intersection About Where the Middle Car Is
Nowadays, There's a Traffic Signal Instead of the Stop Signs. At Least He had a Green for THIS Intersection |
In any given situation, the safety of someone on a bike
depends on his or her actions and the actions of other road users. This
morning, on my commute to work, there was a guy on a bike going southbound down
Bellaire a bit north of Bellaire Elementary School. He was hugging the right
edge where the gutter pan meets the traffic lanes. Before long, he sort of
wandered across the street, more or less in the middle of the left turn lane as
he went into the intersection at Bellaire. He proceeded to ride down the
street; now headed south in the northbound lane. After a couple of blocks, he
zipped up onto the sidewalk, still headed against traffic. He rode along the
sidewalk at about 18MPH; almost as fast as I was going on the road. It was
fascinating to watch his driveway/intersection crossing technique –keep the
head straight and keep going. Any motorist, however diligent, coming from one
of the side streets, would have had no chance to avoid him. Any pedestrian approaching
from the side would have gotten smacked. After a couple of more blocks I was
far enough ahead that the show came to an end. Not long after, I arrived at the
red light at Highway 10.
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The Red Light at Highway 10. Back When it was Dark When I Got There
Today's Scofflaw Was ANOTHER Guy on a Bike. He Crossed on the Left Sidewalk
and Swerved Through the Highway Traffic |
For an encore, while I was waiting for the light to change,
along comes “clueless wrong-way sidewalk rocket guy,” who shot through the red
light off of his wrong-way sidewalk, across three lanes of traffic and a left
turn lane, threading through oncoming westbound motorists on Highway 10 that
were naively expecting that their green light meant “GO” instead of “watch for a
person running the red on a bike.” Though I knew it was NOT a teachable moment,
I couldn’t help myself and yelled “it’s a red light!” in his direction. I admit
it, sometimes I forget you’re supposed to watch for people on bikes, not yell
at them. This guy then proceeded to ride eastbound along for the better part of
a half mile on the left side of the left lane of a highway with a 50MPH speed
limit before swerving across three traffic lanes in order to hop onto a
sidewalk off to the side of the road. Lots of eastbound motorists got to watch
this tricky guy. They all avoided him – THIS time. Cycling really IS safe!
One popular explanation for “safety in numbers” promoted by
Jacobsen and many advocates is that motorists watch for bikes better when there
are more bikes. I’d like to propose an alternate reason since I don’t see how
ANY amount of added motorist diligence would help this tricky bike guy. Isn’t
it more likely that with added bikes on the road, people on bikes have more
opportunities to observe and simply ride less dangerously? Wouldn’t that result
in lower crash rates? Motorists are trained NOT to run into things they see.
That’s true whether that object is a bike, a parked car, a pedestrian, or even stuff
floating in the wind. West of Amarillo, I was amazed to see motorists swerving
all over the road to avoid running into tumbleweeds blowing across the highway.
I suppose it is POSSIBLE that they were watching for tumbleweeds because there
WERE a lot of them blowing across the road, but I doubt it. Avoidance training
runs deep and it kicked in for the Motorists on Highway 10 this morning. Simply
put, if the fraction of bikes shooting through intersections going the wrong
way drops dramatically, the fraction of people killed doing such things will
also drop. Maybe if people doing dim bulb stuff get yelled at by many more cyclists, they'll catch on.
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Heading North, This Morning, the Guy on the Bike Would Have Been Headed Straight Towards Me |
Certainly my loyal reader can think of other reasons for
improved safety with added numbers – “with more bikes, traffic engineers stop
ignoring bikes” is a personal favorite, but reduced DANGEROUS behavior seems
more reasonable than others getting better at anticipating and avoiding that
DANGEROUS behavior.
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My Track This Morning, With Bellaire off to my Right. Rocket Guy was Headed the Same Way Two Lanes Over to the Left |
4 comments:
Steve, you lost me on this one. How does more bikes help with the problem of bad cycling behaviour?
Because of more numerous examples of the right way, peer pressure if you will? Is that what you meant?
I think peer pressure would apply.
On the subject of increased numbers of cyclists http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/07/hell-on-wheels/9008/
When numbers increase, then all types of riders increase and, possibly, the proportion of numpty riders decreases, although in sheer numbers they are increasing too.
In the limit, if everyone rode a bike everywhere, after a year everyone would have at least a year of cycling experience. That alone would improve things. What is more, there would be no cars which would also improve things, at least as far as car/bike collisions. Police would be far more educated about truly dangerous bike behavior versus what looks dangerous to a motorist that doesn't really know cycling well. As today happens with motorists, cyclists beyond the pale would be quickly accosted and either set right or otherwise removed as a source of danger to others. Best of all, local governments could surplus many unneeded stop signs since pedestrians and cross traffic would be in far less danger from even mediocre bike riders than from mediocre SUV drivers.
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No Need for Non-Robot proof here!