When my friends and I learned to ride bikes, our parents told us to ride against the traffic. They reasoned it was easier to see the cars that way.
But now we know that wrong-way cycling is terribly unsafe — don't we? Wrong-way cycling actually makes it harder for motorists to see the bicyclists. And it's motorists seeing bicyclists that we should be most concerned about.
The last I heard, the issue of wrong-way cycling comes up to the Bellevue City Council Monday night when it considers a plan to make improvements to a 5.5-mile stretch of West Lake Sammamish Parkway.
Briefly, the city staff recommends mixing northbound and southbound bike riders and pedestrians onto a “multi-use” trail that uses the southbound shoulder of the roadway. That shoulder is separated from southbound motorists by a low buffer for about the half the distance; just a white line the rest of the way. The multi-use path, with cyclists riding both ways, crosses many intersections and driveways. (Information of the West Lake Sammamish Parkway bike lane dispute is available here.)
The Cascade Bicycle Club and Friends of Lake Sammamish both strongly oppose the city's recommendation as it puts bike riders in harm's way.
What's wrong with riding against traffic?
It's against the law. RCW46.61.770 requires bicyclists to ride on the right side of the road, in the same direction as traffic, points out a critical analysis by Friends of Lake Sammamish.
It's also dangerous.
One recent example is in Ketchum, Idaho, where two popular bicycle paths intersect with dozens of roads and driveways. “We've had a ton of complaints about near misses,” Ketchum Police Chief Corey Lyman told the Idaho Mountain Express. The two bike paths force cyclists riding east to ride against traffic. Ketchum Police Sgt. Dave Kassner says that 50% of collisions between cars and bicycles involve bicycles that are riding against traffic. With the bike paths in place, the city now has to scramble to post bike speed limits and to paint bike lane on the road so cyclists can go with traffic.
Wrong-way cycling is dangerous, especially at intersections and driveways, because “the motorist just does not expect a hazard to be approaching from that portion of the environment,” according to a California bicycle accident study commissioned in 1974. It found 14% of auto-bike collisions involved wrong-way cyclists.
There's more evidence cited by Friends of Lake Sammamish.
Bellevue Police Officer Michael Chiu told the Seattle Times on March 4 that a common collision involves a biker riding along a sidewalk opposite the flow of traffic as a car pulls out of a driveway, with neither person noticing the other. The multi-use trail is essentially a sidewalk, contends the Friends of Lake Sammamish.
Other evidence: bicycle advocate Phil Miller, in a letter to Redmond two years ago, says the Harborview Injury Prevention Center Research Center studied bicycle-motor vehicle accidents from 1985-1990 and found one-third involved wrong-way cycling. Also a WSDOT study of car-bike collisions found that 8% of fatalities came from wrong-way riding.
Let's do what the experts say. John Forester, a cycling consulting engineer based in Lemon Grove, California, has written about effective cycling techniques for youths and adults on his website. The first thing he tells children and adults: “Ride on the right-hand side of the roadway, not on the left and not on the sidewalk.”
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