Cycling

Here is a link to the story called "Behind the Bike Box." My first reaction to this story is one of disgust, Is the City of Kelowna following BC road law in instituting this bike lane feature? Is the City of Kelowna trying to single-handedly redefine the Higways act? Does it not fly in the face of existing BC road law?

The collision referenced by this case occurred on Cornwall Avenue just east of Walnut Street in Vancouver, B.C. Marianne Dupre was riding her bicycle westbound on Cornwall and was being overtaken by a car driven by Teresa Patterson.

I understand that when driving in a bike lane the speed limit is 30km/hr. However the signage for these can be confusing at times I find. Here in North Vancouver for example there are narrow residential roads with images of a bike and two arrows painted directly on the road. This isn't a bike ONLY lane as it's more in the middle of the road with the traffic and is not bound by white lines.

What are you suppose to do when you've stopped at a red light when making a right hand turn and a homeless person on a bike purposely crashes your car because you're temporarily blocking the bike lane? He does damage to your expensive car, but he rides away. He looked like you wouldn't want to argue with him for fear of your life.

A reader from Vancouver asked me where the rules came from for bicycle lanes and signs as they could not be found in the provincial driving manual, Learn to Drive Smart. Included in the e-mail was a link to the City of Vancouver's web site which showed a collection of signs and markings that are now in use on the city streets there. I didn't think that this was going to be a tough question!

This is a case that I had to read a number of times and refer to a picture of the intersection to understand what path Ms. Hunstad, a cyclist, had taken. Rather than cross McCallum Road in Abbotsford in a straight line by using Marshall Road she took an erratic path that included travel the wrong way on McCallum twice.

I witnessed an accident the other day between a cyclist and a truck. The cyclist was riding with no hands, looking down while texting on his cell phone. He did not notice that he had come to an intersection and rode into the side of a truck. He was not wearing a helmet and received more than a few injuries requiring an ambulance to attend. Are cyclists not required to obey the sections of the motor vwhicle act in a case like this?

This incident took place at the intersection of Hillside Avenue and Gosworth Road in Victoria. Lisa MacKnight was crossing in the crosswalk following the directions of the pedestrian controlled signals as Ryan Nast approached riding a bicycle. Mr. Nast passed stopped traffic on the right hand side and intended to go through the intersection on the red until he saw Ms. MacKnight step into the crosswalk. He tried to brake but was not successful and struck her causing significant injury to her.

A lot of people don't follow the so called rules when walking or riding bicycles. The rule of ride with traffic ....ride on the right side of the road. The real bad one I see is of all ages. People not walking toward traffic.

They walk on the right and have no chance to get out of the way of on coming dangers.

This short video from the City of Redmond, Washington explains how inductive loops embedded in the pavement control traffic lights in response to traffic being present. If you are a cyclist, it can be difficult to trigger the lights if you don't know how to take advantage of the loops. Watch the video and learn how to effectively "cycle" the signal to green!