Near Miss of the Day 294: How safe do you feel in a painted cycle lane?

There's a similar cycle lane near me (just south of Winchester), I really can't understand what the point of it is.

Whoever decided to paint that also decided that there didn't need to be one the other way. Almost as if it's completely random with no logic whatsoever behind it.

I cycle on this road usually a few times a week. A lot of cyclists do. It's the main road from Manchester through Salford to Bolton Ironman territory and beyond. The infrastructure is terrible the whole route and I experience close passes all the way along.

When I say close passes, I mean I stopped counting at over twenty in just 15km just last week after a period riding off-road made me more conscious of them - four as serious as the video above at crossing pinch points.

The A6 is listed on Boardman's future 'Bee Network' and it has great potential with a huge amount of wasted space (hatched Road markings, wide pavements). It would be ideal for segregated cycle lanes but I just can't see the money being available. To my knowledge, with the Ironman being Bolton's only internationally recognised event you would think investment in such schemes would be a win-win for everybody...

For educational purposes, councils should paint a line 1.5m from the cycle lane edge, to show the clearance needed between a vehicle and a cycle, like those chevrons on motorways that show safe following distance.

Those cycle lanes are utterly pointless, put there purely as a token gesture to say that the council have done something to protect cyclists.

As for expecting PC Plod to do anything about it..... they will turn round and say "if you cycled in the lane there would have been plenty of space for the lorry to get by you."

I took footage of an incident very similar to that to the police, when a car passed me within a couple of inches at this Pedestrian Refuge.   Would need to dig out the actual footage for a screenshot, but you can see from that image how little space there would be for a car and a bike.

The police went, we couldn't identify who was driving (I had given them a description as I caught up with the driver at the roundabout about 150m down the road), the angle of the camera couldn't prove how close they were to you. (I even gave them calculations to show that there was physically no way for a car to give adequate passing distance at the point).

So they will trot out any excuse not to take action against such ridiculous close passes

Unfortunately this occurs to everyone once in a while:

I always ride outside the line, I'd rather have motorists honking their horns than even remotely giving them an inkling they can squeeze past with inches to spare. However even then there are those killer types who will fuck you over no matter what you do, I had a similar experience with a tipper wagon a few years ago but he was doing close to 50 as his back wheels literally brushed past me on his diagonal line to make the curved exit off the bypass d/c.

And again a few weeks ago on the way to the hospital a high sided 7.5t yet again within inches but a traffic cop on the opposite lane who must have seen what happened and simply drove on with no fucks given just like the driver. Oh and this was a couple of hours after an Arriva bus deliberately drove me into the kerb, and you've guessed it, Arriva are having technical difficulties retrieving the CCTV from the bus, cunts, even worse the police haven't fone shit to even contact them or myself after being reported!

Doesn't matter if we have a 'few' deaths of cyclists, plod nor government are interested in any meaningful action to prevent this, simply blame cyclists for getting in the way, blame cyclists for being in the 'blind spot' or whatever that weeks excuse is for smashing something to pulp, and with the current total at just over 2 cyclist deaths every single week (I realise a small number are single person rtc's) this isn't small potatoes though even if the number of years to average out a chance of an individual death is something like 8000 or whatever, it's still over a 100 deaths that are caused primarily by criminals and the justice system is not doing shit to protect us ... AGAIN!!

Why does the ‘cycle lane’ start?

And why does it end?

It’s just some tick-in-the-box exercise by the council to say that they have a ‘cycle infrastructure’.

The police are now in a difficult position because if interviewed the driver can say that they didn’t contravene the ‘cycle lane’.

That "lane" appears not to be wide enough even to fit "END" painted in it. Might be worth asking the authority if these markings conform to regulations - if not, my understanding is that the authority has to change them.

There are quite a few of these in my local area; I understand the rationale for the islands for pedestrians but the hazard to cyclists is significant. We need at least 1.5 m width and coloured surfaces to be effective.

Shocking!

Please report this to the police. As we all know they should be on the other side of the white line(carriag eway) whether there is a cycle lane or not.........

Possibly the worst cycling infrastructure ever, as it legitimises bad driving.

It was probably put in with the best of intentions to protect cyclists, but does exactly the opposite.  The cycle lane appears to be just for that section of road narrowed by the pedestrian refuge, but is far too narrow to protect, and while previously, any reasonable driver would not have passed a cyclist there, now many will because they can do so without entering the cycle lane.  So this measure, presumably done to make cycling safer, actually makes it much more dangerous.

Please share this video with the local highway authority, and stating that it creates a hazard and endangers cyclists, and that if there is a collision there involving a cyclist, you will ensure that the council is held responsible.  Share the video with any local and national cycling organisations, local councillors and your MP and the Minister for Transport, and local and national media.

It doesn't excuse the dreadful driving my the HGV driver at all, but I hate these rediculously narrow cycle lanes.  They take a road which is just about wide enough for passing traffic, and then paint a line a couple of foot out from the kerb.  What good to this is anyone.  Just don't do it.  It feels safer not to have them.

There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that painted cycle lanes encourage close passing and dangerous driving, and this is probably why councils like them so much.

This type of "design" legitimizes awful driving.

They think they are doing nothing wrong.

Terrible infrastructure encourages terrible drivers to drive terribly.

I can't believe you nearly got taken out by The Ruttles.

I swore quite loudly when I watched that one.

Another highly trained professional driver.