modernjess

Evidently drivers are now so jealous of our bike infrastructure that they prefer them to roads.

Thankfully no one was hurt. Remember you are not safe anywhere. Be careful out there people!

Driver takes a wrong turn onto a bike-ped bridge:
https://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/132743088.html

CliftonGK1

Why are there no gates or bollards to control motor vehicle traffic? At all the entrances to the local trails here, there are 3 or 4 large metal posts across the trail and the center 2 are removable (but locked to the base plate) so emergency vehicles or parks 'n' rec trucks have access but others can not.

tjspiel

Wow. The couple of entrances I know from the Eastern side of the bridge don't look much like roads. At one of them she'd have to take a left turn over a median that has a cut out wide enough for a couple of bikes, but not a car. If she was coming from the other direction it would be a really sharp right.

tjspiel

It's sort of like asking why there are no gates to block access to side walks. The approaches are asphalt with dotted lines on them but only wide enough for a single car and the access to them looks nothing like a typical intersection. The level of confusion this driver showed would lead me to conclude that she's not fit to drive. At least she wasn't at the time.

You do see posts blocking some trails but I could see them also being a hazard in busy areas like this one often is. They'd also make snow removal more of a hassle.

DGozinya

FTA - They could tell how many wrinkles she had and what shade of lipstick she was wearing but didn't get her plate number??

modernjess

So are you saying perhaps it's the bridge designers fault?

I don't think you get 40 feet of snow every year where you live and we could be buried any day now, so we have to build for it. Also you can't build infrastructure to accomodate every moronic eventuality, that's in theory why we have rules and driver's education to teach them. Trust me , If you were here you'd see that it takes an astonishing lack of awareness and driving sense accomplish this feat.

webtwo

"I don't want to drive. The more you drive, the less intelligent you become."

from the movie REPO MAN.

tjspiel

Cripes !

40 ft?

What part of Minneapolis do you live in ?

I do know what you mean though.

mulveyr 

We had something like that happen on the Erie Canal Towpath about two years ago.

Guy was leaving a public parking lot, which the towpath trail crosses, in the early morning hours. The paved trail is probably 8-10 feet wide, tops. Fully signed that no motor vehicles are allowed, some bollards are there, etc. There is no possible way anyone in their right mind can think it's a road. Plus, in the first few hundred feet, there are three places where you can turn off into other parking lots if by some chance you did manage to get on the path.

A week or so later he was found inside his car, in the canal, a mile from where he entered the path. Apparently, when he got to a gate that was fully across the path, he tried to K-turn and didn't quite make it, in spite of there being a huge amount of room for him to do so.

There's still a "memorial" someone put up where he went in. Every time I pass it, all I can think of is that's a damned good thing he took just himself out of the gene pool, and not some innocent walker or cyclist.

SlimRider

All I can say, is that sometimes after you get old, stuff happens!

SlimRider

Mulveyr says:

I wouldn't necessarily say it' a good thing..

It's all unfortunate and so very sad...

- Slim

prathmann

Agreed. We have lots of bollards and chicanes that cyclists have to go through on the trails and I've seen them cause a number of accidents. I can see where they might be useful in a few areas to keep motorists off the paths, but in general I think they cause far more harm than they prevent.

missjean

A couple of years ago I was driving north in the middle lane of a 3 lane highway. I noticed the cars up ahead putting on their bakes, and then noticed them pulling to either side. Then, I see a car coming towards me. I pull way over, half way into the breakdown lane and a gold Cadillac driven by an old man, with a blue baseball cap pulled firmly on his head, hands at 10 & 2, drives by, staring straight ahead.

tjspiel

Like a modern Moses.

tjspiel

After riding home through this area I have a theory as to what happened. It's true that no one fit to be driving a car would mistake any of the entrances to the path as something appropriate for automobile traffic (aside from an emergency/maintenance vehicle).

However, about 1/2 mile from the bridge there is a street that comes to a dead end right up against the Hiawatha Line trail (24th street). Normally there are barricades in place that would block anybody from getting on the path. Tonight though, I noticed the barricades were shoved slightly to the side to allow construction vehicles to get on the path. Since there's been some construction going on for a couple of months with lots of vehicles using this improvised entrance, there's no longer a clear boundary between the end of the street and the beginning of the path. It's just a bunch of packed dirt.

If the lady found herself on this street and saw a truck turn onto the path, she may have just thought is was some sort of narrow service road since there are no markings at all on this part of the trail. She'd be on it less than a block though before she must have realized something wasn't right. This is where my theory gets a little shaky. Before getting to the bridge she would have had to cross 26th street and continue on to what was clearly marked as a bike path.

I do have a second theory. She has a new iPhone and was blindly following the directions that Siri was providing.