Detailed studies by Gorski Consulting have demonstrated that some painted cycling lanes, in appropriate locations, can be relatively safe. Those locations involve relatively wide lanes for both motor vehicles and cyclists, with good surface conditions, and minimal vertical or horizontal alignments. But it is those alignments that are a crucial issue.
For decades collision reconstructionists have recognized that roadways with hills/valleys or horizontal curves (i.e. alignments) pose a greater challenge for motor vehicle drivers but also for cyclists. This is not that difficult to understand. When such alignments do not exist motor vehicle drivers do not need to apply steering inputs nor do they need to change the pressure on an accelerator pedal or apply braking. Thus maintaining a proper centre location within a travel lane is easy to do. And similar simplifications exist for cyclists. But that becomes more complicated when vertical or horizontal alignments exist. Not only must motor vehicle drivers apply steering but sometimes they also need to adjust their speed by either braking or accelerating. This relatively undiscussed matter keeps many vulnerable persons in danger of being involved in a collision. This lack of knowledge becomes even more important to cyclists and those motor vehicle drivers who encounter cyclists where those alignments exist.
Past Research Showing Good Results
Gorski Consulting conducted testing at a reasonably safe, painted, cycling lane created on Colborne Street near St James Street in London, Ontario in the summer of 2022. The details of the study as well as its results were posted on this Gorski Consulting website throughout the spring, summer and fall of 2022. The testing site on Colborne Street contained good characteristics: it was flat, both vertically and horizontally, and it surface was in reasonably good condition. A challenging circumstance is that it was along a travel path of the City’s transit buses and this made it more difficult to separate cyclists from buses. Testing was conducted before the new cycling lane was painted as well as after it was finished. The lateral positions of cycles and motor vehicles were documented with respect to the junction between the asphalt lane and the concrete gutter, as shown in the example below.
Laterally, the orange dots were painted 20 centimetres apart. Viewing the video of these traffic units as they passed the markers enabled the documentation of their lateral position.
For motor vehicles the outboard edge of the right front tire of the vehicle was used to reference a vehicle’s lateral position, As shown below.
The cycling lane width, from the gutter edge to the centre of the white, painted line was 1.5 metres.
The results from four, 2-hour, video sessions are summarized in the table below.
As can be seen in the above table the painting of the white line, and thus the establishment of the designated cycling lane, caused a greater separation between the cyclists and motor vehicle traffic. Before the cycling lane was established the data shows that the average lateral position of cyclists was 0.71 metres but the standard deviation was high, meaning that some cyclists were not riding close enough to the right curb. After the cycling lane was created the average lateral position of cyclists was 0.58 metres thus cyclists moved slightly closer to the curb but also the standard deviation was reduced so cyclists were not wandering into the travel lane as much as before.
For the motor vehicle data it can be seen that, before the creation of the cycling lane, these vehicles were travelling too close to the curb (1.08, 0.87, 1.08) such that, if a cyclist was present, an impact could have occurred. After the cycling lane was created the lateral position of motor vehicles was moved substantially away from the curb (3.00, 1.57, 2.11) and away from any cyclists. Also the standard deviation of the large motor vehicles was substantially reduced. The exception was for “Light Duty Vehicles” as their standard deviation was increased.
Other investigations from this study also examined the speeds of motor vehicles and cyclists during a passing motion and the location and extent of change-in-lane-position of motor vehicles as they encountered cyclists.
Overall the effects of the installation of the painted cycling lane on Colborne Street were generally positive.
Past Observations Showing Dangerous Results
Police, news media and government officials have successfully kept the public, and particularly cyclists, in the dark about causal factors that endanger their safety. A significant segment of the cycling community has no idea how and why their members are being injured and killed. Some experienced riders claim that they know what matters even though they have not examined the details of a single significant cyclist collision. Others refer to international statistics and studies claiming that these provide the answers cyclists need. But many international studies are dependent on police reports, many of questionable quality because the police investigators are not experts in what they are documenting. In other instances the applicability of international studies is rarely questioned whether or not differences in the cycling patterns and cyclist characteristics vary from the Canadian experience. The best research approach is to study Canadian data developed from observations of Canadian cyclists, their collisions, or their incidents that luckily avoid a collision. But that data is not publicly available.
Painted cycling lanes are an example of how broad generalizations are made. In the cycling community painted cycling lanes are broadly condemned in preference to “protected” lanes that have some form of physical barrier between the cycling lane and the lane used by motor vehicles. While there are benefits to such protected lanes they also allow for the presence of immovable, physical barriers close to cyclists and this is often an undiscussed danger. This problem has been analysed for decades when roadway improvements were made for the safety of motor vehicle drivers. Roadway design standards have existed for decades requiring that a “clear zone” be established along the sides of roads and highways from immovable objects such as utility poles, trees and buildings. The reasoning was quite simple: a vehicle that egresses from the confines of lane ought to have a reasonable width of clear landscape in which to slow down, reduce the severity of an impact with an immovable object, or to avoid the object altogether. Such physics does not change went a cyclist rides in a cycling lane.
