Those construction trucks are pretty wide that they take up almost the whole path up there. A cyclist would be foolish not to at least slow down and be prepared to dismount at a moment's notice. That's what I did. I slowed down to barely above track stand when going through there. It's just too narrow and dangerous. You also can't see what's coming at you from behind that truck. :eek:

I'm sorry to read about that cyclist having that accident. There's no way of knowing what caused it. Just be careful crossing that bridge and be doubly careful when that construction is going on.

How about a sign for the door of the pickup truck that says "look both ways before opening"? The Post Office has similar signs in their mail delivery vehicles around here that say backing instead of opening - what if he had opened the door in front of construction equipment? He'd have a lot more explaining to do in that case.

You misread the sentence. I will edit it to make it clearer.

"WHAT IF"

What is the point of that statement, since nobody has a clue what happened. What is the basis for the assumption that the accident was in any way caused by the construction company? For all you know, they do have signs like those. It wouldn't be the first time I have seen safety managers go to such ridiculous extremes. I particularly find the ones in the postal vehicles to be totally absurd, since that is a very basic rule of the road.

If he had opened his door in front of construction equipment, you can be sure that there would be some question to what happened and who was at fault, just as there will be in this case, if that is what happened. Contrary to what the masses believe, in this day and age, there are very few safety questions that don't turn into a witch hunt. I could go into the details, but just know that construction companies are insured, as well as municipal maintenance departments, and everyone else who gets work on a public works project. If your insurance rating is poor, you don't work, and if you create an issue that causes the insurance rate to go up, or the corporate safety rate to go down, you will not be working long.

I'm sure that they have been instructed not to. That certainly would be my instructions to them, with additiona instructions on what to do if someone was creating a serious hazard for themselves or others. They are most likely trying to get along with the minimum of complaints, and having you and all of your peers calling corporate because you felt that someone had treated you poorly would not reflect well on the company.

You seem hell bent to fault them no matter what they do. Exactly what can the worker out there on the bridge do that would make you happy. Please remember that they are not the ones in charge, and are doing the best they can in a situation they would much rather not have to deal with. If you asked them, to a man, they would rather not have to share the work zone with you. As much as you are inconvenienced for the 5 minutes it takes you to cross thru, they have to deal with that for the entire day. Would you care to trade places with them?

And for the record, I have seen many construction zones that drivers are "paced" thru by, you guessed it "pace vehicles". I don't see how the context of your question has changed with the editing. Motorists are expected to follow certain rules, pedestrians are expected to follow certain rules, and cyclists are expected to follow certain rules. Obviously, in many cases, the rules are different. Maybe they just dont expect all cyclists to ride thru at a pedestrian pace. maybe they have quite a lot of experience in the matter and know that many cyclists will completely ignore a speed limit rule, just as many seem to be quite willing to ignore the dismount sign.

Just so you now, the sign isn't a suggestion, and carries the same legal authority as a street or highway sign. The fact that they do nto enforce it does not mean they can't. As I said, it wasn't the construction worker in the field who decided to put it there. In every case i have been involved with, traffic control is dictated and approved by the state or municipal authority who is responsible. Construction companies and workers are not allowed to just post any old thing they feel like, and your continued rant on the subject just demonstrates your ignorance on the subject. If you don't like the sign, take it up with the folks who mandated it. You might be surprised to learn who they are.

You could make the same argument for reduced speed limits in construction zones.

My guess is that your balance is better on your feet at 5 mph is better than on your bike at 5 mph. It's also pretty easy to see who's complying and who is not from an enforcement and liability standpoint. If you were on your bike and got hit, whose to say whether you were going 5 mph or 10 mph?

+1:thumb:

I couldn't have said it better myself. :thumb:

What you do when you see the trucks on the Q'boro bike path is you use some common sense and proceed with caution. It's that simple.

My point is that its likely that it took the actions of two people to create this accident.

And just what magical sense gives you that opinion. There are absolutely no details to support one theory or another.

It is very likely that a construction worker was totally at fault. It is equally likely that it was entirely the cyclists fault. Then again, it may have been unrelated to either, possibly a collision with another cyclist or a pedestrian, or a blown tire, or any number of other possibilities. It is a congested area, with a lot going on.

Placing the blame anywhere is pointless, especially since there are no facts to support any opinion.

What is obvious, is that there was an unrecognized hazard, and the people passing thru may or not be able to appreciate the various hazards in a construction site, while the workers are pretty familiar with them from working in that environment. That is the point of signs. To protect the people who are unfamiliar, as well as protecting the other people in the site, including the construction workers.

