Getting doored is honestly terrifying (I don't say that lightly). I bike and longboard frequently, and I'll avoid bike lanes if they are alongside parked cars. And this is in Boulder, one of the most bike friendly cities in the US:
Local governments have been kind enough to paint warning marks for cyclists, advising them of the safe distance from parked cars and kerbs. Non-cyclists call these warning marks "bike lanes".
Cyclists need at least a metre of space on the nearside at all times. It's your escape route if cars pass too closely. It's your protective buffer against being doored or against pedestrians stepping out into your path. Hugging the kerb gives you nowhere to go in an emergency.
Be brave and take the lane. If you delay other road users, let them honk and shout - that metre of space is literally a matter of life and death.
> Be brave and take the lane. If you delay other road users, let them honk and shout - that metre of space is literally a matter of life and death.
In a country that already respects cyclists this may work. In a country that does not it will likely get you to wake up in the infirmary (assuming you wake up at all) after being hit by someone in a hurry that assumed you were going to give their 2 ton vehicle the room it needs to pass you.
Taking a militant stance as a cyclist by using your fragile body as an obstacle for large steel objects moving at two to three times your speed is not a winning strategy.
If all they did is 'honk and shout' you'd be fine but some percentage will try to pass you anyway.
In my experience taking the lane stops people from assuming that they have space to pass except by changing lanes. Car drivers mostly take their cues from the cyclist. If you're cycling in the gutter it signals for car drivers to try to overtake you in the same lane. Why would you be in the gutter, except to yield the rest of your lane to cars?
There's not space for a car and a bicycle in the same lane. A car will always have to at least partially change lanes to overtake safely. You're better off being 2/3 of a lane over, so your head is in the same position as every other driver, and car drivers change lanes completely to pass as they would for any other vehicle.
Sure, that's the theory. But in practice some drivers will see it as an aggressive move to take 'their' lane. They are wrong, no doubt, but it doesn't pay off to go head-to-head with a bunch of bricks when you're an egg. Better to play it safe. Keep in mind that you're entirely unprotected.
The best way to stay safe in traffic with vehicles is to assume that (1) you're invisible (2) made of eggshells and (3) everybody behind you is out to get you.
If you're a young burly male you might get away with this but keep in mind that advocating this strategy for all cyclists (little old ladies, kids, etc) would definitely not work.
In a car centric society the last thing you want to do is to occupy a full lane sized for vehicles but going 1/3rd their speed. It is an open invitation for aggression against your person, plenty of people see you riding a bike already as such an invitation it certainly isn't going to get better by occupying 'their' lane.
> Sure, that's the theory. But in practice some drivers will see it as an aggressive move to take 'their' lane.
Having commuted by bicycle for almost a decade, this is the theory.
In practice, if you take the lane, virtually every driver will simply move over one lane to pass. Some consideration needs to be taken, of course — if doing this is causing traffic behind you, you should move over and let cars pass (or bike faster, or find an alternate route).
But doing this causes an immediate and unmistakable difference in the behavior of drivers. If you're driving in the gutter, you will get buzzed multiple times in a day as drivers attempt to squeeze by you in the lane. If you're claiming the lane, you might get buzzed once a month. No joke.
You are likely young and able to keep up with traffic. But not everybody is young and able to keep up with traffic. Older people will cycle slower (and are far more vulnerable if they should fall or get into an accident), and kids are going to get clobbered if they should occupy whole lanes.
Keep in mind that any advice that you give for a class of traffic should apply equally to all members of that class, not just to you.
And once a situation develops (such as causing traffic behind you) it is a little late to 'bike faster' (which may simply not be possible depending on age / wind / other conditions) or 'find an alternate route'.
Your comments suggest someone who doesn't do a lot of cycling in traffic. Correct me if I'm wrong. You say that young or old cyclists will get 'clobbered' - what do you mean by this? That a car approaching from the rear will see them riding assertively and simply plow in to them? If not that then what? That the cars will pass them closely as they are forced to move further in to the other lane? If that's your assertion then as others have stated, an assertive lane position is exactly what will save you in this situation - as you have the room on the inside to avoid the passing car.
> Your comments suggest someone who doesn't do a lot of cycling in traffic.
If that's what you got out of it then you're entirely wrong. I cycle a few thousand Km / year.
> Correct me if I'm wrong. You say that young or old cyclists will get 'clobbered' - what do you mean by this?
That the only way in which you can keep cyclists - of all ages - safe is by separating the various traffic streams. By forcible mixing them you are simply asking for trouble.
