Trying to make cycling as safe as possible can be a real challenge for law enforcement professionals and municipal authorities. Even while California frequently receives accolades as a leader in cycling safety, there are still hundreds of deaths and thousands of serious injuries involving cyclists reported each year.
Ensuring that cyclists can safely share the road with motor vehicles requires the careful development of infrastructure and the establishment of policies that help make safety more of a priority. Recently, the state legislature passed numerous bills intended to protect cyclists. The governor signed many of those bills into law, although he vetoed two bills intended to counter particularly egregious speeding.
One of the bills signed into law specifically addresses the conversion of public roadways to bike lanes by prohibition sharrows on higher-speed roads. What does this mean for public safety?
Signs can be easier for people to spot
The best traffic signs and notifications are as visible as possible to as many people as possible. In some cases, local authorities adding bike lanes to existing roads primarily rely on road markings called sharrows as a means of conveying the need for traffic to shift accordingly.
The problem with that approach is that drivers don’t necessarily scan the pavement as actively as they scan the road ahead of them and the horizon. There can be vehicles blocking sharrow markings on the street itself, and drivers may simply overlook those markings. The sharrows can also become worn due to chemical exposure or the frequent passage of traffic over the paint. Sharrows are not the best way of communicating with motorists, especially on roads with higher speed limits.
The combination of elevated signage in addition to sharrow road markings may increase the likelihood of cyclists and drivers alike respecting the shift in traffic flow to accommodate a bicycle lane. Under SB 1216, one of several bills recently signed into state law, local authorities cannot use sharrows to create new bike lanes on roads with speed limits above 30 miles per hour.
They may still be able to use signs in addition to indicate bike lanes and can include high-speed roads on maps of bike lanes. The law may prevent scenarios in which cyclists have to share poorly-marked bicycle lanes with fast-moving vehicles, which can reduce the likelihood of severe cycling crashes.
At the end of the day, road design and signage can only do so much to offset dangerous traffic behaviors. Cyclists also need to be ready for the possibility of a car-bicycle collision. Filing insurance claims and possibly also lawsuits can help injured cyclists demand accountability from drivers who don’t prioritize their obligation to safely share the road.
