Originally Posted by sbhikes
And they typically drive a lot closer to the right when there is no bike lane.
Sure, which is what sweeps away the debris in the part of the roadway where cyclists ride.
Of course, that's not where they drive when cyclists are riding there...
Originally Posted by sbhikes
Maybe if your bike lanes are full of debris you should either get tougher bikes that can handle it or complain to the city to keep them clean.
Debris collects in a matter of hours. No city with any significant number of bike lanes could afford weekly much less the daily or hourly sweeping that would be required to match the continuous sweeping we get
for free in WOLs from traffic.
Sweeping bike lanes is a waste of money. Erase the stripe and you get it for free.
Whether they're going 50 or 25 they can still kill me at these speeds. It is of no importance to me as long as they maintain control over their vehicles and obey the law as they pass.
While overtaking accidents are rare, of those that do occur during the day (or at night when the cyclist is properly equipped with lights and reflectors) where the motorist lost control are very rare. Much more common is the cyclist losing control, or swerving to avoid a hazard. It is to help avoid those much more (relatively) common types of overtaking collisions that motorists need to take care as they pass, which includes slowing down as well as moving left.
You should look before you swerve.
Of course you should, should you have that luxury. At 20 mph it's easy to come upon an obstacle that you overlooked and suddenly have to swerve for (not to mention the dog, child or ped who steps out into the street right in front of you suddenly, forgetting to look for bicycle traffic in the bike lane).
There should be no reason to swerve suddenly in a manner that causes danger for yourself and others.
I will look for sources to counter this point. I thought ocasional unexpected but necessary swerves was obvious in the nature of cycling (and motorcycling).
I think you are overstating the dangers of passing vehicles.
It's all relative. In order to defend bike lanes at all on the grounds of safety one must overstate the dangers of passing vehicles. But, since the dangers of overtaking are not
zero, you might as well look and see if bike lanes hurt or hinder in that respect. My whole point here is that
within that narrow focus, even on high speed/high volume roads, bike lanes make cycling more dangerous than it would be without the stripe (granted there is no data that proves it one way or the other).