bobwysiwyg

I understand the "idea." I just don't think it workable under all circumstances.

genec

Probably not, but the flip side is we don't have to design all roads like speedways and plaster up a bunch of signs to tell motorists what they should already know.

My favorite useless signs are "stop ahead" and the one that tells motorists to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk... DUH. But these exist... why? Why must we constantly tell drivers what they should already be prepared to do?

mr_bill

The "stop ahead" usually are placed where visibility of the "stop sign" is compromised in some way.

But tthey are also placed where there is a history of crashes at the stop sign, simply to cut down on the SMIDSTSS (Sorry Mate I Didn't See The Stop Sign) defense.

Worse are the blinky 24/7/365 stop signs because there have been so many crashes at an intersection, and who wouldn't want to force neighbors to close their window blinds or curtains because people in cars can't be bothered to stop?

The "yield to pedestrians in crosswalk" are placed where there are people who are *NOT* yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, or where there are people who have STRUCK pedestrians in crosswalks, or worse, were people have KILLED pedestrians in crosswalks.

All those signs are signs of how bad it is out there.

-mr. bill

genec

Exactly... drivers not doing their jobs... do you really think signs are gonna help the uninitiated?

bobwysiwyg

Better than doing nothing.

mr_bill

The advanced warning signs are useful. Better would be to reduce speeds appropriate to the sight distances or road conditions. But we worship at the mantle of 85 percentile speed, letting the rogue 15% set our speeds.

Recent story.

One traffic engineer around here recently had enough. A "thickly settled" (which in Massachusetts default to 30 mph unless posted otherwise) no passing zone but straight and wide two lane road once upon a time was unposted.

Then posted at 85% speed (35 mph), then after a while the 85% speed moved up to 40 mph, so posted 40 mph. The recent speed study put the 85% speed at >45 mph!

Traffic engineer says enough is enough, it's a neighborhood street, pedestrians, people on bicycles, lots of school bus stops. There's a state highway a few hundred feet away at 45 mph, but with red lights.

The traffic engineer uses some ENGINEERING JUDGEMENT and posted it at 30 mph - where it belonged.

The 85% percentile speed since changing it back to 30 mph? 30 mph.

Seems that about 15% of the people on the road were people using it as a bypass to the state highway to avoid the red lights. They traveled over 45 mph on the state highway, and by golly, they weren't going to slow down on the "bypass."

A road where I was constantly tailgaited at 40 mph (even had one guy who repeatedly illegally passed over the double yellow line at >50 mph) has reverted to a neighborhood street. The rogue 15% are now back to racing each other on the state highway at >60 mph to the next stop light. Good for them. May the state police have a good time with them.

-mr. bill

work4bike

I'm kind of skeptical of that, see how it works in other places:

And it's becoming a bigger problem there -- Traffic: Vietnam?s Silent Killer | The Diplomat

canklecat

Eenteresting. Seriously.

Here in parts of Foat Wuth, Texas, some then-new mid-priced housing communities in the 1970s began with circuitous roads to discourage bypassers. I'm betting the lag in finished Loop 820 was part of the reason. I know lots of folks, including my grandparents, preferred the old familiar routes that were once the main highways, but over time had become more like boulevards surrounded by old businesses. Heavier traffic would make new housing developments tempting for shortcuts and bypasses, unless designed to thwart speeders.

Seems to have worked. I can't even use most of those neighborhoods as bike routes because they're so convoluted.

And in my former rural hometown north of here the longest straight two-lane road was finally broken up with stop signs and a strictly enforced 20 mph speed limit, after too many drivers kept pushing things to 50 mph. It was discouraging plans to develop once-vacant farm and pasture land into new housing.

canklecat

Incidentally, and at least peripherally relevant here, I saw something this morning that made me realize why some drivers lump all cyclists into the rogue category.

The once-quiet suburban route I take toward a favorite rural ride is once again busy since the school year started. And because either suburban parents won't allow their precious ones onto a bus, or there is no bus service to these elementary schools (I'm not sure which), there are now dozens, possibly hundreds, of cars competing for space, each carrying one or two kidlets.

