Urban cycling won’t be safe until everyone accepts the culture

Editor:

As an avid cyclist who has ridden over 40,000kms on the roads around Lethbridge in the last 13 years, I am dismayed and alarmed with what appears to be increasing public hostility to bikes and cycling, especially in the city proper.

There are likely many reasons behind this hostility. An over-arching one is ignorance -- many adult urban cyclists do not know where they must ride (on a pathway or street, not the sidewalk), do not know when they must or should yield the right of way, and do not know or use basic cycling hand signals.

Many adult urban drivers do not know where cyclists are allowed to ride (on designated bike lanes, bike paths, and on most city streets as well), do not know when they must or should yield the right of way, and do not know basic cycling hand signals (some drivers do not even seem to know how to use their vehicle’s turning signals).

Although the bike lane infrastructure recently installed downtown is essential and the absolute minimum for safe cycling in the areas where it has been installed, a more fundamental issue is the need to improve the will of everyone to share the streets and roads and to know how to share them.

If I read the Herald correctly, one city council member recently raised the danger of drivers accidentally “dooring” cyclists, perhaps implying that downtown dedicated bike lanes and the cyclists riding them were solely to blame for this hazard.

In Quebec (everywhere in the province), a driver who opens his door in front of a cyclist (which usually results in severe physical injuries and sometimes in death to the cyclist) will pay a stiff fine, no matter the outcome.

The way to resolve this is for drivers to learn and use the “Dutch Reach,” which means that car and truck passengers reach across their bodies using their arm farthest from the door to open it thereby allowing themselves to turn and see a cyclist or other approaching object.

Lethbridge residents have not even begun to develop a fundamental urban willingness to accept cycling, let alone coming to grips with “dooring” or employing the “Dutch Reach.”

For these and a long list of other hazards that space does not allow me to address here, I almost exclusively ride out of town on highways with wide verges, which allows me and others like me to ride for distance, speed, exercise, and pleasure. Necessities of route navigation, however, often compel me to ride two-lane paved roads which have narrow verges.

These roads require hyper-attention given that some drivers assume I do not have the right to be in “their” lane (I do) or even on the narrow verge.

The widely embraced international standard is that drivers of all vehicles should give cyclists a margin of 1.5 meters (about five feet) (1 meter in areas with a 50km an hour or less speed limit) when passing’.

It also means the cyclist needs to give her/himself 1.5 meters distance from the far-right edge of the verge, and that means (on a road like Highway 508, for example) riding just in the traffic lane itself. Most drivers willingly give that wide berth and simply pass you; a substantial few do not.

So this year I am installing a so-called “dash cam” for my road bike, and will henceforward report drivers (through my record of their license plates) who have severely intruded on that margin.

The good news for those who just like to ride is the new Link Pathway that will run between Lethbridge and Coaldale.

It will offer safe cycling for all in a rural setting.

But aside from it and some of the city’s established bike paths, including the 7th Avenue bike route, urban cycling cannot occur safely, especially downtown, until there is the will and knowledge among city government, drivers, pedestrians and cyclists to accept a cycling culture and promote a knowledge base that will support it.

James Tagg

Lethbridge