While many motor vehicles riding on roads and highways have widths of 1.4 to 2.6 metres those lanes are also wider, often between 3.0 and 4.0 metres. Cycles tend to wander laterally, especially at lower speeds. This wandering and lower speed often occurs in novice riders who may be more prone to cycling mishaps. Yet the relationship between cycle widths and the accepted width of a cycling lane pose a challenge. As shown in the graphic below the Ontario government (Book 18, Traffic Manual) assumes that a typical bicycle is about 1.2 metres wide but cycling lanes are allowed to be just 1.5 metres wide. These assumptions allow for immovable objects to exist close to where a cyclist is riding.
Within most protected cycling lanes there is not much lateral clearance between a cycle and physical features such as a curb on the right or a traffic barrier on the left. Contact to such physical features can cause injury to the cyclist, or worse. The extent of such contacts and injuries is not publicly known.
Yet recent research reported by Dr. Alison Macpherson in Toronto shows that many more cyclist injuries occur from non-motor vehicle interactions. Data on Emergency Department (ED) visits by cyclists in a five-year period (2016 to 2021) in Toronto showed that 87% of ED visits did not involve a motor vehicle and for the small segment of cyclists who were hospitalized 81% did not involve a motor vehicle. Unfortunately the research did provide further details about what was the cause of those cyclist ED visits. Much of the problem is that, when a cyclist incident does not involve a motor vehicle, police are not required to fill out a collision report and so those incidents are not officially recorded in Ontario statistics.
But this does not mean that cyclist interactions with motor vehicles are not important. Cyclists continue to be entrapped by roadway features that, deceptively, do not warn cyclists of their danger. While many painted cycling lanes are reasonably safe, some are not. It would not be difficult for police, news media and politicians to identify where these dangers exist, but that is not done. The photo below is an example of a painted cycling lane where the road’s curvature poses an obvious problem to cyclists. Vehicles cross into the cycling lane on a regular basis because of the sharpness in the change-in-direction of the road occurring within a very short distance.
The internet is full of postings where cyclists post observations where a motor vehicle has crossed into a cycling lane or where some driver has parked their vehicle in the lane. Many of these instances are just random, not necessarily related to the features of the road. But instances such as the one shown above occur on a constant basis at this site because of the geometry of the road and that makes the danger more important.
In other instances painted cycling lanes are simply terminated whenever their dimensions cannot fit within some narrowing of a road. In such cases chevrons and bicycle symbols are painted within the narrowed travel lane indicating to cyclists that it is safe to continue because the law will protect them from being struck. An example of this condition is shown in the photo below on Pond Mills Road just north of Southdale Road in south-east London.
While those responsible for the roadway markings in the above photo know precisely what the symbols mean, not everyone is so fluent. Cyclists who may be young or inexperienced can legally ride along roads like these but they may not understand the specific meaning of these markings, nor may they understand the danger of riding in this narrowed stretch of road accompanied by substantial motor vehicle traffic. Even experienced cyclists do no appreciate that a law which says “motorists must give a 1-metre clearance when passing a cyclist” will not save them from the laws of physics. Curves shown in the above photo mean that both motor vehicle drivers and cyclists will need to adjust their inputs to stay within a consistent lateral portion of their lane. Those inputs are not performed with “racing-car-driver-skills” and, inevitable, the lateral position of a motor vehicle or cyclist changes. This becomes exceptionally dangerous to the cyclist. The photo below is an example of numerous motor vehicles than encroach across the white-painted line of this curve. In our view, there is a reason why there are headstones of a cemetery located in the background of this photo.
This crossing over the painted white line by motor vehicles is not uncommon because of the curvature of the road. To emphasize this point we can see the following additional photos showing a number of vehicles performing the same action.
The final photo above shows a pick-up truck travelling behind a car, both of which have encroached over the white edge line of the lane. The pick-up truck is of particular importance because such vehicles pose a special problem to cyclists. While passenger car widths may be as much as 1.8 metres, the width of full-size pick-up trucks is often just over 2.0 metres. In addition many pick-up trucks are equipped with extended or towing mirrors, similar to the two photos shown below.
As can be seen above, when an extended mirror is at least 35 centimetres beyond the width of a 2-metre-wide pick-up truck the truck’s total width becomes about 2.7 metres or slightly wider than a typical tractor-trailer. Meanwhile an earlier graphic of typical cyclist measurements showed that the eye-height of a cyclist would be in the range of 1.5 metres above the ground. This would be similar in height to where many mirrors from pick-up trucks would be located. The bottom line is that cyclists are at increased danger of head injury when passed by pick-up trucks with extended mirrors. This is a danger that is not discussed. On roadways such as the curves on Pond Mills Road the presence of a pick-up truck along with a cyclist would pose a real danger. Fortunately the number of cyclists riding in the curves of Pond Mills Road is small, but not non-existent as demonstrated by the observation below.
Discussion
An important aspect of cycling safety must include an identification of those local scenarios where cyclists may be at greater risk of injury, or worse. In London there are many examples of roadways that are dangerous to cyclists. In those, if cyclist must use such a roadway they ought to ride on a sidewalk, regardless of what laws prohibit it. Unfortunately there is little publicity to properly inform cyclists what roadways they should avoid. This makes minimal sense. Accompanied by this there is a lack of any meaningful information provided to the public, and especially cyclists, about the details of cyclist collisions that might help inform cyclists about what they should do to avoid being victims. And there seems to be little effort by all involved to change these regrettable circumstances.
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