Usually I at least brake at stop signs and track stand anyway, with a few exceptions (fast approach behind me with cars coming). But with the school traffic I come to a complete stop and put a foot down at least briefly before pedaling onward. Especially with cars coming from all four directions at four way stops.

This morning I'm returning along this school route and notice another cyclist behind me about 30 yards. I'm riding in the right wheel track of this two-lane road with solid double yellow line dividers (vehicles may pass safely when the way is clear, but should pull completely into the next lane -- I ride in the wheel track to be sure they do).

I notice the cyclist in my mirror is hugging the fog line. I may do that on some roads, but not this one. The fog line is about six inches from a drop into a foot-deep earth ditch/culvert. I prefer a little wiggle room, so I ride the rightmost wheel track.

There's a four-way stop intersection coming up. I figure the cyclist behind me is ultra-cautious, since he's hugging the fog line. As I approach the intersection there are cars bumper to bumper approaching us. A few interspersed cars are passing us in our lane. I don't see any cars in the perpendicular approaches. I notice the first vehicle coming toward the stop sign is one of the school district's vehicles. I want to make a good impression as a conscientious cyclists around the precious little kidlets, so I pull over to the bike lane (which only began just at the entrance to that intersection), and come to a complete stop, putting a foot down.

I'm anticipating the cyclist behind me will do the same.

Nope. He blows right through the intersection. Well, 12-15 mph "blowing through".

Kinda took me aback.

Yeah, I know, it's a PITA to stop and go. Hard to get that momentum up again. And vehicles approaching from behind make me cautious too. But there was a bike lane beginning at this intersection. Instead, he zipped over around me, after having hugged the fog line, and rolled on through.

I usually just shrug that stuff off. But I do kinda understand why some drivers give us the stink eye.

Milton Keynes

Around here they've been putting a lot of these up:


Which isn't a bad thing, but motorists should already know to give cyclists plenty of room.

scott967

Or, they don't want CPS on their butts for child neglect/endangerment.

Or, he has good bike-handling skills so isn't bothered by riding on the fog line, and doesn't freak out if a car passes by less than 3 feet.

scott s.
.

prathmann

Looks like an admonition for cyclists to leave 3' of clearance when passing slower-moving cars on the left. Is that a common problem in your area?

Milton Keynes

I've often wondered why they put the car & bike backwards. Maybe the signs came from England.

Maelochs

The sign mimics what the driver sees out his windshield. I guarantee you if they reversed it drivers would be trying to squeeze by on the right.

The whole deal is to simplify things visually so the brain doesn't have to process much---most drivers would have to pull over and ponder if the sign showed an accurate representation of a rear view.

gear64

Here's my favorite buthead story. I'm coming down a secondary that's extremely backed up due to incident on highway (I'm driving in this story). After having waited a few light cycles myself, I'm still several cars back when a cyclist comes rolling down the sidewalk. He gets to the light just as it turns green, veers in front of the first car and takes the lane up a hill! Still plenty of sidewalk. I would have tolerated the turtle pace up the hill if he had waited in line, but if the sidewalk was adequate to line jump for a mile, it was good enough to climb the hill.

prathmann

Whether in England or the US, the only time a driver would normally be on the same side of the car as the bicyclist is when the cyclist is passing the car rather than the other way around. Unless you have a car imported from England (with right-hand drive) being driven in the US, or vice versa.

I suppose it could be on a one-way street with the cyclist staying on the far left side. But it seems like an odd way to make the illustration.

genec

Nice touch... where signs did matter.

Had a similar situation in San Diego... it was an older road, in a well established neighborhood... so difficult to modify or reroute. Well, statistically it had a high rate of collisions, just in one area where a bit of an S curve existed... the problem was drivers were driving well over the posted 35MPH, and tended to lose control at the S curve area and swerve over into oncoming traffic causing a high collision rate.

