Keep imagining what it would do, because Kirkland ain't gonna do fuck-all about infrastructure. You think that car dealership wants a bike lane put in?

Oh, and also, a pre-emptive fuck you to Kinison and Susanswerphone. Cheers!

That looks sweet as hell. Unrelated: 'Dutch Junction' sounds like a sex act.

EXCELLENT POST

MORE . RUN A FEATURE

i can masturbate to the first video

I like most of it. There needs to be something more to ensure the bikes stop for pedestrians, though.

First video in American cities, please.

And the Dutch tested this method using drunk drivers?

There are parts of the eastside here that are not meant for anyone outside of a steel box on wheels. When I first read this story, I read it as 124th Ave and 132nd St (which would put this literally within sight of my house, and not really all that far from the real place), because it's easier to imagine a bicyclist being there. Then again, it's easier to imagine somebody at 124th St and 132nd Ave not noticing a bicyclist lit up like a Christmas tree until it's too late.

This won't keep you safe from drivers who blow thru red lights and stop signs like the one who almost ran me over in the crosswalk this morning when she blew thru the red light in Fremont while I was walking.

Or cyclists.

Basic physics. Potential energy of different masses means you end absorbing almost all the energy when you have a smaller mass.

i love this. However, I see two major issues: 1. cars won't stop further back. People barely stop in front of the crosswalk now. 2. this requires cyclists to obey lights, which we've noticed has been difficult to make happen.

this isn't about freeways. this can't happen in america today. sorry.

@6,8,9 Because some people act like idiots, we can't set up a better infrastructure to help people behave less like idiots.
More roads will make all these problems better, right?

@1, @6, and @11 all tied for the Tripartite Eurozone Win!

I hate Hate HATE this form of intersection and detest the fetishization of "proper" Dutch cycling infrastructure. It makes me sick. We don't have room and we don't have the political will to impose a new form of right of way on our roadways.

Adding a new cycling chicane to every intersection is a perverse way to prioritize and foster transportation cycling. It always comes down to cyclists behaving predictably and visibly (which by all accounts this Kirkland cyclist was) and to motorist awareness education and legal compliance.

cool idea but that's a system designed for an area where "right on red" is not allowed. I don't know if it could be easily implemented here.

@11 Because existing laws aren't enforced, people are encouraged to act like idiots. Changing infrastructure won't matter if drivers are still allowed to blow through traffic control mechanisms.

30 day suspended license for any moving violation (speeding, running light, failure to signal, etc.), full year for a second, eye removal for a third offense. If you don't cull the dangerous assholes from the roads, they will multiply.

@14- I don't see why not. Like right on red now, the driver just has to make sure they're not turning into someone in the crossing area.

Eh, I'm in favor of any sort of modernization efforts, but I can't help but think that a list of "Recent Vehicle Collisions with Other Vehicles" over the same timeframe would be very, very long. And the roads are already designed with cars in mind...

Have you seen this excellent video about how the Dutch got their cycle infrastructure?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj…

It even includes a little bit of 70's era Occupy Rijksmuseum footage.

You know what else will change things? Putting the legal onus on drivers to avoid collisions with peds and bikes. Here it's enough to say, "Derp derp I didn't see him, officer, derp derp," and you get off with a $52 ticket and no jail time.

That needs to change, and it needs to change dramatically.

Before you go recommending makeovers for Kirkland's streets, and those of other towns, you should take a couple of hours and actually visit them. The problem with those streets, and the reason why no amount of sober Dutch rationalism would make them safe for cyclists, is because of the very nature of them: they are featureless highways. There's nothing on them, aside from a handful of very widely spaced and vast parking lots for strip malls, office "campuses", or thousand-unit apartment complexes.

Since there is nothing IN Kirkland, or Redmond, or wherever; so the only purpose of the streets is to pass through those dead areas as rapidly as possible. The scale of the streets is designed to accommodate 50 MPH traffic (whatever the posted limit is) and the accompanying loss of ability to track fine detail. Like bikes.

These streets, these communities, were DESIGNED for this murder.

Excellent video. And @19 nails it. Jail time for these assholes.

@19 So you think that most people out there are only deterred from harming others based on potential legal penalties?

Do you have any actual evidence that more severe punishments have reduced injuries or fatalities?

@20 Nor are there anywhere near enough east side bike riders to form any kind of effective lobbying body. Even in Seattle it's single digits.

@23: Yes. Davis, California, has laws on the books that punish drivers severely for encroaching on bicyclists. And those laws are enforced. Not only that, but laws are enforced against cyclists as well, so there is a much higher compliance with traffic laws there than elsewhere.

And you know what? Given the number of riders Davis has, statistically speaking it should have experienced several times the rate of fatalities it has. See this article here for info. I think it's behind a paywall, but if you have access to an academic library you can get around it.

I hate that in America it is controversial to suggest that people who kill others "accidentally" while driving a car should face severe punishment. In my opinion most cases should be considered criminally negligent manslaughter -- but I have the daring opinion that people should be punished when they kill other people through inattention while operating extremely dangerous heavy machinery.

