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I think he's right that, at least some of the time, bike lanes are not really for the benefit of bikers- they're used to force bikers out of the way so that cars can go faster. It seems like we've basically accepted, as a society, that you have a right to drive at whatever is the speed limit on your current street. And anyone who interferes with that is blocking traffic and needs to get out of the way. Which is a little odd, when you think about it- in normal life there's no "right to run" where you can sprint at top speed and just expect people to get out of your way. It might make sense on a freeway dedicated to motor vehicles, but even then, you'll encounter stuff like trucks going at a slower speed and you just have to wait until you can pass them safely.
I've been wondering if this will come up more in the future, as EVs have given a lot more people access to speeds that in the past you'd only see from ultra-expensive supercars. If I pay for 200MPH "plaid speed" from Tesla, why should I be stuck behind some granny going 60 in her 1980s honda civic? Make a "slow car lane" and force her to drive exclusively in that lane so that the rest of us can drive as fast as we want! Oh, and if she accidentally drifts into the "regular" lane, make her pay for the damage to my car. Or at least, that's how it feels like from the perspective of someone who got used to cycling on rural roads and is suddenly told he's not supposed to do that anymore.
We sort of already have this. Many states reserve the far left lane for passing only, and cops will absolutely pull you over and ticket you for driving too slowly in it. Speeders get a pass; those following the speed limit get a fine.
This is true, but enforcement in the US is quite a bit more notional than real, ime. I wonder what the equilibrium effects of a stricter norm around this would be--maybe slower traffic would be less disruptive if the left lane was consistently open for passing.
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Sure, but that's different because it's temporary. You wait for a safe chance to pass, gun it, then move back to the normal lane and speed once you're clear. You're not supposed to just continuously barrel along the left lane at twice the speed of the right lane, which is the equivalent of cars vs a bike lane. Of course, people do that anyway...
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Yes, because speed limits are one of the most abused tools of legislation in the modern world (over the cross-section of people affected by them).
Legislators/certain factions of society impose them for reasons that have nothing to do with safety, but forget that respect for their laws is a two-way street; drivers then treat the laws (and by extension those who insist they be followed religiously, or those who aren't capable of breaking the lowest-common-denominator speed limits due to some infirmity) with the zero respect the law affords them.
They're also a way to put the bikers in a place where drivers are expecting, or can learn to expect, them to be. Though really, it's just a hack around not having the space to put in a grade-separated lane because drivers stupid enough to be on their phones (or the aformentioned granny who can barely even see) can't lanekeep (as in, not intrude on the bike lane) to save their lives.
It still gets people killed when the bike lane empties onto the road for that reason, too; the "everything needs to be high up because people who are bad enough drivers to get into rollovers deserve to die less than the pedestrians" safety standards don't help (you can't see out of modern cars unless you make the effort; that and modern hyper-bright eye-level [if you're in a normal car] headlights are why everyone loves tall SUVs simply because tallness gives you [the illusion of] better visibility, and I'd argue that if you screw up so bad you end up on the roof you deserve to die more than the people someone else is going to run over because they can't even see them when pulling out of the drive-thru or making a right turn across the bike lane).
This is why the meta is "put things in between the cars and the bikes at the expense of road usability", because it takes away the road's ability to support reasonable speeds by putting things in the way while at the same time functionally getting a grade separation between cars and bikes. Even those fucking texters still have self-preservation instincts and you can trigger them by making the lanes so narrow that they're more scared of the F-350s and the collapsible-yet-still-capable-of-damaging-the-front-end separation pipes/rails boxing them in than they are missing the latest Facebook post for 5 more minutes.
Wouldn't you normally expect them to be in the road, like right in front of you in the easiest possible place to see? Not shunted off to the side, into their perepheral vision, in a place where you can 99% ignore them until it's time to make a turn and then "oops, I never saw him." But ok, maybe you're right that drivers are just so phone-addled these days that the periphery is the only place they can actually see. Too bad modern car designs (like you mentioned) make it exceedingly difficult to see the blind spots.
Yeah, this is a fairly significant component of practical vehicular cycling advice.
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