Originally Posted by cryogenic
wow... I completely botched that one up... I stop to the far LEFT of the RIGHT turn lane.. ugh... it allows drivers to pull around me to the right and keeps me in position to go straight and makes my intentions known that I'm going straight. sorry about the confusion there.
That makes more sense, and describes the type of cycling I did before I learned vehicular cycling (VC) after reading and studying the book,
Effective Cycling. What I didn't fully understand is how I was still thinking and acting like a second class user of the road, and the consequences of doing that.
Going straight from the far left of the right turn lane is better than going straight from the right or center of it, but it's still going STRAIGHT from a RIGHT TURN
ONLY lane. The driving principle behind this type of riding is:
use the part of the roadway not being used by motorists.
A vehicular cyclist would stop in the straight lane, at the stop stripe if he is first, behind the last car if he is not. If that lane happens to be wide enough to safely share with cars side-by-side, then he may move up a few cars, but never go ahead of the first car and/or past the stop stripe.
By stopping "out of the way" you're less visible to motorists and they pay less attention to you than if you're stopped in a normal travel lane in line with other vehicles going in the same direction as you. By choosing an "out of the way" position that does not make things safer for you, especially if something out of the ordinary suddenly happens for some unpredictable reason.
There is also the side benefit of VC in avoiding puncture causing road rubble. Rubble tends to collect in little piles between the normal travel lines followed by motorists, which is where you're riding if you're following the "out of the way" principle, like riding across the intersection starting at the far right of the right turn only lane.
Also, there is one intersection in question where two lanes turn left, one goes straight, one goes right. In said case, I stop behind the first car in the leftmost right-turn lane and then venture towards the shoulder about 3/4 of the way through the turn. Cars don't seem to mind me doing this at all and they are given plenty of room to go around me. Also, for all intents and purposes, I can sprint through the intersection as fast as they would normally drive so it's not like I'm holding them up.
I think you meant two lanes turn RIGHT, one straight, and one LEFT. Anyway, that's what I'm assuming.
Again, you're in a right-turn lane (albeit the leftmost right-turn lane), yet you're going straight. If you're not turning right, you should not be in the right turn
only lane. That's why they call it the right-turn ONLY lane.
And I'm sure the
cars don't mind what you're doing at all -- though the
motorists may. It's not just semantics. Seriously, one of the differences between riding as a vehicular cyclist vs. the way most other experienced traffic cyclists ride is how you think of yourself and others on the road. VCists consider themselves as equal users of the road with users of motorized vehicles (who are motorists). The key difference is that one can
communicate with a motorist, while communication with a
car is not possible. Again, it's not just semantics, it's how you think about yourself and others. In particular, VCists tend to interact with motorists much more than non-VC cyclists do.
Serge