Bikers really need their own infrastructure that’s kept entirely apart from where cars are. Bikes and cars sharing the same road is terrifyingly unsafe for both.
“unsafe for both”? What is the bike going to do to the car? Scratch the paint? Get blood on the tires?
That said, I agree that separated bike infrastructure saves lives and encourages biking by making people feel safer.
Easy enough to imagine a driver (understandably) swerving to avoid killing a cyclist and losing control of the car
Not to mention the psychological effects if an accident does happen… ‘Unsafe’ doesn’t have to only mean physical injury or death…
That’s a little melodramatic. I’m 100% on the cyclist side (don’t even have a driving licence) but even I can see mixed traffic is dangerous for both.
What driver hits a bike unexpectedly (assuming no intent) and doesn’t react in a potentially dangerous way? People crash cars trying to avoid deer even.
As someone who biked everywhere, daily, for years, I would have loved so much to have my own dedicated infrastructure, if only our own separate, Barrier-protected lane in the street.
I’ve been to cities where they have added in lanes separate from the road, going all over town, and they’re usually packed with people using them.
People want this kind of thing.
In some ways, it really feels like city streets were made for people from outside the city driving in for a specific purpose, and public transit, sidewalks, and bike paths are for the people who actually live there.
The whole previous phase of ever-widening streets/highways and paving any open ground for parking almost feels like an attempt to make the cities more like a theme park you drive to and leave at the end of the day. I’m glad things seem to be trending the other way now, with more emphasis on infrastructure I can use living here.
