John S. Allen's Bicycle Blog

I downloaded the following message from an e-mail list. I can’t vouch for every detail, but I am in general agreement.

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Frank [Krygowski] posted the comment below an hour or so ago [on March 20, 2013] at the blog article about John Allen and vehicular cyclists.

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/03/19/will-vehicular-cyclists-and-the-right-to-park-trump-safer-streets-in-boston/

Might want to go there and vote it up so it will get more attention…

Serge [Issakov]
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To me, this article is a poisonous pie-in-the-sky attack on those who actually understand traffic dynamics. From what I can see, John Allen’s objections are logical and specific: Heavy crossing traffic (into driveways and intersections) is very dangerous to cycletrack riders, because motorists can’t see them behind parked vehicles until too late. Fast downhill speeds make that much worse. Snow plowing won’t happen after the slightest budget crunch. Door zone bike lanes kill bicyclists. Riders avoiding those dangers by riding the road will be hassled.

So what do you give in rebuttal? “Vehicular cyclists stop progress” and pretty pictures of a street that’s magically become almost free of traffic.

Let’s look at what’s happened where cycletracks and other weirdness has been installed. Contrary to the promises, Washington DC’s “innovative” bike facilities have greatly increased crash rates, with up to six times the number of car-bike crashes per month. (See “Bicycle Facility Evaluation” at tinyurl.com/DC-innovation ) And many years ago, one of the first American-style cycletracks was installed in Columbus, Ohio near OSU. It was ripped out in about a year, due to the increases in crashes. The fact is, traffic “innovation” generally breeds confusion and surprises. And surprises on the streets are deadly.

This does not mean all special bike infrastructure is bad. But it does mean that each design must be logically evaluated based on actual traffic movements, and on real-life expectations and reactions of motorists and bicyclists. Deceptive and biased promotion like Teschke’s cherry-picked street analysis, or “gee whiz” Netherlands copying, can’t take the place of detailed hazard analysis.

Unfortunately, competent hazard analysis seems to require the input of traffic-competent cyclists. Traffic engineers who travel only by car can’t appreciate things like blind spots and pavement problems a bicyclist must deal with. Dreamers who never ride their bike except on park bike paths are no better, and gazing at a watercolor concept drawings (with almost no cars!) won’t educate them.

Yet isn’t it odd that the really competent cyclists, the ones who know the hazards of doors popping open and crossing conflicts, are attacked by the dreamers’ blogs! Is there another field in which you think expertise should be disparaged, and those with the least knowledge should be praised and respected?

Joshua Putnam has published some well-crafted commentary on how the brightness of LED bicycle headlamps requires a controlled beam pattern to prevent blinding other users of roads and paths. This relatively new problem deserves attention, and is related to the issue of possible triggering of epileptic seizures by flashing headlights, which I discussed in an earlier post on this blog and which Joshua also discusses.

In a comment on my previous post, Khal Spencer asked whether the extension of a bike lane in a bike box is in fact a lane, or whether on the other hand, the bike box is more like a crosswalk. Let’s have a closer look at that issue.

If we consider the bike box to be like a crosswalk, rather than the part which continues the bike lane to be a lane, then pedestrian rules should in theory apply. In section 11-502 of the Uniform Vehicle code, I read:

(b) No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle which is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.

Massachusetts General Laws establish rules for motorists at crosswalks but don’t have a rule for pedestrians — one of the many gaps in our law, which was never conformed to the Uniform Vehicle Code. Code of Massachusetts Regulations 900, established by the Highway Department (now part of MassDOT) fills in the omission, but only applies to state highways. I can just imagine the officials at the Highway Department taking a look at the General Laws, maybe proposing revisions which the legislature didn’t pass, and then promulgating this regulation, with the intent, “not on our watch!”

9.09 (4) Pedestrian Crossings and Use of Roadways.

(a) No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a sidewalk or safety island and walk or run into the path of a vehicle which is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield the right of way.
(b) Pedestrians shall at all times attempt to cross a roadway using the right half of crosswalks..

Other than on state highways, this rule is left up to municipalities and other entities such as the Debarment of Conservation and Recreation, which are supposed to apply a sample regulation for a municipal traffic code which does not include this wording.

