this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
170 points (98.9% liked)
Bicycling
3421 readers
8 users here now
A community for those who enjoy bicycling for any reason— utility, recreation, sport, or whatever!
Post your questions, experiences, knowledge, pictures, news, links, and (civil) rants.
Rules (to be added on an as-needed basis)
- Comments and posts should be respectful and productive.
- No ads or commercial spam, including linking to your own monetized content.
- Linked content should be as unburdened by ads and trackers as possible.
Welcome!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You don’t actually need to see the barrier, you need to see the white line marking the right limit of the lane, which you are not allowed to cross while driving a vehicle. That’s lower to the ground and anyone should and can see it.
I think smartphone use is more of a culprit than obese vehicles in this case (but then: “I need a truck so that if I run into a barrier, I just hop on it without even noticing!” That seems to be the raison d’être of most SUVs and crossovers in Europe: climbing up curbs)
It's actually completely legal to cross single white lines. Only double white lines and solid yellow lines are illegal to cross.
You can cross them if you have a valid reason to do that, my argument would stand also with a broken line: it delimits the driving lane you are to drive on. Randomly deviating from it is of course not allowed, only while passing or having another valid reason to do that, while making sure you don’t endanger anyone.
@artyom @Etnaphele Depends on your jurisdiction. In mine, it's illegal to do a turn over a single white line.
It's never legal to pull into the shoulder?
Depends what the shoulder is? The traffic rules for all EU countries still lack a bit of harmonization, but the general idea is that:
Our edge lines (used on smaller motorways) are usually spaced out, so you are able to drive over it. But it's still usually better you pull off somewhere instead if possible.
If you're driving on a large motorway that doesn't have an acceptable amount of space to pull over to the shoulder, it's usually a solid line with rumble strips. It's unacceptable to stand on the shoulder of a road with 110+ km/h limit.
And yes, solid line - even a single solid line - may never be crossed.
Many years ago I failed my license test only because of that: I merged off from the acceleration lane before it became a dotted line.
It isn't.