🚀 go-pugleaf

nancy@casbs.Stanford.EDU (Nancy Pinkerton) writes:
>I am a walker and a car driver.  I don't ride a bike, so I've always
>wondered WHY, when there is a nice, wide, marked bike lane available,
>do so many cyclists drive precicely on the white line separating the
>bike lane from the driving lane?  ...There is three feet of paved
>roadway for their use - why not use it?

I am a walker and a car driver and a cyclist.  I don't do what you
describe, so I can't say for sure why people do that.  However, I can
imagine some reasons why:

- I note that you are posting from Stanford.  "Everyone knows" that
cyclists at Stanford are all future BMW-drivers, so they're just
practicing for that day when they really do own the road.

- It's fun to see if you can ride a bicycle in a perfectly straight
line.

- On at least one street that I know of (Channing, head into downtown,
before the Newell light) the bike lane has a kind of wash-board
texture.  It might not be noticeable in a car, but on a bicycle it's
VERY unpleasant (this is one place where I don't ride in the bike
lane).

- Without street sweeping, the bike lanes fill up with crud fairly
quickly, and it makes your tires last longer to stay out of the crud.
Cars tend to clean out their own lanes because of the wind that they
make.

- People in side streets and driveways are more likely to see you if
you are a little bit closer to where they expect to see cars.  People
aren't looking for fast-moving objects on the sidewalk.  I've seen
someone back into a cyclist -- I think it broke her leg, and it sure
tore up the bicycle.

The last two reasons are the most important :-).  Note that "it is a
pain for you to pass them".  That means that you see the cyclist.
From the cyclist's point of view, you are not a big problem -- the
people who don't see the cyclist are the problem.

David Chase
Sun