I'm trying hard to imagine Amsterdam cycling traffic without the separation of low speed and high speed traffic into different lanes and with people cycling like suggested above. The carnage would be terrible.
> That a car approaching from the rear will see them riding assertively and simply plow in to them?
Accidents are called accidents for a reason. That car approaching them from behind may not see them at all due to some momentary distraction. You can attempt to make yourself 'large' and 'visible' but you may still be missed and given the relative difference in strength and weight the outcome is predictable. The best way to stay safe as a cyclist is to stay out of the way of faster and heavy traffic.
> That the cars will pass them closely as they are forced to move further in to the other lane?
There may not even be another lane. And a fairly large number of motorists will not see that as a huge obstacle in trying to pass a cyclist that occupies a whole lane.
> If that's your assertion then as others have stated, an assertive lane position is exactly what will save you in this situation - as you have the room on the inside to avoid the passing car.
Well, in that case you didn't need to take up more room than you needed in the first place...
It's kind of weird how all this seems to center around having a 'safe' place to go to in case the assertive driving ('brave' was the word, why is it considered 'brave' if all it is is safe?) policy fails.
Better to recognize your fragility and play it safe from the get go.
The point is that the non-assertive position isn't 'playing it safe'. You're no more out of the flow of traffic unless the lane is extra wide, you're signalling to following cars that they are welcome to overtake, and you have robbed yourself of any margin for error when a car misjudges their pass and squeezes you in to a parked car or railing.
You're right that the assertive approach is no substitute for segregated infrastructure, but in an imperfect world of mixed-use roads, it's the best way to stay safe, and is the method taught and recommended by many bodies here in the UK.
Interesting. Here in NL we're taught to stay to the right hand side of the lane with about .5 meters of margin to the right relative to where the road surface ends. That way cars can overtake without possibly hitting a cyclist going the other way. Also it is strongly discouraged to cycle side-by side (but kids on the way to and from school routinely ignore that as do couples of all ages).
Is a nice example of what the map of a road with mixed cycle/car traffic would look like, absent any markings you'd still try to re-create that situation.
Cars can - and do - occupy the bike lane if they're moving, will slow down behind a bicyclist if there is oncoming traffic and will move around them when the road is clear from oncoming motorized traffic.
Everybody takes the amount of space they need, but no more than they need. To occupy a whole lane and to ignore the 'honking and shouting' (mentioned upthread) would be considered extremely rude and could easily get you in trouble because you're hindering faster traffic.
> Interesting. Here in NL we're taught to stay to the right hand side of the lane with about .5 meters of margin to the right relative to where the road surface ends.
Here in the US, we're taught to claim the lane. As I said earlier in the thread, I have tried both. The difference between the two is utterly unmistakable.
That said, you're right (again earlier in the thread) that I'm young and healthy and able to more or less keep up with city traffic. However, I did caveat my statement with the assertion that if you are causing a backup (due to traffic, no extra lane, or whatever), you should exercise courtesy and allow traffic to pass.
I'm not arguing at all that a cyclist going a leisurely 10mph on a two-lane, 45mph road should claim the lane and sit there oblivious to their surroundings. But even if they do, this cyclist is going to be (in my experience) far safer than if they were on the side of the road getting buzzed with a 35+mph difference between then and car traffic.
Your road design, markings, and customs are completely different.
In the US, a "bike lane" is a completely separate lane that cars are not supposed to drive in. Unfortunately they're usually retrofitted onto a road, making all the other lanes narrower. This exacerbates the standard situation:
Most roads have a double yellow line down the middle, and drivers are taught to never cross this. The general width of the standard lane is around enough for a larger vehicle and a bike to stand side-by-side, but not enough for comfortable passing. The lowest US traffic speed (outside of neighborhoods) is usually 35 mph (56kph), with the basic non-highway speed being around 40-45 mph (64-72 kph).
Most drivers, especially outside cities, expect that they will always be able to pass a bike regardless of any oncoming traffic. Drivers usually pass bikes by moving over a little and continuing at speed - the "good" ones will put their left tires a foot or two over the double yellow line, or possibly slow down to 70% of their speed if oncoming traffic. If the cyclist is in a bike lane or shoulder, the expectation is that a car does not have to account for them at all, since it's the bike's responsibility to continue out of the car's lane.
In the US context, I agree with the "take the lane" advice wholeheartedly. It makes cars have to account for you, and leaves your clear-lane buffer to your right where you can rely on it (as opposed to thinking its on your left, and suddenly swerving left due to damage, debris, or door). A driver yelling at you because they had to slow down and plan to deliberately pass you is much better than that same driver passing a foot away at full speed. And if a driver does plow into you from behind, they would have done the same thing had you been a few feet more to the right (unless you are actually riding on the shoulder, which is the general approach in rural areas where speeds are even higher and longer distances mean people space out more).