In case we don’t consider the bike box to be a crosswalk, the regulations state

9.09 (5)

Crossing at Non-Signalized Locations. Every pedestrian crossing a roadway in an urban area at any point other than within a marked crosswalk shall yield the right of way to all vehicles upon the roadway. At a point where a pedestrian tunnel or overpass has been provided, pedestrians shall cross the roadway only by the proper use of the tunnel or overpass.

There is not such rule in the sample regulation.

These rules for pedestrians are the closest Massachusetts has to a law which applies to the bike box. There is no law which applies specifically to the bicyclist’s swerving into a bike box. People who promote bike boxes in the USA don’t concern themselves with establishing a legal framework for them.

In any context affecting public safety and which draws appropriate intellectual scrutiny, this would be regarded as wanton recklessness, but bicycling doesn’t draw that scrutiny. The law, to the degree these people concern themselves with it at all, is a problem. “The law is for cars,” — most usually, an excuse for noncompliance by individuals, extended to a license for installations which also pay no regard to law.

We aren’t talking about the honored tradition of civil disobedience here, we are talking about opportunistic bicycle operation, sometimes in reasonable ways, such as failing to come to a foot-down stop at a stop sign, sometimes in more important and perilous ways, such as overtaking unsafely on the right. Tish opportunism expands its scope into disregard for the law by government itself. The installations come first, and changes in the law can wait till later once the installations are a fait accompli. I have discussed this same issue before, in connection with some “Yield to Bikes” signs which Cambridge has installed.

Laws to accommodate unsafe movements will consist of reduced burdens of proof and increased penalties for motorists, for colliding with defenseless cyclists — in installations which have rendered the cyclists defenseless, where only the motorist can prevent a collision — and can only prevent it using extreme caution.

The Facebook Cyclists are Drivers group carries a report of a cyclist who was rear-ended by a motorist who was blinded by the setting sun. And, here’s an urban planning issue I bet that you haven’t heard about (unless you have read my Facebook comment on that report). The solution to this problem is, well, blindingly clear, but also, completely overlooked.

Why do street grids have to go north-south and east-west, guaranteeing that the east-west streets will have blinding sun for a week or two, twice a year, early morning and evening peak commute time, and that the south side of those streets will get sun only in the late spring and early summer, early and late in the day?

If the street grids go northeast-southwest and southwest-northeast, then both sides of every street get sunlight every day of the year, and are more conducive to snow melting and plantings thriving. There is never blinding sun along any street (though there can be when turning at intersections — this issue, to be sure, deserves further study).

This approach works except at far northern and southern latitudes, where the sun rises and sets far north or south of the east-west line in midsummer and midwinter.

One city which in fact has a northeast-southwest and northwest-southeast street grid is Montreal, because the long axis of the Montreal island runs northeast-southwest. That’s one more reason, though not the main one, to discredit the Lusk et al. study of Montreal bikeways 😉

In the USA, the east-west-north-south blinding glare problem was given a major boost by the Homestead Act of 1862, which laid out most of the Midwest and Great Plans, both urban and rural, as far west as the Rocky mountains, in north-south-east-west grids.

The late Prof. John Finley Scott, a staunch advocate of integrated cycling, proposed “wrecking ball therapy” as a way to cure the problems with aging urban infrastructure, and perhaps this is an improvement to keep in mind in that context.

I have my antennas tuned to the signals coming from the paint and path, anti-car, transportation reform segment of bicycling advocacy. I have no access to the messages which advocates of this stripe send to one another. But when I hear the same suggestions coming from multiple sources, I must conclude that there is communication among them.

Here’s the latest party line: bicycling will be better for us when we all ride very slowly. And we should not bother with helmets, because bicycling will become safer if we don’t.

I read it yesterday on an urban planning e-mail list in the following words: “The question … is one of helmets for all versus just riding a bicycle safely…I prefer seeing women, men and kids riding in safe environments en-mass [sic] which will then slow speeds and make bicycling in the city what we see in Amsterdam and Copenhagen and what we still see in China in many locations.”