Well signs were not going to work, so the engineer devised a solution... one that involved paint. He put the 4 lane road (2 lanes either way) on a road diet... so now there are two lanes either way, and a bike lane and a bit of buffer (dead space to take up the remains of the once existing 2nd lane). His reasoning was that in any pack of motorists, at least one driver will be at the speed limit. It worked... his single lane lowered the speed of traffic in the area approaching that dangerous S curve. How well it worked statistically can only be measured over time.

Cyclists both won and lost... as they gained a bike lane up a steep road that previously did not have a bike lane... but that BL is part of the buffer zone... so now cyclists sort of act like human orange cones... used to slow MV traffic. And the BL... well it goes nowhere. The BL only exists for that short area that was once a trouble spot, and then cyclists are left to "negotiate" the rest of the original 4 lane trek on their own. Frankly, it would be nice if "cyclists may use full lane" signs were also posted, but San Diego still thinks "Share the Road" is the only sign available... and even those signs don't exist in that location.

So cyclists helped to contain the wayward motorists, but then are left to deal with the same errant motorists on the rest of this 4 lane boulevard. Uh, thanks???

genec

Just outta curiosity... if you stick around and just watch the cars at that intersection... how many actually come to a complete stop?

Yet is is the cyclists that are "the issue."

genec

No, I don't think so... a bunch of signs just add to distracting visual clutter...

CB HI

Your story implies that even with going slower up the hill, you were still eventually going to reach the gridlock again and neither save or loose any time. So in the words of Hillary, "what difference does it make".

canklecat

I haven't seen any cars that didn't stop at that intersection, even before school started again. And especially now that school has started. I've ridden through that neighborhood a few times on recently school day mornings and every driver seems cooperative with the traffic monitors and unmanned stop sign intersections.

That cyclist I mentioned is the only person I've seen blow through the intersection. And it wouldn't have been a big deal if not for the volume of traffic at that moment. There were cars in our lane. There were cars in the oncoming lane -- stacked up several deep. Every car was coming to a complete stop.

But you never really know when a car in the oncoming stopped lane will turn left across your path. That's why it's foolish for a cyclist to blow through a four way stop intersection if there's other traffic around.

If there's no traffic, no big deal, just roll through. There are a couple of stop signs I brake-slow and roll through on my usual routes, as long as there's no oncoming or cross traffic. But I'll often slow and roll through when there's a car behind me because I've been hit from behind several times years ago by cars that "didn't see me" at intersections -- both on a motorcycle and bike.

So, sure, there are exceptions to every situation. The one I described above wasn't an appropriate occasion to blow through a stop sign.

gear64

You are correct in absolute terms, but part of the theme of this thread is perceptions towards cyclists. It's not the fact that he was going slow in general. It's that he used the sidewalk to bypass dozens of cars, then decided he would switch to the street while the sidewalk was still available, causing many cars that otherwise would have made the light to wait another cycle. Maybe the gridlock continued, maybe it didn't, but to folks trying to get home there's hope that things free up some beyond that light. Still a dick move in my opinion. Cyclists want the road, but not the rules. He's fortunate not to have gotten hit by the lead car. From that car's perspective he came from nowhere.

genec

So is it a "dick move" when motorists block the bike lane so they can eventually make a right turn on red? No, I don't mean move into the BL to make a legal right turn, I mean cut into the BL well ahead of the turn, so they can pass cars on the right several hundred yards before the actual turn, and in doing so, block the BL from cyclists?

This was a regular move by motorists on Genesee Road south bound approaching Governor Drive in San Diego. The MV traffic always backed up the hill to the last cross street, Nobel. A cyclist moving at only 8MPH would cover that mile in minutes, whereas a motorist could take about a half an hour... motorists would often move right into the BL long before the turn at Governor and block the BL from cyclists.

Doohickie

Doohickie

I have exactly the opposite view. With a little experience and a little study of the maps, I find Fort Worth residential streets to be very good for bicycle navigation.