Avoiding right hook collisions

I'm posting this long version here, and a short version in the LANL Reader's Forum page. An intermediate version appeared in the Sunday, 1 July Los Alamos Monitor (subscription required) and in the Los Alamos Daily Post (free).

In the last few months, there have been two crashes on Diamond Drive that occurred when a right turning motorist crossed  the new bike lanes in close proximity to a bicyclist riding in the bike lane. Without going into who did what to whom ( I wasn't there), I’d like to offer some suggestions on how to manage this facility.

Regarding sharing roads equipped with bike lanes, and turning across bike lanes. Some of the law is not exactly clear (at least to me), but the law on changing lanes is clear. When turning right across a bike lane, which is a lane designed for the exclusive use of bicyclists and part of the traveled portion of the street, you as the motorist are moving out of your lane and across the bike lane and must do so safely. The same applies to a bicyclist leaving the bike lane to make a left turn or moving out of the bike lane to merge into a regular travel lane. Here is the code, followed by some comments.

Sec. 38-257. - Driving on streets laned for traffic.

Whenever any street has been divided into two or more clearly marked lanes for traffic, the following rules in addition to all others consistent herewith shall apply:

(1)   A vehicle shall be driven as nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane and shall not be moved from such lane until the driver has first ascertained that such movement can be made with safety; 

The law is in black and white and reinforces best practice. Some of the recent scary interactions leading to close calls and crashes on Diamond Drive south of Orange/Sandia are in the shades of grey area of applying the law, or are caused by inattention.  Safe, alert, defensive driving and biking can keep you out of harm’s way.

So if you are the motorist:

1. When making a right turn on a road with bike lanes, make sure you have safely overtaken a cyclist before going into your turn. The act of turning causes you to slow down and that cyclist you passed may have caught up to you; you may turn directly into the cyclist.
2. Signal your turn in advance and check your blind spot before turning to make sure there is not a bicyclist on your right or about to overtake you.
3. If you see a cyclist slightly in front of, or along side you as you approach your right turn, let the cyclist proceed through the intersection and turn behind the cyclist. Speeding up to pass the cyclist and then slowing down to turn can result in a crash.
4. Cyclists and motorcyclists are more vulnerable than you are. Train yourself to be aware of these smaller vehicles.

If you are the cyclist

1. Watch for motor vehicles slowing down and signalling to turn as you approach intersections and driveways. If a motorist is slowing down as he approaches an intersection or driveway, he may be preparing to turn right across your path.
2. If you are overtaking a motorist on the motorist’s right, you are in that motorist’s blind spot. That could result in a crash if you are passing on the right at an intersection or driveway and the motorist indeed turns. Don't expect people to have eyes in the backs of their heads; mistakes are indeed made.
3. If motor vehicle traffic is slower than you are, and you are overtaking the motorists, be aware of locations where a motorist can turn across your path.  Ride defensively at an appropriate speed, keep your head up, and be observant.
4. If you are traveling at the speed of traffic in a busy area or one where the bike lane may be screened from side streets or parking lot entrances by visual clutter, one can signal and merge out of the bike lane (safely) or slow down to a prudent speed in the bike lane.
5. You are more vulnerable to injury than motorists and not as visible as a car. You must take this into account and ride your bicycle (or motorcycle) with extra awareness for your own safety. Stay alert, practice situational awareness, and always wear a helmet to protect your head in the unlikely event of a crash.

There is a good video here demonstrating the right turn problem.

Video acknowledgements to Mass Bike Vids. 
The safe and lawful cyclist is demonstrated by John Allen

An optimal commuter is not an optimal time trialer.
Here, handlebars are level with seat. It helps to sit up 
so you can easily keep track of traffic.
Deep drop bars can be installed 
and used when appropriate. 

 There is no easy, quick, and foolproof fix to having bike lanes next to driveways, side streets, and other midblock curb cuts. If there were, we (i.e., the County and its traffic staff) would have thought of it already.  For example, one commenter reminded us "...Some time back, I (the anonymous commenter) posted an anonymous comment to a thread saying that it seemed to me that the safest course for a car driver on turning right, was to merge into the bike lane and thereby avoid right hook configurations by filling it up and making it impossible for bikes to be there. I got confirmation responses from folks here that that was indeed the correct thing to do. Unfortunately, the legal quote above "entirely within a single lane" seems to go against this conclusion. It is impossible to be entirely within a bike lane when you are driving a car..."  Assuming for the moment the motorist properly merges without cutting off a cyclist or blocking the bike lane as well as part of the regular travel lane for half a block if traffic stalls, it indeed results in a conflict between two laws: one, that says to keep your vehicle entirely in a single lane as much as is practicable, and another that says to make right turns from as close as practicable to the right curb or road edge. The more basic law is that you don't leave a lane until it is safe to do so, which should be one's basic guidance regardless of what one is driving or riding on.
 
