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points by dgunay 3 days ago | 0 comments
Since bikes/scooters are much faster than pedestrians, it causes problems like this when they use pedestrian infra. For an example, I was driving up to a yield-to-peds xwalk a while ago, and on the sidewalk there was a scooter going at full clip. I slowed down because I had a hunch he would do this, but he took a hard 90 deg turn at the xwalk and went straight through at speed. If I hadn't done that, I might have run him over. A pedestrian could never have done that.

Something similar to this dynamic happens anywhere you would "look both ways" as a driver but don't have far enough visibility to extrapolate a safe window of passage relative to the speed of oncoming traffic. It can happen when parked cars block your view of oncoming traffic, or when parked cars block view of the bike lane, or when parked cars, trees, hedges, fences etc block view of the sidewalk that a non-pedestrian is using.

[–] asdff 3 days ago
The issue is the parked cars not the bike lane. Planners are aware of this. There is recent efforts to “daylight” intersections as they call it when they work to increase these sightlines.
[–] hobo123 2 days ago
You say that, but routinely cars/trucks drive RIGHT NEXT to a bike lane with someone riding a bike, then pull right and drive over the cyclist like they couldn't have seen him or her.

Apparently the possibility of vision / line of sight is not the issue. Maybe the willingness, maybe the understanding that yes indeed, there is another lane next to the road, and maybe you should monitor it for traffic, especially before taking a right or left turn.