Today I did the unforgivable.
You know how when you’re riding along on the bike path thinking “the pedestrians are there on their footpath, the cars are in the car lane and we have this bike lane just for bikes, how cool is that?” and then a car suddenly cuts across in front of you to turn or park, and you slam on the brakes and swerve, freaked out at narrowly avoiding a horrible accident and furious at the stupid, stupid driver?
Well, in an awkward shoe-on-the-other foot type situation, today I was the driver and I did that to a cyclist! I did that unforgivable thing which many drivers have done to cyclist-me, and which i’ve written cranky blogs about.
You’d think I’d know better.
For hours afterwards I yelled at myself (inside my head) just like the cyclist-me yelled at those other thoughtless drivers (also inside my head) and now I’m writing another cranky blog about it.
I cut across a bike lane, in front of a cyclist, to park the car.
Argh!
To his credit, the cyclist just made a funny noise and swerved around me creating the strong impression that this sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME.
And now I know how it happens. I was in an unfamiliar city, in an unfamiliar manual car, with a worn out clutch, looking for somewhere to park. The road signs and line markings were not like what I’m used to in my home city, and I wasn’t deeply familiar with the local traffic’s unique behaviour and patterns like I am at home. I was busy managing to not be in the wrong lane at a multilane intersection and crossing tram tracks without hitting a tram, then entered a roundabout, ahead of a cyclist who I immediately forgot about while my mind was focussed on how to get into that off-street car parking bay up ahead. But the entry I thought I’d seen turned out to be a carpark exit only.
So I kept driving while trying to figure where the entrance could be, and within seconds spotted an empty kerbside car space and pulled straight into it: across the bike lane, across the path of the long forgotten cyclist, Oblivious; distracted with concern that car spaces are hard to find so you don’t pass one up. As the cyclist veered past me and whooped, I was shocked back to earth.
So that explains it.
“But that’s no excuse!” I yell at myself some more in my head. It was poor driving.
It was inexperience. I’m not used to driving strange cars around strange cities, so I failed to juggle all those tasks in my conscious mind which are largely dealt with by my subconscious back at home where I know the patterns and interactions of every street and every bike path. No muscle memory to rely on, you see.
I’m ashamed to admit that the only subconscious process going on in me-the-driver was the very unhelpful “Don’t dither in the middle of the road and hold up other cars. See parking space. Grab it.”
Where was the “don’t try to kill cyclists” instinct, that a special awareness for two-wheelers that I have back at home? That awareness, it turns out, is highly conditional.
I am massively disappointed and angry with myself. And I don’t for one minute forgive any of those drivers who’ve done the same thing to me. Having now walked in his shoes, I understand that the befuddled old guy in Campbell Parade was in a strange town, looking for a park and unable to process everything that was going on. But I don’t excuse him. He nearly killed me. And as for those young guys who were totally aware of everything going on, being in familiar territory and knowing full well they were cutting in front of me and double parking across a bike lane but went ahead and did it anyway – because, you know, they’re in a car and cars just have right of way and can do whatever they want, so nyer! – there’s even less than no excuse. When I tried to explain they’d broken a road rule – not to mention the whole endangering my life thing – they booed me. Seriously!
It’s possibly a bit interesting that when I returned to the crime scene a few days later, (this time the territory was familiar so I didn’t do anything stupid) – I noticed a couple of signs posted where the bike lane exited the roundabout:
...even though the line marking for the bike lane continued.
Which is a bit contradictory.
The signs could either mean “End of separated bike lane” - Within the roundabout, the bike path was isolated from the car lane by a concrete curb. The signs were placed where the curb separator ended and the bike lane merged with the road again, marked only by a understated unbroken white line.
Or, they could signify that I’m not the only stupid tourist in this tourist town who can’t think and drive at the same time and so for safety they might as well just put the onus on cyclists to avoid the tourists.
As no moral tale is useful without learnings, I would suggest the following (as would any half sensible urban planner) because it’s just blindingly obvious, really, that:
- Placing a bike lane between car lanes and kerbside parking is just asking for trouble; and
- Bike lanes should be painted bright, hard to ignore colours with large bicycle icons at frequent intervals, so drivers who aren’t paying attention don’t just see a line on the road and think it’s some kind of lane marking that has nothing whatsoever to do with bikes, or don’t even see the line at all because lets face it - a driver in search of the holy grail (a parking spot right next to the place they’re trying to get to) has tunnel vision.
God! Still can’t believe I did that.
