<p>If you have to stop or slow before turning, being right up against the curb is safer – any straight-through bicyclist who approaches will pass you on the left, away from the direction you will be turning, so there will be no potential “right hook” problem. If you leave space between your car and the curb, then less careful bicyclists may attempt to pass you on your right just as you start turning. Given that things approaching from the rear quarter areas are generally hardest for car drivers to see, this is a less safe situation; even if you are looking, it is easy to miss seeing an approaching bicyclist coming from the most-difficult-to-see angle.</p>
<p>I think I might put in a call to my city office and ask them to add something to the newsletter explaining how to use the new bike lanes. I can’t be the only one who didn’t know how to use them, and I get another email from the city every day letting me know about something… I am surprised they weren’t more vocal about the bike lanes. It’s clear that improper use is really dangerous.</p>
<p>It had nothing to do with a bike lane, but my sister got a ticket once for “improper use of lane.” I bet you could get a ticket for doing this wrong. My sister was turning right and, with no cars coming, turned into the left lane instead of the far right lane, because she was going to be making a left turn into a driveway right after she completed her first turn. That doesn’t seem much different from turning from the wrong lane, one is turning from the wrong lane and one is turning into the wrong lane. The latter is ticketable.</p>
<p>I took my driving test in California more than a generation ago.
The law back then was exactly like what Cardinal Fang and ucbalumnus described above.</p>
<p>These laws vary by state. Since several folks here are in Michigan, this brochure from MDOT describes how they are to be used. And yes, our bike lanes are typically no wider than 3 feet. </p>
<p>A person shall not operate a vehicle on or
across a bicycle lane, except to enter or
leave adjacent property. This means that
drivers are to make turns from the travel
lane and not the bicycle lane.</p>
<p>For the life of me, I can’t picture what CF and Niquii are describing.
I’m a Michigander and I was taught to treat the bike lane as a no-car zone… which seems obvious to me. I do not go into bike lanes, even when turning. I didn’t realize this was a common thing to do (going into the bike lane that is). To me, the bike lane is like a sidewalk that happens to be flush with the street. I certainly wouldn’t drive on a sidewalk!</p>
<p>In the small town in California where I got my first driver’s license, the route we were supposed to drive on includes a bike lane between the car lane and the curb. If we failed to merge our car into the bike lane well before turning right, we would for sure fail the driving test.</p>
<p>California is just different, I think. But when we later moved to another state, we actually did not know whether the regulation there is different from California’s one.</p>
<p>However, Michigan’s laws do require right turners to approach and turn from as close as practicable to the right hand curb or edge of the roadway:
[Michigan</a> Legislature - Section 257.647](<a href=“Michigan Legislature - Page Not Found”>Michigan Legislature - Section 257.647)
The law does not otherwise specify what car drivers are supposed to do with bike lanes, but 257.647 appears to effectively require merging into the bike lane to legally approach a right turn as close as practicable to the right hand curb or edge of the roadway, contrary to what Michigan’s DOT says in its brochure.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen a bike lane like that. They’re always flush with the curb. That’s probably why I can’t figure out what the heck anyone is talking about.</p>
<p>I learned to drive in an old university town with narrow roads where cars share the road with cyclists and where you also have to watch out for pedestrians and deal with cars parked on the side of the road. I was taught to merge in the bike lane when turning as some users have described before.
Differences in road laws would pose a problem when visiting but not when you move to another state since as a new resident you will probably need to pass a new road test in order to obtain your new state licence.</p>
<p>We have some newer bike lanes in town (Royal Oak, Michigan) - I’ll see if I can snap a pic and update. They don’t look that wide (not even three feet wide). They almost look more like ‘bike warnings’ indicating that you should expect to share the lane with bikes and not a separate lane…I say that because there are new ‘bike lane’ logos but the road isn’t noticeably wider…</p>
<p>Yes I read the rest of the Michigan document. They are the sharrow type lanes (meant to indicate to the car driver that they are likely to encounter biker). Driver should turn across the small bike lane when it is safe to go (so yield to bikers then turn).</p>
Yes, turning into the wrong lane is commonly ticketed in my area. We have a few entrances to shopping centers that are really close to the turning entering traffic. To avoid being ticketed once my car get into the road I’m turning in I switch my indicators and move over.</p>
<p>In NYC, S-1 bikes to work, helmeted, all over Manhattan and Brooklyn throughout the better weather months. His big concern now is the introduction of CitiBikes, where anyone can rent a bike for an hour or so and re-park it elsewhere. </p>
<p>He’s worried for all the inexperienced cyclists now suddenly in the city. In particular he mentioned that they wouldn’t know how to avoid illegally turning cars that cross through the bike lanes, which I didn’t fully grasp until reading this thread. There was a lot of excitement over CitiBikes, but insufficient education surrounding it (he felt).</p>
<p>Since the thread began with concern for young people who do not drive, I guess we should all check in with our young people who bicycle as young adults, and find out what they do to protect themselves from car drivers. Long after they stop being hotheads on bikes (and I know that happens, too), bicyclists need to be the most defensive drivers of all.</p>
