Last night, driving home, I turned left from University to Randall, and I took a careful look at the signs on the bike lane divider. They block a driver from seeing bikes for a few feet along the lane, but generally I had a good view, and I would have seen any bike coming eastbound before I hit it.
The lighting is also fairly good there. If an unlit bike had been coming towards me, and I was REALLY looking for it, I would have seen it. But, in reality, I wouldn't be concentrating on looking for oncoming bike traffic, because I'd have many things to consider as I tried to make my way through that intersection -- the cars behind me, the cars ahead of me, possible jaywalkers in the crosswalk (this is the campus area, after all), my own speeds, etc. All the other cars, as well as my speedometer, would be well-illuminated; so if a dark object me at 15 mph., I might not notice until it was too late. Humans' perceptions and information-processing capacities are limited. If you want to survive, on a bike, you have to take these limitations into account. Bikers who ride in the dark without lights apparently don't understand that. From: "Robbie Webber" <[email protected]> To: "Patrick Lenon" <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Sent: Friday, November 5, 2010 1:03:38 PM Subject: Re: [Bikies] Randall and University - bike-MV crash? Yes, the University-Randall intersection was where the crash occurred. I saw a bike laying on the sidewalk/curb in front of Subway, on the SW corner. The car with the broken windshield was southbound on Randall between University and Johnson. It wasn't too hard to figure out what happened. As to the WRONG WAY sign, those have been added all along the counter-flow lane divider within the past two years. I am thrilled that they are finally there, because way too many bicyclists tried to use the eastbound lane as a two-way bike lane. There is barely enough room for the eastbound bicyclists, much less people going westbound. I think the signs along with actual paint in the eastbound lane, have significantly cut down on the number of people going the wrong way. As to the height of the sign, I've never noticed them obscuring my view of eastbound bicyclists, but as I mentioned earlier, I rarely make a left off that part of University, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask. I do know that drivers are at all range of heights, both because of their natural sitting height, and the height of the vehicle seat. We all know that large SUV driver sit much higher than people in small cars. I agree that putting the signs very high would put them out of the sight line of many drivers (I have the same experience of drivers not noticing the lane restriction signs around the Square.) Moving them only a bit would probably only change which drivers' view was blocked. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
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