Ignoring rules for bike-only lanes can have tragic results

On June 21, the PG published a letter by Peter Waterkotte regarding bike lanes (“Absurd Enforcement”). I understand that he feels they are an arbitrary designation fit to be ignored when a person deems them an impediment to travel and no bikers are in sight.

I read this on a day when I passed a biker with an umbrella poking from his backpack — on a non-bike lane road. Many use bikes as their only source of transportation; so rain and snow are not the barriers to travel that they are for car-bound people who don’t allow for increased travel time when the weather changes.

Bikers are often “not in sight.” Designated lanes protect their lives. Several years ago, I hovered over my comatose daughter in an ICU in Colorado. She was in a bike lane, but a driver decided that he could move beyond the stop sign and stop in that bike lane. She slammed into the car, though valiantly braking. The biker behind her swerved into traffic to avoid the car.

The driver apparently didn’t see them and felt that his travel time and the road designations of a stop sign and a bike lane didn’t apply to him as he drove some friends around.

The purpose of bike lanes is to protect the bikers. It also serves to protect the driver from causing harm to someone whom he just didn’t “see.” KATHLEEN BRODA

Mt. Lebanon