Carbon Trace

This letter to the editor appeared today in the Springfield News-Leader:

On June 10, I was driving south on Holland Street between Cherokee and Seminole. A bicycle rider was ahead of me on Holland Street and going the same direction in the middle of the street. When I honked at him, thinking he would move to the right so I could pass, he shoved his bicycle off the street and stood in the middle so I had to stop. He then came to my car and commenced the most foul-mouthed screaming tirade I have ever heard. He informed me that bicycles have the right of way over all vehicles and that I had no right to honk at him.

I informed him, too, that he had run the four-way stop at Cherokee and Holland. He told me in no uncertain terms that bicycles are exempt from stop signs and do not have to stop.

This young man is wrong on all counts and I sincerely hope he reads this and does some of his own research to find out what the traffic ordinances say about bicycles.

Because I have no other evidence, I’ll take the writer at his word. Let’s examine who is wrong about what.

Holland is a narrow, residential street and part of the Springfield Bicycle Route system. You may wish to review this video:

Holland St. north to MSU from acline on Vimeo.

(Note: Stopping while making video is difficult, so I track-standed most of these stops while making this.)

Problem: Riding in the middle of the street. I am assuming the driver means to indicate the absolute middle between the two lanes. If he means the middle of the appropriate lane, that changes things quite a bit.

Verdict: The bicyclist should have moved over. There’s plenty of room for cars to pass bicycles on Holland. And it doesn’t require the bicyclist to be dangerously close to the shoulder, which on Holland drops into a shallow ditch in most places.

Problem: Foul-mouthed tirade and blocking the road.

Verdict: The bicyclist should have let the honk go. I advise cultivating a no-response response to confrontations (with wiggle room for extreme or especially dangerous cases). Foul-mouthed tirades, however, should be avoided.

Problem: The honk.

Verdict: If what the driver is saying is true, this bicyclist would have annoyed me, too. Is honking necessary in his case? I need more information, i.e. how much time did the driver give the bicyclist to make the right choice?

Problem: Right of way.

Verdict: Bicycles do not have the right of way over all other vehicles, but the bicyclist did have the right of way in this case because he was ahead of the car going in the same direction.

Problem: Stop signs.

Verdict: Bicyclists must stop at all stop signs and obey all traffic control methods that apply to cars. Bicyclists who run stop signs are annoying, especially to other bicyclists who 1) ride everyday as basic transportation, and 2) follow the rules. Those of you who run lights and stop signs make life harder for us all.

(Further, Springfield needs an enforcement program that treats bicycles the same as cars. What do you suppose a police officer would do if he/she saw an SUV driving in the wrong lane at night with no lights? Same thing should apply to bicycles. That the police do not write tickets for such behavior is a sign of disrespect.)

Returning to the question of lane position: If the bicyclist was in the middle of the appropriate lane on Holland rather than in the absolute middle of the road, then the driver has no complaint and should not have honked.

Both the driver and rider have some things to learn. I would suggest cultivating this attitude: Users of the road, no matter what they are driving or riding, are human beings, not objects.

Technorati Tags: bicycle politics, bicycle safety, bicycle video, cycling, traffic design