So I started commuting to work on my bicycle last month, today was my 8th commute. For the most part it goes great, but there's one intersection that bothers the hell out of me, and every time I come up to it, I keep thinking to myself "one of these days, someone is going to kill me here".

Here's an illustration of the lead-up to the intersection:



And a google maps link: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sour...03433&t=h&z=19

So I'm heading west, I'm the blue line. My intention is to go straight west without turning. The majority of the traffic, however, turns North, as the city to the West is pretty dead. The traffic is usually going at a very strong pace, typically 50+ mph. To make matters worse, the entire lead-up to the intersection is on an uphill grade, because the road goes under a rail overpass a few hundred feet prior to the intersection, so I'm typically going slower than normal, say about 10-12mph rather than 15-17mph.

Traffic is represented by the red line. They NEVER slow down and go behind me into the turn lane. They ALWAYS speed up and cut in front of me and it scares the crap out of me. I don't show this in the diagram, but this goes on up until about 30 feet from the intersection, so they're cutting in at the last possible moment, even though I'm to the left side of the solid turn lane marker, and they have far more than enough room to go behind me to my right.


Does anyone have any suggestions for how to handle this in a safer manner?

My first two commutes I wasn't quite ready to ride on the road, so I rode in the sidewalk. On the first one, I rode on the right hand sidewalk, so of course I wasn't able to actually cross the road in the crosswalk because the cars simply ignored me and kept speeding around the corner. So the next commute I decided to be "smart" and ride on the left sidewalk... which isn't smart for various other reasons (almost got T-boned multiple times, so I decided it was time to start VC).

Any help would be appreciated. The only other route I can take that avoids this and similar intersections adds 3 miles to my commute (bringing it to 22 miles), a time commitment I'm not willing to make at this point in time.