@24 Sadly I do not.

I'm not really opposed to stricter punishments, I just have not seen evidence that they will do much to reduce accidents. Though I certainly have not taken time to really look since I can't say I care all that much about bike issues outside of slog comment threads.

@19: Would you also jail a mother for leaving the stove on and accidentally starting a fire that burned down an apartment complex? Or Eric Clapton for leaving the window open that his 2 year old son fell out of? (Sorry to end that sentence with a preposition but don't have time to fuss over better wording.)

You'll never punish away human fallibility, but you can certainly design stoves, windows, and streets to compensate for human imperfection so that predictable accidents such as the "right hook" scenario this video addresses become less likely.

Serious punishment should be reserved for people who deliberately make dangerous choices- e.g. driving drunk or while talking on the phone.

@27 cosign. americans want to throw everyone in jail. and guess what... we pretty much do. boy, that's been great for society.

@27, quite so. As I explained in my other comment, but maybe wasn't clear enough: it is impossible to drive those streets while paying adequate attention to bicyclists. Humans just can't operate at two different scales at the same time like that.

Think about road signs; think about the mile-high gas station signs you see along the freeway, or mega-streets like Aurora. Those signs would be completely ineffective on a narrow neighborhood street like 45th in Wallingford, or downtown. You wouldn't be able to see them. Similarly, a dinky sidewalk sign, like an A board or one of those signs hanging overhead perpendicular to the sidewalk, wouldn't be seen at all on a freeway, or on Aurora, or on any of the mega-boulevards of the Eastside.

This isn't just a street design; it's a community design. That's why you can't fix it just by fixing the paint on the road surface. Nor can you fix it by demanding the unrealistic if not downright impossible from motorists.

@24,

I always felt safer riding a bike in California and, similarly, felt less stressed out when I saw a bicyclist while I was driving, but that was for reasons far beyond traffic enforcement. The areas where I was riding/driving were flat, blind intersections were relatively rare and had proper traffic control where they existed (stop signs and such), and, most importantly, the streets were wide enough to accommodate a car and bicycle side-by-side. I won't ride in Seattle as long as there's not enough room, which means I will never use a bicycle for transportation in this city.

Every step of the "How the Dutch got their cycle paths" process is something that could never ever happen in the US. It makes me want to cry.

So, because a drunk driver may have killed somebody, you want to change the design of the intersections...where a drunk driver could still kill somebody.

@29- "...it is impossible to drive those streets while paying adequate attention to bicyclists."

Except for the 99% of the time when drivers do pay adequate attention.

You can't create an accident proof world, however you can't pretend the imperfection of the infrastructure excuses careless driving. Nor does it mean we can't create a better (yet still imperfect) infrastructure.

@30- It's funny you think the roads are narrow here, they're much more spacious than in Boston.

Right.

You know that the car is going to pull into the green part when rounding the curve so he can see the on coming traffic and thus cut off both the pedestrians and the bicyclists.

My suggestions are:

1) Eliminate right turn on red in all urban or high traffic areas.

2) Have more All Stop crossings. Allow a timed period for only bicycles to cross while all traffic stops. Same for people.

Cyclists will not follow the long way 'round and wait at the next crossing for a left turn, they're going to zip through the middle of the intersection like they do now.

Except for the 99% of the time when drivers do pay adequate attention.

A system that requires human attention to be operating at full capacity 100% of the time is a system that will certainly fail.

People get tired, their minds wander, they are involuntarily distracted by attractive women and flashing signs, they look to the left at the expense of the right, they look in the rear view mirror at the expense of the forward view, they sneeze, they spill coffee, they yell at their kids to stop fighting, their eyes fail to perceive things, etc.

This is our biology.

#22, 23, 24, and others

Yes, northern Europeans do have traffic laws that favor cyclists over drivers of cars:

"...[T]here is a legal assumption that motorists are automatically considered liable in law for any injuries that occur if they collide with a cyclist. This may hold regardless of any fault on the part of the cyclist and may significantly affect the behaviour of motorists when they encounter cyclists."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregated_….

While I'm not in favor of jail time for the first few moving violations,

@23 people are deterred from taking risks they were ok with before if they know the penalties for getting caught will be high enough. If the fine for parking in a handicapped space without a placard was $5 most people in a rush would be willing to risk it, because even if they get caught it's just $5.

@27 if I knew jail time was a possibility if I accidentally left the oven on and burned down my apartment you can bet I'd be watching the damn thing the whole time. There would be no half-hour naps while the pie cooks, no running and fetching laundry while the oven's on, and no disconnecting the smoke alarm because the turkey is dripping a bit too much. Inattentiveness becomes rarer the more motivation you have for paying attention. That doesn't mean the law should guarantee jail time, just that if I knew that was the complete upper limit I'd be more cautious, and so would others.

@36 a couple of expensive tickets for the first few who try would solve that and make money for the city.