'Twas not to be. Louisville now has a couple of bike boxes.
Pretty green paint does not make an intersection safer--behavior does. New "No Right Turn on Red" signs don't make an intersection safer--many motorists will ignore those signs (I ride through an intersection featuring "No Right on Red" regularly, and see someone turn right on red at least every other time I am sitting at that light). Unwary cyclists will think it safe to barrel through the intersection, never mind that car with the right turn signal flashing.
What can go wrong?
I wonder how many cyclists will get mowed down before people realize that they need to sue the city for criminally bad "engineering?" Is the city immune to such lawsuits?
Edit: After a few questions here and there, I have learned that someone in Public Works has "wanted to try bike boxes" for some time.
"Try" implies a trial or experiment of some sort. Who would be the subjects of this experiment? Humans, of course.
A small problem comes to mind, however: Over the last sixty or seventy years, human society has increasingly frowned on the idea of subjecting humans to trials unless said subjects have expressed informed consent. This is especially true when there are known risks involved, such as the blatantly obvious potentials for hazardous interactions I've mentioned above.
I cannot imagine an informed human who would be willing to consent to such an experiment.
1 comment:
These kinds of stories always make me a little bit glad that I live in a less affluent suburb of Montgomery County, Maryland - a county where the powers that be try their best to ignore cycling issues and where cycling advocacy organizations tend to focus their attention on the wealthier areas of Rockville, Bethesda and Chevy Chase.
Here in Silver Spring, which used to be home to the stupidest bike lane in America, I guess they're hoping to avoid making the same mistake twice, so I cycle blissfully free from infrastructure that tries to kill me.
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