AlmostTrick

If 40 mph was the maximum average speed I would cycle in I couldn't leave my neighborhood. That's one thing I envy about city riders; lower speed differential.

genec

Sam, why is it you feel a need to limit yourself to such speed parameters?

JeffB502

In Maryland it's illegal to operate a bicycle on any roadway with a speed limit over 50mph...if that was the law here it would be impossible for me to get to work on my bicycle. I guess I would have to ride my bike to the start of the 55mph section of my commute, then walk my bike in that section?

https://www.sha.state.md.us/exploremd...bike_laws1.pdf
See page 10, section 21-1205.1

JusticeZero

The majority of roads I ride on are 55 mph posted, and my ride to work has car traffic averaging somewhere in the low to mid 60's. Furthermore, they often are striped 'no passing' and are two lane roads. My give-a-damn broke months ago.

wheel

Having a mirror helps and bright clothes.


I personally think Lane sharing should be done on a road by road. Getting drivers to come along would be hard with that.

I share a lane on 45mph roads. Think it could get worse yep try taking a lane on a busy 45mph with two travel lanes. Think it could worse yep, To top it off to the south of me I have a 45mph bike laned road, where every major intersection has me merge into 45 mph traffic to avoid a right turn lane.

Speed mismatch is the problem IMO

makeinu

Under such circumstances in MD it's illegal to operate on the "roadway", but it's permitted to operate on the "highway". The distinction being that the "roadway" consists of only the travel lanes while the "highway" includes the shoulder. Although there are a few exceptions, in practice most roads with speed limits over 50mph have wide shoulders to accommodate unusual vehicular circumstances such as pulling over, ambulances, bicycles, etc.

So for the 55mph section of your commute you would have to use the shoulder. But you wouldn't want to split lanes or, if you take the lane, be approached from behind by 60+mph traffic anyway, would you?

I mean, although being right/left hooked presents a greater danger than being rear ended in general, there must be a point of diminishing returns. As intersections become farther and farther apart and the speed differential becomes greater and greater the danger of being rear ended must increase and eventually surpass the danger of being right/left hooked. After all, in MD, cyclists are always encouraged to use the right most portion of the highway (shoulder being preferable to right side of travel lane being preferable to center of travel lane or even further leftward). The difference is that at speeds lower than 50mph it is at the discretion of perceived unsafe/hazardous conditions (for which the danger of right hook qualifies, in my opinion), but at speeds greater than 50mph the law deems that all doubt is removed, that riding a bicycle in the travel lane is unequivocally unsafe, and that no amount of discretion can be used to behave otherwise.

So I think the Maryland law has some logic to it. What do you guys think? I'm seriously asking because I live in MD and I can't decide whether it would be safer for me to obey the highway shoulder law or not. My life is definitely worth more than a few citations, but it may be the case that riding legally is actually the safest option in this case.

noisebeam

Wouldn't it be ideal if there was no restriction? Then the individual cyclist can made the decision for the safest place to ride on any given part of street at a given time with varied traffic volume, intersections, surface conditions, etc. The law means that one must instead muddle the decision with legality vs. safety. No law can determine the safest place to ride for every 50mph+ road. Only a thinking cyclist can.

Al

makeinu

Well, here's what I think:
1. Your question is one of legal philosophy and the legitimacy of political nannyism. While I agree that fewer laws are in general better, when it comes to getting from point A to point B, I'm generally not interested in changing the law as much as I am interested in arriving at my destination safely and quickly (which includes not taking a detour in bracelets to the local PO). When I want to make a political statement I will do so, but I like to be in control of my actions and strategic in my application of political activism in proportion to covering my own ass. That being said, the first step is to understand my choice of riding position outside of political concerns.
2. Traffic laws are rife with such political nannyism anyway. Seat belt laws, drunk driving laws (in my opinion motorists should be held accountable for the damage they incur and the danger they present to the world, regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in. If a person isn't fit to drive then it's their responsibility not to and the reasons behind it are irrelevant), crash test requirements, etc, etc. So this isn't a problem unique to cycling.
3. Consider this: If the traffic speed were near infinite and there were no intersections then there would be no danger of being right hooked and a large danger of being rear ended. The fact is that the physical speed limit of cyclists is lower than the physical speed limit of motorized traffic. So there will always be a point where speed and road design can alone be used to determine the absolutely safest course of action regardless of all other factors. In such circumstances, acknowledging alternative safety assessments (by, for example, allowing the operator of the vehicle to make their own determination) can only lead to acknowledgment of unsafe practices. So I believe that the law can, at times, determine the safest place to ride (even if it might not be right to force such safety on people who don't want it).

