Bikedued

I almost was hit by some tool in a red jag while riding down A1A in Ft. Lauderdale. I was minding my own business IN the bike lane, when this guy throws his signal on, and pulls halfway into the bike lane to barely wait for crossing pedestrians. The few in his path cleared, and here he goes, forcing me to choose between hitting his ten year old four door jag, or the pedestrians he barely waited for. Here I go, thumb down on the Airzound for a loooong blast, which still didn't stop the turn until I was passing the right front corner of the car. At this point I figure his vision and attention finally kicked in, and I hit neither the pedestrians or his car. After a nice HEY!!! followed by a healthy JACKASS!! I continued on through the intersection unmangled.
This was not a right turn lane that bisected the bike lane, but a regular traffic lane at a light to a smaller sie street. The light was green, and the walk signal on.....

My question is, who was in the wrong here? Me, or the Jag driving tool? Please see the humour in the name calling. I am joking, since I'm not in the ER, and happily typing away on my computer. The bike would have not been a big loss, since it was a modified, ugly, and fenderless 61 typhoon with a Shimano 3 speed. However I like my body and don't want it underneath a 4000lb Jag.

sbhikes

Personally, I would have let him go and passed him on his left rather than insist on passing him on his right.

Bikedued

That's all nice, but you can't pass on the left when you're already beside the car, not too mention the other bumper to bumper cars behind him. How would I get to his left side in that situation?

genec

Not quite sure where all the players were in this situation, but in CA anyone making turn (which I gather the guy in the Jag did) is supposed to make that turn from as close to the curb as possible.

However, if he cut you off, he did not properly merge into the lane first as he might have done if you were in a motor vehicle lane.

On the other hand since you were not turning (I believe) you should not have been close to the curb at the corner.

So it sounds as though you were in the wrong place AND the driver failed to yield to anyone in the BL before making his turn.

So everyone was at fault.

Of course others will come along and tell you the BL was at fault and therefore no one knew what to do.

Can you describe more the street, the speeds and the construction of the BL?

sbhikes

Slow down or stop. He'll pass and then you can go around him on his left or continue on your way if he's completed the turn.

You should never pass moving traffic on their right if there's a chance they might make a right turn. It doesn't matter about the bike lane. That is why a lot of people get out of the bike lane near intersections. To avoid this very situation. Cars are supposed to merge into the bike lane before turning. So, either merge left out of the bike lane at intersections or prepare to slow or stop to accomodate cars turning right.

noisebeam

Sbhikes advice is right on. Once you get used to only and always passing on the left you will find that right hooks become the least of your concerns while riding.

Al

Brian Ratliff

Two issues. There is a failure of legal reponsibility on the part of the driver. He must yield to a cyclist in a bike lane. There is no doubt.

Unfortunately, the law does not protect you, personally, against a 4000 lb Jag which broke the law. The defense is to leave the bike lane slightly (a foot or two to the left of the line will do IMO) when approaching the intersection and make it clear that nobody who is turning right is allowed to pass you. Do this for every intersection you encounter.

If the vehicle still tries to pass, either accelerate and move further left (giving the guy a nasty look helps sometimes too) or brake and let him go. I prefer to accelerate. A driver trying to make a right hook will have to slow to your speed anyway, and accelerating makes it clear that they were in the wrong.

Helmet Head

Neither you nor the driver is at fault here.

The problem is the bike lane, and the cyclo-segregationist thinking accepted in our culture, including by the majority of cyclists, as the norm.

According to that thinking, there is no right answer at intersections, the most common location for collisions. It's anarchy, where no one is right, and everyone is wrong.

CA law makes a valiant effort at trying to rectify the problem, and seasoned cyclists like Diane, Al, Gene and Brian have learned the tricks of self-preservation, which are contrary to the guidance provided by the bike lane.

There is no point at getting angry at the driver, he is only doing what any rational and reasonable person might have done in the same situation. Like it or not, the onus is on you to avoid what is happening.

Philosophy aside, if you and the motorist are both turning right, you should be both traveling in the bike lane, one behind the other. To prevent motorists from right-hooking me, I often move further left, outside of the bike lane, even when I'm turning right, though still signalling with my right hand. The law says that I need to be as close to the curb as is "practicable" (if I'm turning right), but if a certain distance is so close that it encourages passing on my left and right hooks, that's not "practicable". Finding the sweet spot takes a bit of work at first, but it will get natural after a while. Using a rear-view mirror to observe how subtle changes in your lane position affects the driver behind you can be very helpful in this regard.

If he's turning right, but you're going straight, then you need to be outside of the bike lane, far enough left to let right-turners like him pass you on the right, and you need to get out long before you the reach intersection when, as in this case, it is often too late to get out.

Bikedued

See what I can do here.