It was actually difficult finding a representative picture, since there are so many distinct types of area in the US. As you go into more planned areas, the neighborhoods become nicer (meant for mixed use), but the arteries become even worse and using them is necessary to go anywhere.
> > If that's your assertion then as others have stated, an assertive lane position is exactly what will save you in this situation - as you have the room on the inside to avoid the passing car.
> Well, in that case you didn't need to take up more room than you needed in the first place...
Are you seriously suggesting that rather than have a few-foot safety margin to their right, a cyclist should simply ride entirely in that space because they don't "need" it most of the time?
> But in practice some drivers will see it as an aggressive move to take 'their' lane. [...] In a car centric society the last thing you want to do is to occupy a full lane sized for vehicles but going 1/3rd their speed.
I think this overestimates the antagonism car drivers feel towards cyclists and underestimates the danger of simply not being noticed. When I cycled, I usually found that cars would give me as much space when overtaking as the space I left to the kerb. Cycling a meter from the kerb felt much safer than cycling a foot from the kerb. It forced drivers to make a positive decision to pass me.
I've had (full) beercans thrown at me in traffic in the USA just for cycling, I'd rather avoid playing dodgem with SUVs and pick-up trucks driven by people that feel that roads are not for sharing with vehicles other than cars. To boldly occupy a whole lane is something that might work in a few cities that have considerable bike traffic but I don't think that is a universal rule to live by as a cyclist.
I would still encourage everyone to stop, note the license plate number of the vehicle, and call police dispatch if anyone throws beer can at you. This is wrong at multiple levels and those people don't belong behind the wheel.
I am not fond of enforcement. I'd rather everyone just do the right thing because it is the right thing to do but some people clearly don't get it. Please report incidents like this.
Even in the parts of the US that have said in their laws that cyclists should occupy the whole lane when it's unsafe for them to do otherwise you'll find police giving them tickets because those police don't understand the law and don't understand the safety of it.
I commuted by bike for 10 years following these rules and never had an accident involving moving cars. I feel I always had good situational awareness and control of the situation even in complicated intersections. But I've been doored 3 times in that period, the last time being a very close call where a passenger in a car standing at a red light decided to get out, and so I decided to give up the bike. It feels ironic that out of all the cycling scenarios I could be in, I feel I have the least control/awareness with doors opening.
In retrospect I should have applied your 3 rules to car doors as well, and move at a leisurely walking speed when in door range.
The problem with the doors is that unlike all the other traffic scenarios you could be involved in they contain some surprise elements. For one it is stopped traffic (something that is normally safe) that suddenly becomes dangerous, also it can happen very suddenly. One moment a car is an immobile object, the next it throws a 3' obstacle directly into your path, and if you're close enough there simply isn't time to react. It's next to impossible to safely avoid a door if you are less than your stopping distance away from the door when it is thrown.
After all, taking into account that hitting a door is bad it is arguably less bad than trying to avoid it by swerving around it and getting clipped by a car behind you that doesn't respond in time (assuming it even has room and time enough to respond). Ironically, electric vehicles are more dangerous in this sense than combustion powered ones because they are extremely quiet.
Every time someone in my car is about to open any doors I automatically say 'careful for bikes and pedestrians'. Some people are annoyed by this but I still do it and it has already saved the situation more than once.
I'm currently recovering from a one-sided cycling accident so you can take that as proof that cycling is a dangerous activity, no matter what (right leg broken in 6 places, 2 chunks of steel and 13 screws later and I can re-learn how to walk, the accident happened Aug 7th, I'm already back on the bike and driving but it was a tough battle to get to this point this quick).
Taking the lane is precisely what allows you to make room for motorists. If a motorist makes a close pass when you've taken the lane, you just steer away from them and create some space. If a motorist makes a close pass when you're already hugging the kerb, you have nowhere to go. The best case scenario is that you'll crash into something without too many sharp edges.
Taking the lane doesn't mean acting as an immovable roadblock, it means using the full width of the lane to your advantage. You take the primary position in the centre of the lane by default. When you need to make space, you retreat to a secondary position closer to the kerb. As soon as it is safe to do so, you return to the primary position.
Unless you create the space you need, your safety is in the lap of the gods. A pothole, a piece of debris, a stray dog, an inattentive driver - if you're wedged in between the kerb and passing traffic, all you can do is slam on the brakes and pray. If you've created your own space, you have options.