In any case, at the present time the law is what it is and, given the penalties, has little bearing on my decision to ride. LIke I said, my life is worth more than a few citations. If it's not safe to take the shoulder on a 50+mph MD road then no threat short of death will persuade me to do so. However, the question remains, is taking the shoulder on roads with speed limits of 50+mph the safest course of action? Have there been any studies which investigate the safety of cyclist lane position as a function of speed (nominal or actual)?

noisebeam

There is a big difference in 'nanny' seat belt laws vs. telling a cyclist they must always ride in position that may not always be safest.

Are there times you don't put on a seat belt because you know it is a safer option?

As to roadway position, the cyclist can decide. Just because there is a wide shoulder and 50mph traffic does not mean that remaining static on that shoulder is safest. Just because one can ride in the outer lane does not mean that it is safest place to ride in when there is very close approaching 50mph traffic.

Al

makeinu

Yes, for example, when driving at low speeds in a bad neighborhood the danger of not being able to exit the driver's seat as quickly as possible is much greater than the danger of being thrown through the windshield. Obviously being strapped in is not always the safest option. Do you think it would be safer to have a mandatory seat belt on your bicycle? Of course not. A seat belt mitigates a particular risk that just so happens to dominate in many instances of automotive travel, but may not necessarily dominate in all instances.

As a matter of physical fact vehicles cannot collide if they remain in spatially distinct nonintersecting lanes. In cases where traffic is traveling in such lanes with no reason to change from one to another, the danger of vehicles in separate lanes crossing paths is by definition an unforeseen risk. Since the aforementioned path crossing is a prerequisite for collision, the risk of lane crossing is an upper bound to the risk of collision. If we show that the risk of collision in an alternative case is more likely than the risk of lane crossing then it is certainly also more likely than the risk of collision for vehicles traveling in spatially distinct nonintersecting lanes.

Towards this end, consider the case of vehicles traveling in tandem in the same lane. In this case the risk of collision corresponds to the risk of one vehicle rear ending another. Assuming a bounded sight distance and a bounded braking ability and assuming that no vehicle tries to intentionally collide with another, collision is guaranteed whenever speed differential exceeds the maximum braking ability within the maximum sight distance. So increasing the speed differential beyond a certain point guarantees collision (which cannot be said of crossing lanes whose width and straightness scale with the speed limit to prevent an increase in inadvertent lane crossing with increasing speed).

Thus, in the limit as speed differentials are increased and the possibility of lane intersection eliminated, the risk of collision for vehicles traveling in tandem surpasses the risk of collision for vehicles traveling in separate lanes...or something to that effect. Of course, this may not hold for a nonzero number of lane intersections, a noninfinite speed differential, multiple vehicles, etc, etc, but I suspect that a statistical study would generate substantial evidence to suggest that it is, indeed, unsafe for cyclists to ride outside the shoulder above a certain speed, contrary to the intuition of any particular cyclists.

However, I may be wrong. The relative risk may only be true in the limit and may not be satisfied under the particular number of miles per hour and particular number of lane crossings/exits/intersections/etc present in actual roads. Moreover, even if a study showed the risk for a population of cyclists, it may not hold for a particular cyclist applying particular riding techniques.

In any case it's better than nothing. Let me ask you this: Supposing there is a statistical study supporting my hypothesis for a population of cyclists, do you have any reason to believe that a particular cycling technique would give a different result? You may very well believe that your personal cycling abilities are superior enough to evade all kinds of danger and you may very well have every right to act on your beliefs. However, that's still a far cry from providing the kind of reason or evidence which might be appropriately applied to decisions of public policy (not to say that current public policy is based on hard reason and/or evidence, but it should be).

genec

But also consider that with such a law in place, there is motivation for those that allocate funding for roads to ensure that such funding includes shoulders for higher speed roads.