A1A is a four lane beach front road, with a 35mph(I believe) speed limit. Some of the right turns have the right turn lane bisecting the BL at an angle, with the BL staying in the same location. This intersection was not one of those. On the intersection in question, there's no dedicated right turn lane. The car has to stop and block one of the two car lanes, while waiting for pedestrians etc, while executing a right turn. The bike lane is about 3-4 foot wide, and continues all the way up to the light, then is resumed on the other side. The street where the light is, is a smaller two lane suburban style street. I hope this is clear enough?

Applehead57

Who's right is irrelevant. The bike loses.
I always assume the cager is an idiot and not paying attention.
I don't mind giving up ROW.
I'll rather be riding my Gunnar instead of a wheelchair.

genec

told ya.

Bikedued

Next time I'll try swerving out of the BL in front of a line of cars moving 35(in reality 40-45). I'll let you know how it comes out if I'm unharmed, and you'll get the hospital bill if I am. Sound fair?

noisebeam

They key is you don't swerve out at last minute. You prepare ahead of time knowing the intersection is there, always keep an eye on traffic and signal and move out into lane before the right turn. I do this all the time is 45-50mph traffic.

Al

Helmet Head

Actually, the real problem is cyclo-segregationist thinking, of which the bike lane is only a manifestation. That is, the same thing could easily happen, and does, at intersections without bike lanes. That's because everyone in our culture, cyclists and motorists, think cyclists should be segregated, and operate accordingly.

When a driver approaches an intersection where he sees a cyclist, his instinct in our culture is not to integrate with the cyclist, and get behind him, but to segregate him, and move around him. So he passes him, and then slows down to make his right turn.

Meanwhile the cyclist who agrees with the motorist that cyclists should be segregated, continues riding near the curb, even though he's going straight, even though he's catching up with and passing on the right the motorist who just passed him on his left and is slowing down to turn...

Bike lanes contribute to and encourage this kind of thinking, but they are not the root cause. The root cause is cyclo-segregationist thinking. It is the belief that cyclists and motorists don't mix, that cyclists should be totally separated from motorists, that cyclists should have "their own space", and that some separation is better than none. It's this thinking that makes the integrated cycling that is required for safe travel at intersections like this in traffic impossible to execute.

Interpreting the advice given in this thread by at least four experienced cyclists as "swerving" out in front of traffic is another manifestation of cyclo-segregationist thinking so prevalent not only in our society in general, but within the cycling community itself.

sggoodri

The automobile driver should do the following when executing a right turn in this location:

1. Look to the right and behind, and merge fully into the rightmost lane, in this case a bike lane, as close to the curb as practicable, taking care not to cut off anyone currently in that lane.

2. Slow and stop if necessary to allow pedestrians to clear the crosswalk area, while blocking the rightmost portion of the roadway. Any drivers including cyclists who wish to travel straight should merge left and pass to the left.

3. Proceed when pedestrian traffic is clear.

It's annoying when a driver passes you and then slows down and stops in your lane because his destination is blocked, but traffic law cannot reasonably prevent this if you are traveling slower than the speed limit. The law can only prohibit a dangerously close movement in front of you. But in the case you describe, the driver failed to merge all the way to the curb/gutter area before stopping at the crosswalk. Attempting to turn right from a position left of through traffic is what caused the problem. This is illegal in most states.

Bike lane striping discourages right-turning motorists from merging properly toward the curb in preparation of a right turn. Segregation by vehicle type is inherently flawed in this situation; it is impossible to compensate for it entirely with education. These right hooks also happen on wide outside lanes, but they are somewhat less common, and cyclists might feel less entitled to try to pass on the right. When I encounter a driver trying to turn right from my left, I move behind him, even if I must back up to do so.

-Steve Goodridge

Brian Ratliff

It is more like a merge into traffic, not a swerve. If you are a foot or two to the left of the bike lane, you will not be impeding those drivers going straight. The person turning right will be slowing and blocking traffic for you if the need arises to move further to the left.

The advice sounds weird, I know, but it works quite smoothly. It is always worse thinking about it in front of a computer than actually doing it out on a bike.

Bikedued

I see now how all these threads blow up into 5-6 pages. I should have known better than to ask. ROW is ROW. Does the bike lane overrule a vehicle right turn or not? A simple question.

sggoodri

Also, if drivers are preparing to turn right at sharp 90 degree intersection, they and the drivers following them are traveling slowly enough that it's pretty easy to merge.

I find that if I stay a few feet out from the gutter at intersections, the few drivers who still try to right-hook me are easy to avoid hitting, because the faster drivers must turn a wider radius that leaves me more asphalt for evasive maneuvers, and the slower drivers (who are less likely to try to pass anyway) give me more time to respond and stop or slip behind them.

