Thursday, January 20, 2011

Woodside Vigilantes

This AM - commuting to work on Canada Road. 7 man paceline. As we approach the stop sign at Olive Hill, and start to slow, we are passed by a pickup truck pulling a horse trailer. The truck and trailer then start to drift into the bike lane!

The truck pulls up to the stop line fully over to the edge of the road, blocking the bike lane, stops, then pulls out back into the nominal traffic lane.

Showed us! Of course in the process with his trailer he almost showed the lead man the ditch well before we got near the stop sign.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Please consider filling out the SVBC Incident Report when this type of thing happens. We aren't able to follow up on every incident, but when we can show patterns, we can approach the appropriate authorities to work on a solution.

http://bikesiliconvalley.org/incident-report

Thanks!

cor_van_de_water said...

Merging (safely!) into the bike lane is the expected (mandatory even) procedure for a vehicle turning right.
If someone merges into the bike lane and slows, my natural and legal response is to merge into the traffic lane to overtake that person. (of course not by running a stop sign) You can hopefully start a dialogue when you come to a stop next to a driver's window. If it results in a shouting match then it is better to get an officer to the scene. Hopefully one that knows the full CVC.

murphstahoe said...

Your sloppy blogger screwed up. It wasn't Olive Hill. You can turn right onto Olive Hill - I was being lazy and did not go to google maps (not sure if there is a stop sign on Canada at Olive Hill).

Suffice to say the stop sign in question does not allow for a right turn - all there is on the right of the road where this happened is a ditch.

Regardless - if you are merging into the bike lane to make a right hand turn, you are required to merge SAFELY. if there is an eight man paceline in the lane next to you, you have to wait.