There are more cyclists than young agile males. And your advice only applies to those. I'm trying to imagine a 60 year old lady on a bike applying this advice and fail to see any happy endings. And where I live old ladies on bikes are extremely common. Cycling advice should apply to all cyclists, not just to those giving the advice.
What do you mean? A 60 year old lady would be safer in the main traffic lanes than in the gutter, for exactly the same reasons as anyone else - more visible from behind, more control over when cars pass them, no risk of hitting a car door etc.
Well, where I live a few million of those elderly lady cyclists (including my mom, 73, makes 100 Km trips on her bike) have reached that age simply because they know not to mix themselves with traffic faster than theirs. Living in a country where traffic has been educated to give cyclists room most definitely helps but I'd hate to see our older generation decimated because they decided to seek 'the middle of the road' all of a sudden.
Cyclists stick to the right of the road exactly so cars can pass them safely.
Anyway, I'm out of this discussion, I find it very interesting that commenters from countries where cycling is decidedly unsafe are going to lecture those from countries where the predominant mode of transportation is the bicycle on safe cycling practices. If the US would adopt half the measures of what we consider normal here when it comes to roads and other facilities for cyclists and cyclists there would adopt half the practices of what we here consider safe cycling then you might have a chance at making cycling a viable means of transportation.
In the meantime, good luck with 'assertive cycling', occupy that lane, it's yours after all and make sure you wear that helmet, you'll need it.
> I find it very interesting that commenters from countries where cycling is decidedly unsafe are going to lecture those from countries where the predominant mode of transportation is the bicycle on safe cycling practices.
We are lecturing you on the optimal way to cycle in /our country/, not yours. Sure, your country might have a thing or five to teach us about infrastructure, laws, and cultural norms regarding bike traffic, but when it comes to what an /individual bicyclist/ should do given the situation here, we absolutely have a better idea than you do. It's like comparing driving in a easygoing city and driving in an aggressive city--sure, the driving in the former is on the whole safer than in the latter, but driving in an easygoing manner in an aggressive city is much more likely to get you into trouble than driving aggressively will.
> I find it very interesting that commenters from countries where cycling is decidedly unsafe are going to lecture those from countries where the predominant mode of transportation is the bicycle on safe cycling practices
This is exactly the point though. The guidelines that apply in the Netherlands are different to the guidelines in, say, the UK, precisely because the two countries have very different attitudes towards cycling. In the Netherlands you have an environment where cycling is extremely common, motorists are very used to sharing the roads and in fact most motorists are also cyclists themselves. This dramatically reduces the sort of us vs them conflicts between cyclists and motorists that seem so common in other countries. Different types of road user are seen more or less equally and show each other a level of respect that is just about unheard of elsewhere. In such an environment, hogging the lane seems unnecessarily aggressive because you simply don't need to do it.
In the UK, USA and just about everywhere else motorists are simply not used to driving close to cyclists. They don't know how much space to leave, they don't know how to pass them safely, it's actually socially acceptable to be aggressive towards cyclists but most of all, motorists are not on the lookout for cyclists, they are not expecting them. In this kind of environment the cyclist's number one priority is to make themselves seen and that's why being assertive is so important.
If you're in the middle of the lane by default the car behind you might be annoyed but at least they are likely to see you, and when you've been seen you can then move closer to the kerb to allow them to pass you safely. This puts the cyclist in control in a situation where they'd normally be at the mercy of motorists.
Whatever dude. You (evidently) know nothing about me or my country. Maybe your country has great numbers for safety of cyclists; good for you if so, but that doesn't mean everything you're doing is right, much less that it's so obviously right as to not even bear discussion.
Why are only agile young males capable of steering to the left and right while cycling? Surely other categories of cyclist are capable of doing this. If any cyclist, regardless of age or gender, is unable to plot a safe path and follow it avoiding obstacles then they are endangering themselves through their choice to cycle on a road.
Because 'slamming on the brakes' is not an option for older cyclists, slamming on the brakes (especially on a wet road) is a small step away from falling for an older cyclist. They can however coast to a stop while braking. They can't swerve either and they can be forgetful (forget to indicate, forget to look around them). And still they are perfectly valid cyclists and should not have to worry about arriving in one piece (or at all) because they are a little bit older.
Cyclists are perfectly safe on their own, it's up to the rest of the traffic to keep them safe and treat them as if they're made of glass.
Nobody should be travelling at a speed that is beyond their own ability to stop. Cycling at a speed beyond any individual's threshold for safely braking is putting themselves in danger. This applies equally across all levels of training, ability, age and gender.