I heard it again today on Robin Young’s Here and Now radio show on NPR. At the beginning of the show, host Young announced that a topic would be “is it possible that not wearing helmets makes bicycling safer?” The helmet segment consisted entirely of an interview with a guest Elizabeth Rosenthal, a public-health advocate. Here’s a link to the show segment: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/10/02/lose-bike-helmets

The claim which underlies the party-line argument against helmet use is that if people don’t have to wear a helmet, then more people will ride bicycles, motorists will become more attentive, bicyclists will have to go slower (because there will be so many getting in each other’s way on narrow bicycle paths, also part of the plan, though that isn’t mentioned). Voilà, bicycling will be safer. There also is a health claim.

Let’s consider a parallel example: “is it possible that not wearing a lifejacket makes canoeing safer?” And here is the supposed logic, as applied to canoeing: if people aren’t encumbered with having to purchase and wear a lifejacket, then masses of people will take up canoeing, people in powerboats will be more attentive about avoiding collisions with canoes, and the rivers will be clogged, forcing slowdowns — and so canoeing will become safer. Also, the health benefits of canoeing to society at large will outweigh the losses through drowning, even if (also never mentioned) most people never canoe far enough or paddle hard enough to get a meaningful fitness benefit.

The argument as it applies to bicycling has some traction because it rests on a nearly universal, distorted perception of risk — fearmongering turned inside out. I took canoeing as an example because it is well-known that most canoeing incidents do not involve powerboats: a canoe simply capsizes, or someone falls overboard. Less well-known is that over 70% of injury-producing bicycle crashes do not involve a motor vehicle. Also in incidents which do involve a motor vehicle, a helmet often prevents or mitigates injury.

What underlies the anti-helmet drive is social engineering by the bicycle industry, environmentalists, transportation reform interests and public-health advocates like Young’s guest Rosenthal, to recruit more people to ride bicycles — and mitigation of risk to the individual bicyclist be damned. We prime the pump for increased bicycle use by shoving that issue under the rug, and if we have a few fatalities and disabling injuries (actually, many thousands –) which could have been avoided, well, these are sacrifices that must be accepted in the interest of the Greater Good.

The anti-helmet argument gains more support thanks to the advent of municipal bike-share systems, which at the same time make access to a bicycle easier and use of a helmet more inconvenient.

Also, the story on Here and Now confused the issue of mandatory helmet laws with the issue of personal choice as to whether to wear a helmet. Let me make it clear: I don’t support mandatory helmet laws, which aren’t enforced, yet which can impose a presumption of negligence on a bicyclist who doesn’t wear a helmet — as in “yes, the driver ran the stop sign, but you weren’t wearing a helmet, so you don’t collect on the driver’s insurance.” That kind of blaming the victim is despicable, but it happens. On the other hand, because I care about my own well-being and that of my family, I wear a helmet. I recommend that other bicyclists make the same choice.

“It’s more like walking than riding a bicycle. You’re more like a pedestrian,” said Rosenthal of ideal urban cycling as she envisions it. “The kind of crashes in which people fall off bikes and hurt their heads are really, really, really rare because you’re riding around at 5 miles per hour. It’s more like walking,” said Rosenthal. Great. That’ll get me home in two hours. And who will point out the bicycling is several times as efficient as walking? Taking Rosenthal’s argument to its logical conclusion, I’d benefit more from walking, and then it would only take me four hours to get home. Canoeing upstream on the meandering Charles River from Boston to my home would be even better, and swimming, better yet.

Let me also point out that the speed at which the head strikes the ground depends on head height, not forward speed — and that slow-speed crashes are often caused by collisions while in crowds of bicyclists.

At the end of the radio segment, host Robin Young quoted someone as saying about a helmet wearer, “you’re a racer. Get off city streets.” A competent and fit urban cyclist is by definition a racer? A bicyclist is going too fast, not even as fast as a motor scooter rider, and so should get off the street? Serious confusion reigned.

Bicycling advocacy has always been subject to push and pull from various non-bicycling interests. Now, more than ever, it is being taken over by people, whether with the best of intentions, intent only on personal gain, or who consider themselves to be doing well by doing good — for whom bicyclists are only a mass, a population — as described in one of the quotes at the start of this article. After the US Civil War, there was a name for such people: carpetbaggers. People who might not be familiar with the legacy these people left both for the Southerners whose lot they claimed to advance and those whose tradition they attempted to overthrow might read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpetbagger.