Cycling

Adventures in Active Transportation is a blog post by Tannis Braithwaite, a member of the BC Cycling Coalition. In it, she highlights some of the barriers to active transportation in B.C., especially as they apply to provincial (non-municipal) highways. The focus here is still on moving motor vehicles, not active transportation.

Are you going green? Is an e-bike something that you are considering the purchase of to help you get around? Buying an electric bicycle or adding an electric motor to a conventional bicycle to help out with the chore of pedalling uphill or giving a boost to your efforts on level ground sure sounds good!

Question: Eastbound on Point Grey Road at Alma Street in Vancouver there are two bike lanes on the north side of the street that are allowed to cross Alma Street without stopping. On the diverter is a lane use sign for Eastbound traffic, "no straight ahead except for bicycles".

We are seeing significant changes to city streets that create more room for transportation modes other than the automobile. Your opinion of these changes likely depends whether you are inside or outside of that automobile. Is it an informed opinion? Where do you find information on how these things work? Good questions!

This is a podcast from Steed Cycles in North Vancouver. It details a crash between a cycle ridden by Ben Bollinger and a car that ran a stop sign and struck him. It explains the injuries that he suffered and the "Enhanced Accident Benefits" that ICBC provided. He was part of the community voice that caused ICBC to stop billing uninsured, vulnerable road users for damages to the vehicle striking them.

The dreaded Right Hook: Where a driver passes by on the cyclist's left and then makes a right hand turn, oblivious to the fact that the cyclist was there and had to be yielded to. A study by University of Toronto Engineering found that drivers often fail to adequately scan for non-motorists when they turn right at intersections. In fact, more than half of 19 participants aged between 35 and 54 years old were guilty of this.

The case of Steinebach v Skittrell involves a collision between a car driven by Katherine Skittrell turning right over a bicycle lane to enter the Gables townhouse complex and Mark Steinebach, a cyclist who was using that bicycle lane. Ms. Skittrell should have been aware of Mr. Steinebach, as she had nearly collided with him in the intersection of Promotory Road and Teskey Way a short distance away.

"Are there rules for riding bicycles?" a reader asks after narrowly missing a collision with a bicyclist. "They seem to ride wherever they feel like it. How is a driver supposed to know what bicycle riders are going to do?"

Cycling advocates in BC would like to see our government enact a safe passing distance law so that drivers are aware of how much space they must leave between their vehicle and the cycle as they drive by. Two US cities, Grand Rapids, Michigan and Knowville, Kentucky have such laws and were chosen by NHTSA for a study of how high visibility enforcement of the law influenced passing distances.