John Forester

In 1985 Dorris and I were touring England, and the map route to Portsmouth Navy Yard (to see the Victory) was A4. OK. A4 turned out to be a depressed 8 or 10 lane freeway, but was not prohibited to cyclists because it was not a Euro route. To hear each other, we had to get within inches from mouth to ear and then shout.

Bekologist

wow. highways were loud 28 years ago. impressive, jhon.

besides a useless anecdote, any opinions on what speed vehicular cycling and lane sharing becomes onerous to the majority of bicyclists, jhon?

and what about the vehicular cyclists that will not share lanes on higher speed roads? vehicular cycling falls far short.

is a 7 times speed differential too great for effective lane sharing of moderately wide lanes, john?
how wide does a lane need to be designed for lane bicyclists to share the lane safely with traffic moving 70-80 miles an hour? is 14 feet a wide enough lane for a bike moving 8mph to share with traffic moving 80?

john. any opinions? I think vc fails miserably if even vehicular bicyclists are driven off moderately high speed roads.

John Forester

I have spent a considerable part of my cycling life riding on rural highways with speed limits of 65, or even without posted limits. So what? That speed is attained only under a limited range of conditions, and those conditions are also when the cyclist has least to fear. When traffic builds up, speeds are lowered, and overtaking is less frequently possible. When the road is curvy and sight distances are short, motorists generally go slower. The one that I worry about is the impatient motorist who is at the tail of a train of vehicles traveling in the direction opposite to the cyclist. That driver needs a clear distance of half a mile or so, and he fails to see the cyclist at that distance. I set one of these up for filming in Bicycling Safely on the Road. And we had one, up near Julian in the foothills behind San Diego, about three years ago.

Oh, yes, those who fail to slow down are the motorcyclists. Cal 35, along the top of the spine of the San Francisco Peninsula, was notorious for this, with a history of dead motorcyclists for every curve, it seemed. But, by and large, motorcyclists find that overtaking cyclists is an easy task.

The question has bee raised as to whether one style of cycling would be much safer than another under the ranges of conditions suggested. I have no opinion on that. I think that I ride near the edge of the roadway more frequently than some have described for themselves. Indeed, on a narrow 2-lane rural highway under the conditions in which one would anticipate 65 mph motoring, I think that I would not take the lane. When I am preparing for a left turn on such a highway, I make one move, after checking and yielding, from near the edge of the roadway to the centerline.

Bekologist

chestbeater. and a worthless incomplete analysis of traffic dynamics on high speed roads.


so even john wouldn't take the lane on highway speed roads. VERY interesting.

Bekologist

vehicular cycling fails even the high and mightily egomaniacal john foresrter!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

john would hug the edge on narrow highway speed roads!!



WHAT A PIECE OF WORK! HILARIOUS!

JeffB502

There's no shoulder (or a non-paved shoulder that would be dangerous to ride on) on most of the 55mph 2 lane roads I ride. Obviously if there's a paved shoulder on a rural road I'll ride on it, but that's frequently not an option. Usually on the 55mph section of my commute I take the right tire track or center of the lane, and find that much more comfortable than riding on the fog line and having high speed traffic trying to squeeze between me and oncoming high speed traffic. This type of riding condition is my main reason for using 2 Dinotte taillights and always wearing high vis clothing. I also try to avoid riding into the setting sun, but if I absolutely have to I'll look in my rear view mirror more often and be prepared to bail onto the unpaved/rutted dirt shoulder and/or the ditch next to it.

Before I started using the Dinottes (but I was wearing a high vis vest) I experienced one old woman in a Cadillac that almost didn't see me. She was coming up behind me, sun was high in the sky and not causing visibility problems, she was probably traveling at or near the speed limit. I was riding in the center of the lane and noticed she wasn't slowing from the distance people normally slow from, and wasn't moving left (there was no oncoming traffic). I continued watching the vehicle, and had a "point of no return" in mind where if she got within a certain distance without braking or moving left I was going to swerve off the road to the right. Right as she got to that point and I was moving to the right, she slammed on the brakes and got slowed down to my speed before getting up to me (I was on the fog line by that point, which is the edge of the roadway...there's a sharp drop off from the roadway to the dirt shoulder that I really didn't want to test). She then proceeded to pass me slowly, avoiding eye contact.