Helmet Head

The question is simple, the answer is not.
You find a clearcut answer about ROW at intersections with respect to BL usage in CA law, for example. Go ahead, make my day. And good luck.

sggoodri

At intersections, the bike-only prohibition is void for right-turning drivers. The rules revert to the ordinary rules of the road for multi-lane streets. A right turning driver must move all he way into the right lane before turning right. And lane changes must be done safely.

Imagine if you were driving a car in the outside through lane, and a driver in the inside through lane tried to turn right from the inside lane near the centerline, across your path. That's illegal.

You have no special right of way because you are on a bike in the bike lane. You are simply a vehicle operator in a lane, and other drivers should merge carefully into your lane when they need to use it.

-Steve Goodridge

Bikedued

Thanks Steve, what I wanted to know. I wish he had merged over into the bike lane, at least I would have had time to do something, since I would have been behind him, and not beside.

Make your day?? LMAO, that's a good one dood! HH, just so you know, I skip over your posts for the most part. On this thread or any. Have a nice day;-) (((unsubscribed)))

HiYoSilver

Bikedued,

Intersections are extremely difficult to understand without a picture. It doesn't have to be fancy, but such an image would help focus the discussion.

Bottom line, who cares who had the ROW, what is critical is not what is right legally but rather what is right safest riding behavior. First, you passed. You're not in ER. Second, giving you a letter grade is not possible until we can see the intersection. Also include 1. your position prior to the light change, 2. your position and the jag's position as you entered the intersection.

genec

Treat the BL like any other lane, and it makes all kinds of sense... a driver will not otherwise go from a left lane across a right lane to make a turn without looking, and merging, and or giving way to traffic in that lane, prior to making the turn.

MassBiker

I have two answers for you.

1) The motorist was at fault.
2) Welcome to life in the modern world.

Here's part 1:
---------------
FLORIDA STATUTES
TITLE XXIII
MOTOR VEHICLES
CHAPTER 316
STATE UNIFORM TRAFFIC CONTROL

316.151 Required position and method of turning at intersections.--

(1) The driver of a vehicle intending to turn at an intersection shall do so as follows:

(a) Right turn.--Both the approach for a right turn and a right turn shall be made as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway.

https://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/...316/ch0316.htm
---------------

So what's a roadway? It's the traveled portion of the road. That's between the paved shoulders, if the road has paved shoulders; or curb-to-curb if there are curbs with no shoulder; or the entire paved area, if the road has no shoulders and no curbs.

I found no provisions for "bike lanes" or "bicycle lanes" in this section of the Florida statutes. One might then conclude that these are just specialized-use lanes, like high-occupancy vehicle lanes, or bus lanes.

In the case of those specialized lanes, when they're striped to the right of general travel lanes, it looks like 316.151 will still apply. That is to say, if there's a bus lane running down the right edge of the road, you *don't* want non-bus traffic swinging across the bus lane at every intersection. You want the ordinary lane traffic to merge into the bus lane, and turn right from it.

Thus, I think that the motorist made an illegal right turn by failing to turn from the bike lane.

And now -- part 2: livin' in the modern world, where few know what they're doing, and fewer still take responsibility for their actions. Which means that cyclists have to be better drivers than the drivers are!

Notwithstanding the blame I placed above, bike lanes are confusing to motorists. Many motorists believe that bike lanes exist primarily to keep bicycles out of motorists' way. They also tend to swing right turns around them, rather than merge in, because they've been mistaught that they should always stay out of the bike lane. The Florida laws don't appear to deal with right-turns at bike lanes, either. And so I believe bike lanes contribute to right-hook incidents like yours.

Bicyclists are also sometimes confused. Many buy into the bike-lane safety myth, believing that a stripe of paint keeps them safe, but as you've found out, it's often just not so.

The fact is, no-one has ever shown that painting a bike lane stripe on a road makes that road safe for bicyclists. Cyclists are better off following ordinary road rules, and in this case, that means that one *avoid at all times* the inside of a right-turning vehicle. Unfortunately, this means that the cyclist will have to leave the bike lane and merge into the travel lane, and probably farther out into the travel lane since the motorist isn't merging right into the bike lane.

Regardless, cyclists are best off ignoring the bike lane when going into an intersection. Instead, follow the basic intersection rule, which has two parts. The rule is:

----------
When approaching an intersection, move to the lane, and the part of the lane, that best serves your destination.

a) If a lane that serves your destination serves only that destination (such as a left-turn only lane, or a straight-only lane), ride to the right of that lane.

b) If a lane serves more than one destination, ride to the part of the lane that best serves your destination. So if you're going straight through an intersection in a lane that allows right turns, you should merge into the lane and toward the center of it as you approach, moving left around right-turners in front of you.
----------

Hope this helps!

genec

Thanks... and right on!