<p>It’s backwards from China, where cars were introduced into a bike-riding society. Don’t you remember those confusing pictures of traffic there? We’re going to that same place, and need a much better awareness of sharing the roads with other forms of transportation than our own.</p>
<p>I’m going to check in with my young adult bicyclist, after reading this thread, to see how it’s going for him.</p>
<p>In NYC streets with bike lanes (the ones where they are delineated with paint on the pavement, not the separate ones with physical barriers) there are dotted lines between the car lane and the bike lane indicating that cars will be crossing the bike lane.</p>
<p>Although the whole Citibike thing can be pretty scary, there have been no serious injuries (knock wood!) in the 8 (?) months they have been on the ground. The bikes have been hugely popular. I reluctantly allowed my 17-year-old to have a membership.</p>
<p>Citibikes is just a horror. The only reason there haven’t been fatalities in midtown is because all of the construction keeps traffic from really moving. But I blame the people who get on the bikes without knowing how to ride, of which there are more than you might think. It would be a great program if everyone who rode was responsible about knowing now to ride a bike and following the rules of the road.</p>
<p>I liked it on December 31, when people got onto CitiBikes as volunteers to pedal in place for 30 minutes each. They stored up the pedaled energy to use for the Ball Drop in Times Square, New Years Eve. But nobody went anywhere, it was just a good energy day.</p>
<p>I agree, Zoosermom. Out in the sticks, we don’t have the traffic but bikes are often all over the place. Very scary sometimes. In the land of no bike lanes, I find kids who will split up with two on one side of the road and two on the other; sometimes swerving around. In our town, that has a bike path, the serious bikers ride on the road that has a dangerous curve and is narrow. You cannot pass them if there is on-coming traffic. The bike path parallels the road but these bikers won’t go on it. Then we have the bikers with no lights biking at night on country roads that are unlit.</p>
<p>Sharrows are not bike lanes. Where I’ve seen them used, sharrows are placed so that if cyclists ride over them, the remaining travel lane to their left would be too narrow for a driver to pass in. Sharrows are placed on roads that would be too narrow for a bike lane, to remind drivers that bikes will use the travel lane, and to remind cyclists not to cower unsafely in the gutter when the road is too narrow for bikes and cars side by side.</p>
<p>On roads like that, drivers can’t pass cyclists if there is oncoming traffic. Motorists must wait to pass until it is safe. </p>
<p>Even on roads with no sharrows, when the road is narrow I ride well out from the curb, roughly in the righthand car tire track. That way the driver can see that they must cross the centerline to pass me. Otherwise, drivers inexperienced with cyclists will try to squeeze past, when there is no room for them to squeeze past.</p>
<p>Ahh that makes sense. The sharrows look more close to what I have seen before in other parts of Michigan. The more traditional bike lane I see in my new hometown was brand new to me, but that lane is quite wide. That road has always had a full car width between the right lane and the shoulder so I guess it was a good candidate for a bike lane. It’s just a very busy road and we don’t have the bike lanes anywhere else, so I’m not sure how practical it is for bikers to use it! Maybe they are just thinking ahead to wanting to move in that direction. I only live about 3 miles from work so biking in good weather wouldn’t be entirely out of the question though right now it would be completely unsafe… we would need more of these bike lanes. And good weather is only a few months out of the year. I wouldn’t be able to break a sweat since we do not have showers or even bathrooms that are comfortable to change in. I’d have to REALLY not want to drive to make it worthwhile.</p>
<p>Where I live right now and the surrounding area is a bit of a commercial hub with a LOT of office buildings, it’s where a LOT of people in SE Michigan work. The trouble is, this city and the surrounding cities are VERY expensive to live. It is one of the most expensive areas in this region. Not many young professionals could afford it. So it would make it impossible for them to bike since most of them would be commuting on the freeway from cheaper locales (like I had to do when I was single.) My fiance makes very good money and together we are still at the top of the very bottom quartile for our city in terms of income. There are some lower budget apartments but they are across town from where most of the businesses are, too far to bike even in good weather. And for a young person, those rent prices are still very high compared to other cities.</p>
<p>That would be the thing, for me. I can’t command the sort of income that would allow me to choose to live in Ann Arbor, NYC, or any of the big cities I am aware of-- absolutely not single and not really with my fiance either, together we could have maybe pulled off Ann Arbor but only living like paupers. They’d have to have uniquely low cost of living. Which is unfortunate, since it seems the low income are the ones most likely to not have a car or be able to drive.</p>
![http://www.hawleycompany.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/new_bike_lane-768x1024.jpg[/url]](http://www.hawleycompany.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/new_bike_lane-768x1024.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
![http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/bike/images/bikeLanes1.jpg[/url]](http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/bike/images/bikeLanes1.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