FWIW, on a day with heavy headwinds when I had just started commuting and was doing less than 8mph I tried riding on the dirt shoulder mentioned above. It looks fairly smooth when driving by in a car at 55mph, but it has a large number of 45 degree ruts made by tractor tires when the shoulder is muddy, which are then filled in by loose sand/dirt when everything dries up. Riding along I found these ruts (and the many other hazards) attempting to wrench the handlebars from my hands and/or throw me off the bike, and decided it was safer to get back on the paved roadway.

I wouldn't mind a law in California requiring cyclists to use a well-paved shoulder on 55+mph roads as long as the shoulder was at least 4 feet wide (minimum width for a rural bike lane where no curb is present per California MUTCD) and maintained properly, and has the same rules for leaving the shoulder as for leaving a bike lane (unsafe conditions, making a left turn, etc.). However, if there is no paved shoulder available, the cyclist should be permitted to ride on the roadway no matter what the speed limit. Maybe Maryland has 45 or 50mph speed limits where California would make it 55, or a law requiring shoulders on all roads with speed limits above 50mph?

JusticeZero

Exactly what I do.. I do often take the right tire track, however, when the shoulder contains debris, snow, or is absent. My commute today was almost half in the tire track.

Bekologist

no, no, justice zero, you've got it wrong - riding in the right tire track IS taking the lane, a position john emphatically states he WOULD NOT TAKE! John forestor advocates curbhugging on high speed roads because he too realizes the inadequacies of vc on high speed narrow roads!!!!

john hugs the curb! Don't take the lane!

Don't you see that? A serious case of motorist superiority disorder!

JusticeZero

I don't see how flaming John Forester contributes to the discussion. You clearly disagree, and no doubt have some reasons to disagree, but I do not care. I care about, in this case, learning where people are riding on the sorts of roads I deal with regularly. Please take your animosity elsewhere.

LCI_Brian

I don't think you ever reach the point of guaranteed collision, because drivers would have to make the choice to drive faster than their sight distance in order to do so. In reality, most drivers will adjust their speed for the conditions based on their skills and reflexes - even if only for reasons of self-preservation.

Impaired and reckless drivers are of course an exception. But public policy should be based on addressing their behavior, rather than using these drivers as justification for restricting cyclists from the road.

Now if there is a sudden change in weather conditions from dry to inclement, for example, it's possible there's a transient where your hypothesis could be true, at least until drivers have a chance to adjust their speed accordingly.

I am most concerned about high speed roads in foggy conditions. I've heard of studies indicating that motorists "feel" they are going slower than they actually are, so they are more likely to drive faster than their sight distance in foggy conditions. Multi-car pileups in the "tule fog" in California's Central Valley are anecdotal evidence of this.

If a particular cycling technique gave higher cyclist visibility and therefore faster detection by faster drivers compared to another technique, then it could give a different result.

In any event, it seems that public policy is driven most by the desire to minimize motorist delay due to cyclists (although cyclist safety may be used as the "justification").

LCI_Brian

Rather than enact such a law, it would be simpler to designate the shoulder as a bike lane, provided it met the bike lane standards.

JeffB502

I agree that a mandatory shoulder use law is not necessary. On the other hand, a mandatory "all 4 foot rural shoulders shall now be designated as bike lanes" law sounds great, as long as the funding is put in place to maintain the shoulders to the higher "bike lane" standards of cleanliness, smoothness, etc., install bike lane signs and/or pavement markings, re-paint lines at intersections, and perform all other necessary changes to make the shoulders conform to the MUTCD standards for rural bike lanes.

Perhaps this hasn't been done on many rural shoulders simply because the agencies in charge of county roads (and the residents of the unincorporated areas) don't want to spend money on bike lanes, and also because once a shoulder is officially designated a bike lane more money would have to be spent to keep it in compliance with the standards.

John Forester

The King's Fool was allowed to make jokes, even foolish ones. You, Bekologist, are the Foolish King, able to produce nothing but absurdity.

Why take the lane when there is no need to do so? Doing so wouldn't do good for anybody.

Bekologist

hugging the white stripe in narrow lanes and highway speed roads is a dangerous road position, john.

i find it so telling vehicular cycling fails you as a bicyclist.

heads up everybody!! john forester says hug the curb on high speed roads!!

THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!!