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Originally Posted by fenwick16
Over 20 years ago I started various ways to stay fit. One was riding a bike from the west end of Hamilton to the east end of Burlington, Ontario (about a 1 hour ride for me). I stayed on city streets, but even so I had one car that I only narrowly avoided by making a sharp 90° turn and there were numerous large trucks that drove past me with just a couple feet to spare. After a few months, I gave it up because my nerves were so frayed by having constant narrow misses (or what I perceived to be narrow misses). So I can sympathize with people on bikes. Prior to riding a bike from Hamilton to Burlington, I had also been in Japan for a couple years and I rode a bike there daily; in Japan it was a completely different experience - it was actually relaxing instead of nerve racking.
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Here my side mirror gets clipped every so often from people unwilling to give me more than a few centimetres of personal space.
Of course I may make it seem like every motorist is bad but unfortunately in reality the bad drivers tend to out number the safe (and generous) drivers.
I usually avoid the Bedford Highway where Shore Drive runs parallel to it (Meadowbrook-Fish Hatchery) but last night I was heading to the grocery store which has few if any safer options than driving down the highway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian
Its not completely cultural... our street layout isn't suited to biking. Plain and simple. Amsterdam has biking lanes INSIDE of the sidewalks... it goes cars, trams, sidewalks, bikepaths... so there is no bikers screwing with pedestrians and both are more safe from trams and cars.
All these lines they put in are a joke... I'm not getting killed by some guy in an SUV going way to fast.
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I'm not a big fan of our so-called bicycle lanes either but it should be noted that most of my close calls are outside of the areas with bike lanes.
What I have been pushing for the southern section of the Bedford Highway in Bedford (Southgate and south) is two-traffic lanes (three if theres space in the ROW), then a narrow median for streetlights and signs, then a bike lane (wide enough for two bicycles ride side-by-side) on each side with a sidewalk and if possible space for street trees. So it'd be something like this;
sidewalk | trees | bicycle | median | traffic | traffic | traffic | median | bicycle | trees | sidewalk
Even just adding a turning lane would eliminate one of the biggest safety issues. When a car is making a left-turn traffic behind it will commonly go around it on the righthand side in the bicycle lane. A lot of motorists don't look behind them prior to doing this and close calls can result as cyclists can't predict when a car is going to drift into their lane. The only two possible solutions are installing a turning lane or put a median between the cyclist and vehicular traffic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fenwick16
Another problem with riding on the street are people opening car doors. Although it hasn't happened to me, I have heard of first hand experiences and accidents in the Toronto area newspapers involving bicycles hitting car doors that open in their way.
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I haven't experienced that problem either however I have heard of it happening before. The Bedford Highway has few legal parking spaces so the chances of a being "doored" are low most of the time.