People who cycle on roads expecting cars to take full responsibility for their safety are unlikely to last very long. A cyclist needs to operate within their own safety tolerances, rather than expect others to provide safety to them.
That's total nonsense. If someone throws a door in your way you're going to get hurt, no matter what, which was what started this whole discussion in the first place. See, 'safe braking' makes some assumptions about what other people will do and when they don't all bets are off. That's why we call them accidents to begin with. Cars turning without signaling, doors, swerving into the space occupied by a cyclist and so on. There is absolutely no way to protect against any or all of that.
If everybody would be traveling at their 'individual threshold for safe braking' there wouldn't be any cyclists at all.
> People who cycle on roads expecting cars to take full responsibility for their safety are unlikely to last very long.
> A cyclist needs to operate within their own safety tolerances, rather than expect others to provide safety to them.
And that attitude is the heart of the problem right there. Cyclists can expect other traffic, especially armored guided projectiles to take their fragility into account.
I sincerely hope you're not a driver. And if you are that you stay away from my country, it took a few decades to get rid of that attitude here and the number of accidents dropped in spite of more people in traffic, including kids and the elderly.
Cyclists absent other traffic have a very good safety record, as soon as you mix traffic at different speeds the situation gets dangerous especially if the stronger of the two parties expects cyclists to provide their own safety, by nature of being unprotected humans they need cooperation from other traffic.
Your argument was that poor old dears were hurtling along unable to stop in a reasonable length, only able to "gently coast to a stop". You are now arguing against your own point.
I do drive, and when I do so I rely on the experience of cycling 2500km last year on public roads. You seem to be relying on experience of arguing pointlessly for the sake of noise on the internet.
All cyclists should travelling at a speed where they are capable of breaking before potential hazards. If this includes unexpected cardoors then they should be travelling slowly enough to respond to the danger.
Why do you think they travel above a speed where they have adequate breaking time? Why do you think they should deserve this special treatment that is not afforded to other vehicles?
It's not about youth or agility, it's about skills and confidence. Young men innately have the confidence to ride assertively, but all cyclists should feel empowered to protect themselves.
The obvious example is fatal accidents involving large goods vehicles and cyclists in London. Women are vastly disproportionately likely to be involved in this class of accident, despite being under-represented in overall accident statistics. The leading theory is that women ride less assertively, putting them in dangerous situations at junctions. They're more likely to undertake and less likely to take the lane, jump red lights or bang on a window to make their presence known. They vanish into the large blind spots that surround large goods vehicles. In all likelihood, these cyclists are dying of politeness.
Essentially all those cases are cases where the other traffic is clearly at fault for not being situationally aware. It's akin to victim blaming to suggest that one would need to ride 'assertively' in order to survive in traffic.
All you should have to do to survive in traffic is to obey the traffic rules and the onus is on the rest of the traffic to give you the space you require in order to be safe. Anything less simply won't do.
If so I'd expect something a little bit more substantial to be presented as 'the leading theory', it's just a news paper article repeating a claim by a sports cyclist.
Lorries should be equipped with mirrors overseeing the area to the immediate side of the vehicle. And contrary to the statement in the article the safest place to be is not in front of a lorry but behind it, as a cyclist you should never ever go beside a lorry unless it is stopped and unlikely to move in the next minute.
After all, in order to get out in front of the truck you're going to have to be beside it anyway for a while (and how long will depend greatly on how fast you are moving, something a professional racing cyclist might over-estimate for the general population of cyclists.
Some of the most assertive cycling lane-takers I have witnessed were elderly ladies. Might be because they are old enough to have first hand experience with traffic not yet completely dominated by cars. Even after nominal mass motorization (median household has a car), it took a few decades to displace other modes of road usage to the point were drivers routinely assume that there can be no other vehicles on a regular road, effectively declaring public roads to limited access motorways by negligent threat.
Try Denver. Downtown has several main routes of terrifying bike lanes on the left side. No one looks left/back when they are taking a left turn, even when theres a full car sized lane with reflective dividers (they also frequently forego blinkers, but thats another issue). The worst is the people pulling into parking garages mid block.
Reminds me of the opening narration to the French movie La Haine. Approximately translated:
"This is the story of a man who fell from a 50-story building. The man, as he fell he kept repeating to reassure himself: 'So far so good, so far so good, so far so good.' But the important part is not the fall... it's the landing."
Also in Boulder, also a time I have to be hyper aware. I find the bike infrastructure in this city slightly... uneven. Sometimes, it's great, sometimes it's not very well planned out. I live off of 36 in N Boulder. It can be downright dangerous using the bike lane.
http://www.bicycling.com/culture/advocacy/2014-top-50-bike-f...