bike lanes and filtering

I had a conversation with a customer from the bike shop the other day, in which he told me of his recent bike crash.

It seems he was in a designated bike lane, moving at a pretty good clip, alongside a line of cars stopped for some reason. As he approached an intersection, one of the cars in the line opted for a right turn, with predictable results: a right-hook crash that led to a cyclist who has a broken clavicle (five pieces!). He is going to be healing and undergoing rehabilitation for some months before he knows whether he can ride a bicycle again.

I feel bad for the guy. Cycling is an important component of his physical and mental health maintenance plan. Summer is almost here--a time when a lot of cyclists do most of their riding.

How could this have been prevented? It won't surprise either of my two readers that I have some opinions.

He was, despite the presence of the magic-paint bike lane, clearly at risk for right-hook crash (any motorist can turn right into any driveway or side street and likely won't even THINK to look for someone in the bike lane). It's almost the same thing as "filtering," or moving up past a line of cars waiting at a stop light. Yes, he had a bike lane in this case, but the dangers involved in filtering are still all too present. If there is a hard curb outside the bike lane, even more so. Once a motorist starts to turn right from the lane to the rider's left, there is no place to go but into the car. If someone had opened a door at an inopportune moment, the rider would have faced injury as well. To some degree, my customer contributed mightily to the crash factor list by putting himself in a dangerous position--partly by letting the paint think for him.

Then, of course, there was the motorist, who failed to check over (presumed) his right shoulder for overtaking traffic in the marked bike lane before turning into the path of a fast-moving bicycle rider. Given that this motorist was in the right travel lane of the roadway (except for that magic-paint bike lane that contains folks moving slower than "regular traffic"), he was (I suspect) not accustomed to having to look for overtaking traffic from that quarter. Should he have been? Yes--the lane was probably marked about as well as bike lanes often are(n't).

Yeah, I have a problem with right-edge-of-roadway bike lanes. They make cyclists an "out of sight, out of mind" non-issue for motorists. They give cyclists the false sense of security that comes with having their own lane. The "magic paint" does NOT protect anyone, except for perhaps when there is a line of parked cars just to the right of the door-zone bike lane, and there is no cyclist in that lane when the car door gets opened--the bike lane serves as a buffer between the parked cars and the moving-too-fast-for-conditions cars.

When operating in these bike lanes (and I understand that there is social pressure to use them if they are available), be just as vigilant. You are often in the blind spots of motorists who want to turn right. Don't go so fast that you cannot keep from crashing in such situations. Better yet, know that there is an "out" for not using the bike lane when it puts you in greater danger than taking the lane in the wider lane.