If you weren't already doing it all along, that's kind of on you. It's literally on the driving test. I've been hit walking in a crosswalk by a driver who didn't check over their shoulder as I came up behind them while they were stopped. No injuries luckily.
GP is just a shitty driver, is my takeaway.
That goes for cars and bikes, and cars and pedestrians, and bikes and pedestrians.
Nope. The numbers of people killed or seriously injured in road collisions that don't involve motor vehicles are absolutely tiny. Motorists are dangerous, cyclists are not.
> Cyclists sometimes behave as though they are pedestrians and other times they behave as vehicles, depending on what is convenient.
And? Is that somehow bad? This seems to be a common motorist talking point, but I've never understood what it's supposed to imply.
Yes, it can be very bad. Drivers not being predictable is a big cause of car crashes. I was always taught that when driving, don't be nice, be predictable. It's also a large part of defensive driving. A cyclist that is sometimes acting like a vehicle, and at other times as a pedestrian is not nearly as predictable.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/28/why-john-fores...
Except when they ignore stop signs and blow through an intersection when it's not their turn, causing a car that has the right of way and is already in the intersection to slam on their brakes to try to avoid killing the cyclist, resulting in the car losing traction due to the weather conditions and to slide into a tree. Saw it happen in front of my eyes just a few days ago.
Or when to avoid stopping behind a car that was already in the turn lane in front of them, they hop up on the sidewalk and then cut off the car via the sidewalk, nearly running down several pedestrians. That one was earlier this afternoon.
Cyclists and pedestrians are not the same, and should not be treated the same, or interchangeably. I agree that the way that infrastructure is set up right now is terrible for cyclists. But it is how things are right now, and ignoring that is silly. It's not at all that different from how having pedestrians and cyclists sharing the same roadway is also not the best of ideas.
But in addition, you know those signs they have up on the side of the road, the "Share the Road" ones? Sharing goes both ways.
A shared space doesn't mean you're entitled to bringing an armoured, deadly machine into that space and expect others to take equal responsibility for the danger your machine is imposing.
I suspect you aren't merging into the bike lane when turning right and leaving space for a cyclist to pass you on the right. I've seen many drivers make that mistake. As a cyclist I never pass cars on the right in this situation because drivers don't check.
You are supposed to merge into the bike lane before turning. It's in the DMV handbook. The painted bike lane becomes a dotted line close to the intersection for precisely that reason.