Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
April 7, 2005
DURHAM — Imagine driving along when without signage, without warning, and without anywhere else to go, your lane ends. You stop, baffled, climb out of your car and look around. About 50 yards ahead you see where the road continues. Between here and there is an unpaved, patchy mix of grass, gravel, mounds of unused asphalt, and murky puddles from last night’s rain. Even if you wanted to drive through this gap in the road, you’re not sure you should since the ground is also littered with rusty car parts left by the last person who tried to traverse the stretch.
A motorist would immediately report the gap in the road to the local public works department. Such a gap would fail every known traffic engineering standard. Really, it’s a lawsuit waiting to be filed.
Cyclists, however, know this scenario all too well. One minute we’re riding comfortably on the 3 ft. shoulder of a wide outer lane. The next minute, we have to make a split-second decision: we can stop, jump off a six-inch ledge into the sandy grass just off the road (which is also usually filled with broken glass and empty fast-food bags), or suddenly merge with the automobile traffic.
Riding a bike in traffic isn’t necessarily dangerous. Merging with automobile traffic without warning, however, is pretty scary.
The inconsistency of the shoulder, the width of pavement just outside the line marking the limit of the lane, is just one of the reasons why state law says that cyclists should ride in the travel lane, as part of traffic. Under state law, a bicycle is considered a vehicle, just like any car, motorcycle, or truck. Not only do bicyclists have the right to ride in traffic, it’s also the safest place on the road to ride. Sometimes, though, uncooperative or unaware motorists or even just a steady stream of automobile traffic can marginalize bikers, pushing us to the shoulder.
Relegated to the margins of the roads, we often ride in that inconsistent, crumbling, glass-strewn space that may end abruptly. When the shoulder extends a foot or more in width, a cyclist can be tricked into thinking that the shoulder is a safe place to ride.
Old Erwin Rd. and Ephesus Church Rd. are case studies in varying shoulder widths and bottle-necking narrow bridges. At times, a cyclist can ride down Erwin on a width of pavement wide enough to be a bike lane. At the bottom of a hill, the “lane” may end without warning.
Roads with inconsistent shoulders are dangerous in their deception. They appear to offer bicyclists space to ride. On your bicycle, that car-free zone just outside the outer lane entices you. Then, you’re forced to think quickly about how best to avoid an accident. Neither merging nor stopping are ideal.
What would be ideal? What if civil engineers and transportation planners thought about bicycles with every road designed and built? What if bike lanes on urban streets and wide outer lanes on rural roads were the rule rather than the exception? Then the problem of the inconsistent shoulder would be a thing of the past.
We don’t accept this kind of dangerous inconsistency for our automobiles. Why do we accept it for our bikes?