Posts about Road Rage

1. Cyclists might be on the left side of the road (such as when turning left).
   
2. Riding outside a bike lane is often okay (and, in DC in VA, always legal).
   
3. If turning right across a bike lane, move into the bike lane first. More on this.
   
4. Bicycles are faster than you might think.
   
5. Don't honk.

Bob added 5 requests to cyclists, which I agree with as well:

1. Be obvious, be predictable.
   
2. Think like a driver.
   
3. Wait for right-turning drivers (in other words, respect drivers doing the right thing to turn right across a bike lane as in #3 on my list).
   
4. Obey traffic laws. (Though personally, I'd like to see us adopt the Idaho Stop.)
   
5. Respect pedestrians.

You can read the whole thing on the Washington Post site.

A number of people brought this up in the Dr. Gridlock chat today. Most echoed a similar point best captured in this question and Bob's fantastic response:

Sunday's column regarding cars and bicycles sharing the street with each other did not address what I consider a major point. While I won't intentionally do something that would endanger a bicyclist, I find little reason to respect the "rights" of people who choose to ignore laws that I must obey. I live near a street with a bike lane, and regularly see riders who don't even slow down at a stop sign, and only hesitate at intersections with a red light. Why do they feel that laws they find inconvenient are no more than suggestions?

ROBERT THOMSON:
I completely understand how you feel and see the same things. But I think this is a slippery slope.

Our goal in all "share the road" situations should be to survive and help other travelers survive. Along those lines: We don't have to prove our righteousness to total strangers who may be doing the wrong thing in traffic. We just have to do the right thing.

And there's too much of this dividing ourselves into categories of travelers. Like it's our category against all the other categories—whether it's drivers, bikers, pedestrians—or Lexus drivers, pickup drivers, sedan drivers motorcyclists. What's the point?

Cyclists and walkers know how rare it is to see a motorist stop—rather than just slow down—for a Stop sign. Why wouldn't they have a similar bad opinion of drivers?

Another great comment came in a little later in the chat:

From my office, I can see the bike lane on Q Street, NW at 16th. Routinely, and I do not exaggerate, I see cyclists riding the wrong way on Q Street. More often than not, they are on BikeShare bikes (but not always) and generally don't have helmets on. I also see cars that veer into, and sit in, the bike lane on red lights.

We're all selfish (says this driver/cyclist/pedestrian). I think everyone needs to watch out for everyone else. Being dead right on your bike is still being dead. And I would think that being the cause of the death or maiming of another human whether on the right side of the law or not would be a horrible thing to carry through life.

ROBERT THOMSON:
Yep. I think you've gotten to the bottom line.

Travelers sometimes write in and say, "Dear Dr. Gridlock: Who's right in the following situation ... "

I love to discuss such issues, because it can raise our consciousness about traffic situations, but I worry about creating the appearance that under some circumstances, it's okay to hit somebody.

Travelers are never in season. As our commenter pointed out, the fact that you didn't get a ticket won't be much consolation if you wind up injuring another person.

Does being car-shaped and having batteries make it more appealing than a bicycle? In downtown DC, being car-shaped would just make this bicycle hard to park, but in a place like Loudoun, it could bridge the gap between cyclists and drivers. It's great that a number of people in Loudoun and other very spread-out suburbs bicycle everywhere. But it's not easy for the average person there to start riding regularly.

For urban dwellers in dense communities, driving already has substantial hassles, especially parking, and there's a lot to reach from just a short bike ride. As I noted in my Washington Post op-ed, Capital Bikeshare got me biking a lot more. That was easy because I can reach a great many destinations with a one-mile bike ride.

If I lived in Olney or Chantilly, there'd be some, but far fewer. Running everyday errands requires traversing longer distances. Roads are engineered to be even less friendly to biking, and almost every store requires navigating a parking lot where people aren't expecting a cyclist.

Maybe a vehicle that's in between the car and the bike would give someone who drives everywhere an alternative that's not as intimidating. Hills aren't quite so difficult, but the driver gets used to pedaling and improves physical fitness. It's larger and therefore more visible to other drivers.

Being larger, though, it's also harder to pass. If these vehicles became more than the very occasional curiosity, will they change drivers' view of the roadway, or will they just become yet another source of angry conflict?

Newspapers are already replete with angry letters to the editor about cyclists riding on roads like Macarthur Boulevard that force drivers to wait instead of achieving any desired speed. Then there's the occasional column by someone who admits to wanting to actually assault cyclists because they get in the way.

It's easy to imagine the same conflict between drivers of motor vehicles and users of these pedal-powered cars. Drivers get irate if 2 cyclists are riding abreast; this car is always at least as wide as 2 cyclists. It can go faster than a bike, but still far slower than a motor vehicle.

If enough people drive both an SUV and a bike-car, maybe everyone on the road will just develop an appreciation for each other's point of view. First, though, bike-cars would have to go through a period of being a niche product for early adopters. Then we'll see if Loudoun residents continue to find them entertaining and fascinating, or if they turn into a nuisance, a point of conflict, and a punching bag for politicians who can't envision any kind of freedom other than driving a really large, high-horsepower car.

Only the last item is actually about the passing distance itself. But even with a 2-foot rule, drivers still have to either get into the adjacent lane, or at least move substantially enough into that lane that they might as well move in entirely.

Many drivers think they can or should pass cyclists by squeezing through in the same lane. That's dangerous and illegal in most places. To pass safely, a driver needs enough room to move over to the adjacent lane, at least temporarily.

