Be careful when riding in segregated bike lanes

[fiamme red]

Very sad to hear about the death of this young woman. She was hit by a truck that turned left into her at a "mixing zone." :(

http://thevillager.com/2017/04/13/cyclist-struck-by-truck-on-first-ave-dies-of-her-injuries/

[Clean39T]

Sad, and I'm not victim-blaming here, but...

I sometimes feel like bike infrastructure can lull you into a false sense of security - unless you're 100% off street, you're still in the potential path of a drunk/oblivious/texting jackhole with a loaded gun...

Something we should all keep in mind. Eternal vigilance and all that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[fogrider]

The thing about being in the right on a bike is that it does you no good if there going to be an impact. when it comes to bike vs anything else, the cyclist always out on the bad end.

[R3awak3n]

There are a lot of times that I rather not ride on the bike lane. Actually most of the times. Not even the mixing lanes (those are the worst) but even dedicated bike lanes are terrible (not all but a lot). You get pedestrians, other cyclists that don't know what they are doing and cars trying to cut you when they turn (hard to see you).

I feel like I have to pay more attention when you are on a bike lane than on a lane without one. It definitely gives people a false sense of security like Clean39T said.

[fuzzalow]

Sorry to read of this happening. RIP.

Everytime this happens at large it is a reminder to be vigilant. Always gotta stay positive by not leaving fate to random but by tilting the odds in your favor to critique and revise your own technique if necessary. One need not be involved and survive an accident in order to analyse, revise and improve the approach in what and how you ride. Run through the situation in your head, make a plan for the scenario.

I have ridden the 1st Avenue bike lane many times. I know the neigborhood. In this case of using a separated bike lane on 1st Avenue, or any separated bike lane, IMO the rider must head check over the right shoulder to identify & gauge the threat, if any, in the leftmost lane that might turn left cutting across the rider's path. Which basically means you headcheck every other block while riding up 1st.

The reason the rider must headcheck is because the separated bike lane involves an additional ~4 foot-wide curbed partition between the traffic lane and the bike lane. That extended distance changes the sight picture as seen by the vehicle driver - the rider in the bike lane is now too far left to become part of his normal sight picture in driving the vehicle. So for many hooking a left turn which, as long as there are no pedestrians in the crosswalk, he can go. And at early hours when there are less pedestrians, the driver need only lightly tap the brakes because he thinks he is clear. He will not see the rider in the bike lane because the normal way he drives a vehicle does not require him to rotate his head farther left to account for the additional field of vision needed to see a rider positioned further left travelling in a separated bike lane.

A rider must know the threats in their traffic environment. Identify and analyze the threats. Every ride brings new data to consider, if it hasn't been considered already. Every close-call must initiate a self review of yourself & the incident for what happened and what can be done better.

I am not blaming the victim here. I am using a tragic event to get what good we can get out of it happening to think about and better ourselves and improve the rate & odds of our survivability out there. Look at how much I've written on this. I care enough about this topic that I don't care if somebody thinks I'm a blowhard about this or dismisses what I wrote as TLDR in internet shorthand.

Be careful out there.

[martl]

Very sad to hear about the death of this young woman. She was hit by a truck that turned left into her at a "mixing zone." :(

http://thevillager.com/2017/04/13/cyclist-struck-by-truck-on-first-ave-dies-of-her-injuries/

According to the article, the victim was riding northbound on 1st avenue. Google streetview shows there is a segregated cycle lane on one side (the west) of 1st Avenue, which means she was forced to ride left of the traffic.

I will never get how such a bike lane design can be considered a safe thing.

It has been known and well researched that is one of the most dangerous places to be in an urban environment, because one is *not* where the "routine checks" of any other traffic participant "scans" for others - an older analysis of traffic accidents showed a 9x higher risk of getting hit on such bike lanes.

Unfortunately, the current consensus seems to be to put "perceived" safety over factual safety. Bollards don't make your ride safer. Getting seen does. Being in places where one is expected does. And no, this is not a thing i say because i'm an adrenalin junkie who wants do excercise his death wish at the cost of women, children and cute kittens.

[R3awak3n]

I have been taking 1st ave bike lane for the past month and a half since I am working in chelsea for a minute. Just took it yesterday and am going to take it in a few hours. Its a terrible bike lane. Every other block you have cars cutting you and they are coming from behind and a lot dont care and look for bikes. Like fuzzalow said you have to keep looking over your shoulder. Add to that the fact that tona of people commute using that lane and are all in a race to see who gets to work first.

Now there is construction on a couple blocks so it forces you out of the bike lane and into traffic, terrible.

They need to figure out a way to have cars stop before crossing left. Be it a light or a stop sign so that when bikes have a green light it means they can just go since this is for the most part a protected bike lane. It makes no sense



Dont get me started on the 2nd ave bike lane...

[OtayBW]

Very sorry to hear of this fatality. IMO, it points up the problem of 'mixing zones' that typically exist with many of the 'cycletracks' and segregated bike lanes in general.

[jumphigher]

Definitely stay vigilant everyone. :(

[fiamme red]

The bike lane zealots at Transportation Alternatives (whose motto should be George Wallace's "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever") never learn. After a cyclist was critically injured by a truck turning right at the intersection of 43rd Ave and 39th St in Sunnyside, Queens, T.A. is calling for "protected" lanes on 43rd Ave. Hello? Didn't we just see from the First Avenue tragedy that segregated bike lanes don't protect cyclists at intersections?

http://sunnysidepost.com/van-bramer-calls-on-dot-for-safety-measures-at-deadly-sunnyside-intersection

“It has become evident from yet another crash at 43rd Ave and 39th Street in Sunnyside that we need swift action to protect cyclists who use the key commuting corridor on 43rd Ave,” said Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives.

“Now that Mayor de Blasio has made an additional budgetary commitment to street redesigns, the City needs to move quickly to fix dangerous corridors like 43rd Avenue with protected bike lanes and intersection safety improvements that meet a Vision Zero design standard.”I don't understand how anyone can honestly claim that putting parked cars in the middle of the street rather than along the curb makes cyclists safer at intersections. :crap:

[fuzzalow]

I don't get involved with bicycling politics and I don't have an opinion on what the best approach is on bike lane travel re: segregated or non-seg'd.

I see it largely as achieving seg bike lanes as being emblematic of political legitimacy by virtue of the political power in securing & retaining land rights in the scarcity of NYC public space. In that sense, even if the traffic safety & flow issues are not best served in seg'd bike lanes, there is a justifiable strategy for insistence on seg'd lanes as a recognition of a bicycling public that is viable, real and must be served.

NYC power politics can often summed up as a land grab with the winners getting access or considerations denied to others or tilted to their own unique purposes.

For the broad main stream public, it is easy to understand a preference to seg'd bike lanes. The average CitiBike user is no more comfortable with taxicabs 1 foot from their elbow than the average cyclist is comfortable riding a downhill sweeper elbow-to-elbow in an industrial park criterium.

In bike politics, I'm happy to take the victories in any and whatever way we can get 'em.

[galgal]

Really sad to hear of the woman's death. Ridden/ride the 1st Ave/2nd Ave bike lanes a lot. As Fuzzalow says, you have to be aware of traffic that can't easily see you and will be making left turns across the bike lanes. It's a rare ride around NYC when I don't have a close call of some sort. Which goes into the memory bank, for future eventualities. And you still have to expect the unexpected. Last week on the 1st Ave bike lane heard noise behind me and looked over shoulder to see a Harley barreling down bike lane, one of the local Hell's Angels I would guess, that passed on my right and then made sharp left inches from me into the intersection.
The segregated bike lanes are far from perfect, but I'll take them. It would be utterly foolish to take them as really safe though. As NYC riders know, even the Hudson River bike path has memorial ghost bikes at places where bicyclists were killed.

[htwoopup]

As was noted above being in a place to be seen, being seen, and the cyclist looking for dangers are all necessary. There is another thing that makes me nuts about the segregated bike lines on First (don't even start about Second), Ninth, etc as has been said is that they don't expect to see you and don't look for you and can't see you.

Quite simply, as a cyclist I can't see them turning until I am practically on top of them and almost T boning them or they me. This is even worse when there is a UPS truck double parked next to the "barrier" of parked cars. I fear this is only getting worse as more and more folks do the Citibike thing (another danger zone are the Citibike stations with people milling about and pulling out bikes, leaving bikes in the stand, etc without looking at the other cycle traffic).

Geesh, I sound like a grumpy old guy. Didn't mean it to come off that way. Just very saddened by another senseless death and very worried that many more will happen while folks think they made it better for cyclists so they don't have to re-think the methodology.

[asindc]

The thing about being in the right on a bike is that it does you no good if there going to be an impact. when it comes to bike vs anything else, the cyclist always out on the bad end.

I was just saying this earlier today.

[fuzzalow]

The thing about being in the right on a bike is that it does you no good if there going to be an impact. when it comes to bike vs anything else, the cyclist always out on the bad end.

I was just saying this earlier today.

I agree with the very important goal that underlies what the two gentlemen above are getting at: being right or wrong doesn't matter because the prime directive is always to do whatever is neccesary to stay alive.

I am only talking about the riding here; the political and traffic engineering discussions are important too but those objectives & goals are for another venue and in a completely different environment. The fact that, for example, anyone may dislike seg'd bike lanes & mixing zones must never change the approach of riding them. Because it is the reality here and now of what we've got and we either deal with it or ignore the realities to our own peril.

BTW, that was the point of my long-ish post about vehicles left-turning through seg'd bike lanes: a sense of entitlement to your bike lane space or any expectation of cautious, much less courteous driving, is an incorrect approach that can get you killed. Any driver in that similar situation might cut a rider down like he was intending to kill 'em. But instead, the driver was just driving as he normally does and the seg'd bike lane means he really didn't see the rider - to expect any driver to magically have more skill is not something to bet your life on. As a rider: trust nobody. As a rider: go only by what you can see. As a rider: think for two when you ride for both what you gotta do and in awareness & anticipation for the stupid $h1t others may do. Handling this is not a burden, it is a skill.

As riders, we do what we gotta do. It is not an inconvenience and an imposition to headcheck every other block riding up 1st Avenue. It is not an intentional act of stupidity that seg'd bike lanes were implemented to make it dangerous and to piss off riders who think seg'd bike lanes are a bad idea. It is not an entitlement that the bicycling environment is not held as inviolate and sacrosanct by pedestrians, double-parked cars, snow piles, etc etc etc. Deal with what we've got while we continue on other fronts to make things better. To make things better we have got to stay alive to keep pushing for what we want. To make things better we have got to stay alive so we can come up with the ideas that help solve our problems.

Complaining isn't bad if it helps identify an issue or a problem. But there's got to be a follow up after that otherwise it's just bitchin' and bitchin' is just too easy. Sorry about prattling on like this.

Be careful out there.