Missouri Bicycle News

Today's KCStar has an editorial about bicycle and pedestrian safety:

Can a bicycle co-exist with an SUV? Can a pedestrian find safe passage across a parkway?

Yes and yes. But in the age of frenzy and the land of sprawl, ensuring safe streets is going to take some work.

The new Share the Road Safety Task Force — a collaboration of local governments, police departments, youth and senior citizen groups and others — is a promising development. An organized effort to promote safe transportation is overdue.

Founders of the task force have correctly noted that planners in this region have long deferred to cars and their oversized cousins. Intersections are treacherous for pedestrians, sidewalks are scarce, and too few lanes and trails are designated for bicycles. . . .

We have a little work to do here, though:

Missouri and Kansas statutes are clear that bicycles have as much right as a car or SUV to be on the roads. The horn honking and one-fingered salutes that too many drivers use to convey their dislike of cyclists are out of line. Bicyclists, for their part, should remember that traffic laws and common sense require that they ride single-file and as far to the right as possible on busy streets.

Bicyclists are not required to ride as far to the right "as possible" nor is that a safe way to ride.

This chapter from Streets Smarts explains the issue in detail.

But in general bicyclists should never ride closer to the edge of the road than three feet--because it is not safe to do so.

And if the lane is too narrow to share between the bicyclist and the motor vehicle (and that includes about 90% of Missouri traffic lanes) then the legal and safe way to operate is to move a little to the left to give a clear signal to motorists that they cannot squeeze past you within the lane. Usually this means riding about in the right "tire track" of the rightmost lane.

I ride thousands of miles this way each year in the Kansas City metro area and there is absolutely no question that it is far safer for both bicyclist and motorist. In this position the bicyclist is visible and predictable.

Hugging the curb, the bicyclist is continually buzzed by motorists passing too close and continually faced with the prospect of being forced off the road.

By moving a couple of feet to the left the bicyclist is more visible and traffic flows by without a hitch--as you can see in the photograph above (in fact this rider could well move a foot more to the left--this does not disrupt motor traffic any more than the position she is in, but gets her further out of the "danger zone" at the edge of the road, gives her more room to maneuver in case a motorist does pass too close, and makes her more visible to motorists).

MoBikeFed has been part of Kansas City's Share the Road Task Force, which in October launched this successful Pedestrian Safety Campaign and received wide press coverage and plans a similar Bicycle Safety Campaign in May. MoBikeFed would like to take successful programs like this statewide--another reason to support MoBikeFed's current fund raising and membership drive. permanent link to article: "KCStar editorial supports safer roads for bicyclists, pedestrians"
posted by Brent Hugh at 11/16/2006 11:15:00 AM |comment on this article