Someone in this case most likely didn't follow safety protocol. Maybe the rider, maybe not. What this thread has shown is that some folks are quite willing to ignore them. I can't help the rider who was injured, and am not interested in placing blame. It is pointless. What I can do is to offer up my experience in the hopes that there isn't a future occurrence. Everyone is responsible for their own safety first and foremost, but there are those who are trained and entrusted with protecting people in certain situations. You can't ignore their efforts to keep you safe, and then blame them when it doesn't work out. That only leaves one recourse for them to follow, Ban non workers from the site.

dahoyle, FYI, when there's work being done on the Williamsburg Bridge with cyclist still on the worked-on path, a pair of workers are in place to manage bike traffic. Nobody is asked to dismount. Why not on the QBB? NYers are not going to take a dismount sign seriously in this spot. If the concern really is safety, rather than the CYA illusion of safety associated with a sign that will be ignored, why not? Too expensive?

+1,000

I really can't say. What I can say is that it is almost certainly not the workers decision. They are laborers, skilled tradesmen and such. Those decisions are made by some safety manager in some municipal office, and it is almost certainly a CYA issue from their point of view. Lawyers and bean counters and such.

It is naive to think that the construction workers have any authority in the matter. It is still a legal matter and enforcement is still a law enforcement issue. About the most they could do is request a police presence on the site to ensure that enforcement is maintained.

If you choose to ignore their sign, you are most certainly covering their asses if you have an incident. You might be able to win some sort of settlement if you are injured, but it will almost certainly be much harder than if you were following the letter of the law.

I won't speculate on what might be different between the two work zones, but someone obviously made a determination in that regard. As I said, these things don't happen arbitrarily, regardless of how it might seem to you. It may be as simple as two different people determining the hazards differently. You really don't seem to appreciate the degree that safety is scrutinized in construction, especially when there is a potential for lawsuits from the general public. There are very few cowboys left in the business, but there are entire staff sections that are watching every action and trying to protect the company from liability. Those little signs that everyone ignores is part of that effort.

Of course it is hard to know what happened in this accident. But if the cyclist was going fast enough to break his frame I think we all know who has the majority of the blame.

On the other hand there is endless construction vehicles and workers on QBB bike path. Other near by bridges you rarely see them. The path is clearly supposed to be a path and construction access zone. Could they use a lane of traffic instead? I think yes.

+1.

I don't know what happened in this particular crash, but will gladly speculate that the cyclist could have avoided it with a little caution.

I'm not defending the situation, but it seems to me the bicyclists and the construction workers generally have a pretty cavalier attitude towards one another's safety on that bridge. For all the talk here of "cyclists dismount" signs, I have never seen them on that bridge, except for the ones permanently placed at the east end. Perhaps that's because I typically cross the bridge at about 4:15 on weekday afternoons; after quitting time?

But anyway, it's happened to me that I'm riding along on the bicycle part of the lane --which is maybe six feet wide?-- and a construction worker steps out in front of me from behind a bridge support or something. This when there are no signs, no orange cones, no trucks parked in the lane; indeed no sign that construction is going on. If I were going insanely fast, there would be no avoiding a collision.

What do I mean by "insanely fast"? I don't know, but there are no speed limit signs, and Queensboro Bridge is the NYC equivalent of a big hill. You put some effort into getting up it, and you can go pretty fast coming down. We are cyclists, many of us enjoy a nice downhill, and for many NYC commuters it's the only opportunity to get up to 25+ mph in our whole ride. Does this excuse us? No, of course not. It's pretty dangerous. But there it is. We do these things.

Yeah 25 is a bit fast on that narrow bike path. I took the road bike today and found myself leaning on the brakes a lot of the way down to keep things slow enough (not so much an issue with the more upright-position folder).

Curiously, today there were two pick-up trucks but not a workman in sight. I wonder if that means anything?

Speaking of bridges, on the Pulaski Bridge (which I cross follow the QBB), I'm consistently impressed with the intelligence and sense of the cyclists who ride across it. It's really surprising to see so many cyclists behaving correctly.

I can tell you that is almost certainly not going to happen. They will close the bike path first. Sometimes you have to work in closed down traffic lanes, but it is the last option.

The bridge is the construction zone, so that is where they are. The Bike path is the part of the bridge that creates the least amount of hazard to the least amount of people, so that is where they are staged. It isn't going to change because it inconveniences some people. It is the nature of construction.

