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Shea Gunther

People don't have to die on the road

Why don't we design our streets and roads to keep us safe?
Mon, Oct 05 2009 at 10:17 AM EST
Read more: ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION, BICYCLES, GREEN DESIGN

Photo: Dougtone/Flickr
One of my good friends was hit by a car on Friday.
 
He was riding his bike to work when he was hit by a pickup truck turning left at a four way intersection. The driver of the truck didn't see him and may have been talking on her cell phone. He was struck by the truck on his side and sent flying, dislocating his hip and breaking his pelvis and wrist. Luckily he wasn't far from the hospital and was quickly rushed into surgery with a great surgeon. He'll be in the hospital a few more days recovering and will be out of commission healing for a long time.
 
It's terrible that the the driver of the car was driving while distracted and she should be punished to the full extent of the law for her negligence, but there's a hidden culprit in this story deserving of even more of the blame- the roads themselves.
 
My buddy should never have been in the path of that truck. If he lived in a place like Davis, California (the city Portland, Oregon modeled their bike infrastructure after, watch this video), his wheels would not have come across the path of cars and trucks more than a few times, if at all, during his commute from home to work on physically separated bike lanes and paths. Cities like Davis don't pull their punches when it comes to supporting bicycle riders- roads for cars and bike paths are given equal play in the design of the city. When bike riders and pedestrians do share space with cars, the cars are forced, by the design of the road, to travel slowly and carefully. Their bike lanes are safe and sane- suitable for five year old children riding without training wheels for the first time.
 
Amsterdam is the central gem in the worlds crown jewels of bike friendly cities. In Amsterdam, it's assumed that, in the case of collisions between bicycle riders and cars, that the car driver is at fault. If the bike rider is under the age of 18, the fault automatically falls on the person driving the car, no matter the circumstances of the accident. They actually build their roads to make driving inconvenient with lots of one way streets, raised crosswalks, and low speed limits. On September 20th they even banned cars from their roads entirely.
 
In 1997, the Swedish Parliament introduced a bold plan call "Vision Zero" that required that all road deaths and serious injuries be cut to zero by 2020 through better design. Mark Rosenberg wrote about the policy in a great article in the Boston Globe in August, you should read it. All new roads in Sweden must be built according to Vision Zero guidelines- speed limits where bikes and pedestrians interact are capped at around 18 miles per hour, intersections have raised walkways to force cars to approach slowly, red light crossings have been replaced by traffic circles, and they've even developed an economic way to build barriers between lanes on two way roads, slashing deaths by head on collisions there by 70 to 80 percent. The death and serious injury rate on Swedish roads have plummeted since they adopted the plan. I also found a great paper on Vision Zero written by Monash University Accident Research Center analysts Claes Tingvall and Narelle Haworth that goes into even more detail on how it's done.
 
Somewhere out there, some nameless traffic engineer woke up today and jumped out of bed. He walked around his house getting ready for work, got in his car, and drove to the office. He doesn't know that the intersection he designed sometime years ago in Portland, Maine contributed to my friend nearly being killed on Friday. He doesn't know that my friend won't be able to jump out of his bed for months. The engineer is, of course, a product of a school of thought that's been engrained in the culture of traffic engineering since we first started driving around on four wheels. He's a cog in our old-school, car centric traffic design machine.
 
But still, someone should tell him about Vision Zero. Someone should tell all the traffic engineers. People don't need to die and get seriously injured on the roads.
 
We're smarter than this.
 
 
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Comments(5)

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Posted By ChipSeal - Wed, Oct 07 2009 at 10:15 AM EST

The road is not the hazard

Brian, that is not a bike lane, it is shoulder, and in my state, it is not considered part of the roadway. In my opinion, on the road in the picture, the safest position in the lane (A consideration no motorist ever has to make) would be about three feet to the left of the fog line.

Shea, it was not the road that caused your friend to be injured. It was an incompetent driver who failed to exercises due care in the operation of her automobile.

Changing the transportation.... More

Posted By Shea Gunther - Wed, Oct 07 2009 at 3:29 PM EST

The road most certainly is the hazard

I have to disagree with you on this, it was the fault of both the road and the driver of the truck. Our roads were/are designed primarily to make it easy for cars and trucks to get around. We certainly need to do a better job of training drivers to watch out for bike riders, but it can't end there. If we're serious about cutting the amount of oil we have to import and cleaning up the environment, we need to get more people on bikes. For that to happen, we have to have safe, sane bike lanes for.... More

Posted By Lill Hawkins - Wed, Oct 07 2009 at 9:39 AM EST

Maine Roads

I can't bring myself to mention safety and Maine roads in the same sentence. The biggest problem with Maine road construction is that there are no shoulders. Nowhere to go if you have car trouble. No place to walk that's wide enough to be safe. And there's often a pretty steep drop off from the pavement to the dirt.

I don't know how many times I've read about an accident where someone "overcorrected" and overturned. We got so excited a few years ago, when they resurfaced the state road.... More

Posted By Shea Gunther - Mon, Oct 05 2009 at 2:07 PM EST

.

A safe and sane bike lane is one that I'd feel comfortable riding on with my young daughter. Three feet of space and a stripe of paint next to a busy road is neither safe nor sane.

Posted By Brian - Mon, Oct 05 2009 at 1:56 PM EST

Why is this bike line not safe or sane?

Can you explain why the bike lane in the picture you have at the top of the article is not safe? Also, I live in Davis CA. and I do have to agree that it's a great city to live in and bicycle commute around. However, I don't agree with your description that bike lanes and car lanes are "physically separated" or that the roads are designed to force cars to travel slowly. It's simply not true. Although the Davis "Green Belt" is a separate bike route through the city that is physically.... More

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