The problem seems to be that bike lanes were created with the simple concept that bikes will be to the right of cars and this will reduce conflicts. Unfortunately, and especially in urban areas, that is not always the case. What I've done here, after considerable discussion with LAPD and Dept. of Public Works, is provide some safety guidelines but not tell people how to make turns. That will be determined by what is going on around you at time zero.

To quote Keri Caffrey (as posted on Carbon Trace) "Bike lanes, which are promoted as being safe, generate a lot of manufactured conflict in urban areas—because channelizing traffic by vehicle type, rather than speed and destination, violates the principles of movement and breaks an otherwise functional system" But many cyclists (not to mention motorists) want them, so we all have to work with the compromises to travel they require.

Both motorist and cyclist are responsible for being observant, aware of each other’s presence, understanding and working within the system as it exists, and negotiating safe passage to their destinations in an area which is busy, such as Diamond Drive south of Orange/Sandia.

Some other information tuned to Los Alamos is here.

Thanks, and keep it safe and away from the ragged edge out there.

Khal Spencer

Chair, LANL Traffic Safety Committee

Co-Author, 2005 Los Alamos County Bicycling Transportation System (i.e., “bike plan”) as adopted by County Council

LANL ramps up after-hours vehicle security at entrance portal (aka Large Intestine)

As reported in the Sunday Los Alamos Monitor. So if you are riding up towards the Jemez on Truck Route/West Jemez, be prepared for this.

LANL ramps up after-hours vehicle security 
 
"Despite concerns expressed by local businesses regarding its potential impact on efforts to bolster tourism, Los Alamos National Laboratory is taking further steps to ratchet up security.

Beginning Monday, all vehicles entering the LANL Vehicle Access Portal at East Jemez Road must use center lane number 4 between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m. weekdays and around the clock on weekends. All other lanes will be closed during LANL’s non-work hours."

Read the story on our website!

Beam me up, Scotty, they're after me again!

VeloNews and Red Kite Prayer are reporting on the USADA's newly opened investigation of that guy Lance Armstrong. Or, as Charles Pelkey put it "Just when I thought I was out...they pulled me back in"

Long ago and far away, before this all started getting murky
Or, was Lance already aware he would some day need that Transporter?
Picture by Graham Watson

Volunteers needed for Tour de Los Alamos

I'm forwarding this for the Tour organizers. If you have not volunteered for the Tour de Los Alamos, its a great way to support the oldest bike race in the southwest.

The Tour de Los Alamos is Sunday the 17th of June, and they are in need of a few more volunteers. This is a great chance to give something back, and it can be pretty fun, too. A free t-shirt and sandwich go to volunteers.

Email Dave Zerkle at     dczerkle at msn dot com

Famous racers from all over the world vie to win the Tour de Los Alamos

God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but fire next time.

From a traditional African-American (slave) gospel song. James Baldwin used it for the title of his book, The Fire Next Time.

If it ain’t drought and fire here in the West or storm and flood in the Southeast, its ocean acidification and a probable increase in speed of the global water cycle, a pretty sensitive indicator of climate change.

Source

Meanwhile, Public Radio is telling us how we are now able to economically extract oil from shale. My buddy Joe Smoot was working on Wyoming (Green River) oil shales back in the late seventies, when we were worried about cutoff of supply from the Middle East. Now its profitable.

All this exciting development into how to engineer combustible fuels out of rocks makes it possible to continue our current fossil fueled economic paradigm, but kicks down the road the question of what that will do to atmospheric and ocean chemistry and climate (oceans are a huge buffer for heat, CO2, and climate change deniers). It will ultimately be someone else's problem (I don't have any kids), if the worst case happens but being an earth scientist, I can't help but wonder why we don't take the warnings more seriously.

Any way you look at it from a global economic and climate perspective, we live at the behest of Ma Nature. When was the last time anyone you know enthusiastically welcomed you back to their home when all you did was fart and belch all the time? Even Ma would have to suck it up and then say hello. That is a pretty good metaphor to the present day level of mining and burning of fossil fuels. We don’t even try to be polite any more.

Charlie Komanoff, in a 2005 piece, writes about "The Need for More Cyclists"  More cycling seems to be a cure for just about any of society's ills--as long as the bicycle is ridden out of that garage rather than carried on a roof rack. I ride my bike because I like to ride my bike. But there is a bit of synergy there with Gaia:  "The bicycle offers the gains of advanced technology without threatening the environment. It stands not only for undamaged nature but also for unbroken autonomy. To attack the pedals may be strenuous over the short run, but it is an expression of trust in one’s own powers, for with the bicycle everything depends on the self. Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond existence as mere clients and consumers — those people ride a bike"
Wolfgang Sachs, For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back Into the History of Our Desires.

p.s. Thanks, as usual, to one of my mentors, Charlie Komanoff, leading to the expansion of this post.

2012?