I understand the frustration, but it is simply a fact of life, on a city bridge, or interstate thru the mountains. Maintenance has to be done, and people are inconvenienced.

The answer is for everyone to be a little flexible, a little forgiving, and very careful when you encounter it in whatever form it might be.

The idea that they will close traffic lanes to prevent inconveniencing cyclists is pretty much absurd. The number of people who would be inconvenienced would rise a hundred fold, and there is nothing safe for anyone about a closed traffic lane, and impatient motorists. Would the cyclists be safer? Certainly, but it would place every other person on that bridge at an increased risk, and in that case, not only is the risk higher, the consequences of an accident are much higher.

Okay, this is all true, but you seem to be missing a couple points.

First, the one lane of MUP in question is both the only pedestrian crossing, and the only bicycle crossing, between Queens and Manhattan. If they close that path, anyone who wants to get from Queens to Manhattan, or vice versa, will need to use car, subway, or bus. Cars on the same bridge have what, nine lanes? The one MUP lane carries 100% of the bicycle traffic and 100% of the pedestrian traffic. One car lane carries about 11% of car traffic.

Second, the construction in question has been pretty much constant for over 20 years now.

I'm not saying it is the best solution for everyone concerned. Obviously it isn't the best approach for cyclists and pedestrians. Not even saying I wouldn't be just as upset if it was in my path every day. I'm just saying that it isn't likely to change, for exactly the reasons I posted, and that if I was the one who had to make the decision, it is probably the same approach I would take.

As to it going on for 20 years, that is also not unusual. The bridge is what, 100 years old, and neglected for the first 80 of those. The truth of the matter is that it is a full time job to keep it up and safe, and should probably be replaced, but that isn't going to happen for a large number of reasons.

Maybe they need to construct another bike lane....:lol:

Common sense.

Wow, common sense tells you what happened in a situation that you have absolutely no information about, and have narrowed the situation down to who was involved, and who was at fault. It couldn't possibly have been another cyclist, or pedestrian, or just the single cyclist not responding appropriately to a hazard or riding to fast in a congested area or any number of other possibilities. He was obviously assaulted by a construction worker with a tire iron. No other possibility exists that is equally plausible.

Let me get this straight, there was nobody on the bridge except the cyclist and the maintenance workers? Is that what you are saying?

You know, I have tried to be civil about this, but people like you who are so quick to place blame with no information whatsoever, should be forced to lead your lives without other people to build and maintain all the things you take for granted. Is it so hard to just say that you don't know what happened, and that everyone should exercise a heightened degree of caution while passing thru.

It's just so much easier to place blame, tho isn't it? I hope they close the damn bike lane after this. That is the only way to guarantee safety.

dahoyle, for you. The path will not be closed. It would be a tremendous inconvenience for a lot of people. I imagine that they'd sooner convert one of the south lanes back to a bike/ped path (as it used to be some years ago).

Now, for the REAL story. Today I stopped to ask one of the workers what had happened two days ago. We're all wrong! The guy (too?) cheerfully told me that what happened. Nice guy, BTW. Anyhow, the truth of the matter would be funny if nobody got hurt: the cyclist was rear-ended by a rollerblader going too fast. I swear that's what he told me, and I believe he was being sincere. I don't remember seeing the offending rollerblader, unless of course the man down I saw WAS the rollerblader and I didn't see the cyclist.

Edit: submitted too early.

I'm not sure how that makes me wrong, since I pointed out numerous times that none of us was there, and that it could have been something totally unrelated to the cyclist or the construction, and could easily have been some other person using the bridge. I think a rollerblader qualifies as a pedestrian.

In any case, I hope that neither party was seriously injured, and that everyone just takes it as a lesson to be careful, OF EVERYONE, ALL THE TIME.

My only objection to the direction the thread turned was that everyone was so quick to blame the construction workers, without anything to base it on. They were there because they have to feed their families, same as all of us. Yes, they (we) are a constant hassle to everyone that we inconvenience, but it isn't by choice, and even construction workers go out of their way not to cause any more inconvenience than necessary. Certainly, there are bad apples among them, just as there are in every segment of the populace. Judging them all based on the actions of a few is not fair, as most of them are just hard working folks trying to make a living in a demanding and difficult, and sometimes dangerous occupation. You can be sure that there have been many more workers killed and injured by the populace at large (mostly motorists) than the other way around.

Sorry if I stepped the rhetoric up too much to make my point.