More worrisome is the attitude which we hear all the time from letter writers to local newspapers, talking heads, blog commenters, and even legislators, that bicyclists are lawless hoodlums not deserving of any protection from the law.

Yes, some cyclists break laws, and some cyclists ride very recklessly. Of course, many motorists break laws too, like speeding, not stopping at stop signs, not yielding to pedestrians, driving in bike lanes, assaulting each other, pedestrians, and cyclists, yelling at police officers, and more.

That doesn't excuse cyclist misbehavior, but it's also totally unfair to blame all cyclists for the dangerous actions of a few or the mildly illegal actions of many when drivers do the same thing. Most drivers generally act respectfully but do break laws in small ways like speeding, and a few drivers are really bad. Same for cyclists.

When a majority builds up and expresses incorrect and biased attitudes about a minority group, we call that out. If white people say that black people don't deserve the same rights or respect, we call that racism. If men say that women don't deserve the same rights or respect, we call that sexism. If straight people say that gay people don't deserve the same rights or respect, we call that homophobia.

This anti-cyclist attitude needs a name, too. These Virginia legislators aren't just misinformed and pigheaded, they're also cyclist-ist. Or something. I haven't seen a good name for this prejudice. Have you? Any ideas?

Update: Racism, sexism, etc. are of course far worse than cyclist hatred, and I don't mean to mean that oppressed cyclists are being mistreated as badly as ethnic groups once were and often still are. However, that doesn't make this attitude not a form of prejudice, and one worthy of being named and criticized, even if it's lower on the scale of prejudices than some.

It's impressive that so many cyclists are willing to ride on 19th Street, which seems harrowing; trucks are constantly pulling over to both sides, blocking a lane for deliveries, while cars go into the many parking garages with curb cuts right on the street. When traffic was stopped at a light, the cyclists had to squeeze through very narrow spaces to move up.

Is this one of those situations which is actually safer than it looks because there are so many cars, trucks, bicycles, and pedestrians going every which way that everyone knows to look out and be careful? Or can we accommodate all these southbound cyclists with some kind of dedicated facility, either on 19th or on a nearby parallel street?

That piece reached a slanted phrase to paragraph ratio exceeding 1:1, as he ironically referred to Maryland's nickname, the "Free State," quoted AAA's EDJS-spreader Lon Anderson but no supporters of cameras, and even brought out the Norquistian big guns by concluding, "Some D.C. Council memebers have gone as far as to call the expansion of the program a "tax" on drivers."

Tuss claims that "Questions remain about whether Connecticut Avenue—a six lane commuter route—is the proper place to have these cameras in place." Questions also remain about in whose minds those questions remain, other than Tuss's. Since he didn't see fit to quote any supporters of cameras, here we go. Chevy Chase DC resident Kevin defended the speed cameras on Connecticut in Maryland on the neighborhood listserv, writing,

[The camera] has transformed the road to a safe zone for both drivers and pedestrians. This had not been the case in the past. A few years ago, my daughter and I tried to ride our bikes from our house on the east side to her friend's house on the west side of the Avenue from upper Chevy Chase DC. It was a terrifying experience to get across the street at one of the corners below the Country Club. Cars would not allow it, even if we started when they were relatively distant. Now, cars move at a reasonable speed through that area (and even above Bradley) all because of the speed camera (and occasional squad cars from the Village police).

Resident Jane wrote, "A recent article in the Washington Post noted that since the speed cameras on the stretch by Chevy Chase Club were installed that accidents were down from 14 a month to 3." These comments followed a question from a driver who had received a speeding ticket for going 37 in a 25, and was asking how to appeal. Most residents reacted with little sympathy, pointing out that the driver had been exceeding the posted speed limit by almost 50%, and citing the statistics on how pedestrian survival rates plummet as speed increases.

Unfortunately, Tuss's infectious EDJS did hit some of his fellow journalists, like Marc Fisher, whose recent column calls speed cameras a "recession-proof biz" and dubs them "gotcha cams." Let's just remember: these cameras only "gotcha" you if you not only break the law, but break it by more than 12 miles per hour (raised from 10 with the recently-passed Maryland law). Fisher, to his credit, has a stronger immune system than Tuss, and partially recovers from his brief EDJS affliction toward the end of the column:

Surely more of us speed (guilty as charged, your honor) than commit many other violations, so speed cams hit a broader swath of society than some other such taxes masquerading as disincentives. But it's also true that speeding kills, and this just happens to be one of those nice little coincidences in which cash-strapped governments get to do the right thing even as they soak the offenders.

Katherine Hill, immune to EDJS, writes about drivers who are protesting the law, blurring their license plates, and even assaulting police officers. She suggests,

Why don't you just...not speed? I wonder if these same motorists fought the legislation before it was [passed], which is probably the most efficient way of preventing and stopping the installation of red light and speed cameras. Where was the call to arms then? The protests failed, and the cameras were installed. Maybe you could just drive safely instead?

One "family friend" of Hill's even discovered she could avoid getting a ticket by stopping dead at the center of the camera's zone. If she's going from 50 to zero and back again, then she's probably averaging less than 30 over the camera's range. In other words, she'd get through the area faster by just driving the speed limit. This friend is clearly a chronic EDS sufferer, showing other symptoms like "lectur[ing] any one she sees jaywalking, standing top close to the edge on the sidewalk, or crossing against the sidewalk."

Maybe scientists can take some blood samples from Fisher and Hill, with hopes of isolating the antibodies to create a vaccine for EDJS. Some of our more established reporters, like Tuss, Eric Weiss, and the Washington Post editorial staff really need it. They've lived with EDJS so long that they probably hardly notice the symptoms.