Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Those bollards need to be solid.
Just one of them
The goal should be to protect vulnerable road users. Solid metal or concrete blocks would be better because they would actively prevent cars from entering the bicycle lane.
The goal should be safety. A single solid pole in a line of breakaway poles is spiteful.
I'm 100% on board with being spiteful to carholes. My only note on the suggestion is that hitting the concrete one and disabling your car should be considered sufficient evidence on its own to convict the driver of attempted murder.
A car entering a bike lane by accident is just as deadly as one that enters out of malice. Which is why the bollards should be solid, and visibly so. The dividers should prevent cars from entering.
These bollards are designed to collapse as they did. They are designed to be visible markers, rather than physical barriers. These are bad by design. Lawmakers are more concerned with avoiding airbag deployments than safety.
A single breakaway post that doesn't break away is not the solution. Though I would never snitch on someone secretly who filled one with concrete overnight.
The collapsible bollards are often to allow emergency services to take the lane as cyclists should be evacuating such lanes upon hearing sirens until it becomes clear their lane isn't needed
Chaotic good.
I was thinking they should be connected with a steel cable at the bottom, and a hook inside the plastic shell, so if a car hits them, they grab on and start slowing the car down.
No. Each post should be solid enough to stop, or significantly slow a car on its own. They need to be built to protect vulnerable road users from cars. Slowing the cars gradually does not do that.
Cables under tension can snap back which makes your idea even more dangerous than just a concrete block.
That's how they are in Europe. Slam into one of those and you basically have to get a new car.
You need to promote it as "anti-terrorist hardening to protect cars from terrorist ramming attacks". It's more likely to get support.
If that's what it takes.
Eh, there are genuine situations where you don't want to stop the vehicle immediately, like say if this trucker came up on the other side and pushed the filming car into the bike line. Having a controlled line that brings the vehicle to a stop is much safer than having concrete and steel barriers that just shred the car and the occupants. Similar cable systems are already installed to stop cars, so the engineering has been done to prevent those dangerous snap-backs.
Those systems are designed to dissipate the forces by crumpling and creating debris that is thrown away from the middle of the road. The crash panels at the start of cable systems and guardrails are designed to launch debris in a colission. Incredibly dangerous for cyclists or pedestrians, which is why they are installed at road edges. They are completely unsuitable to be barriers between different types of traffic.
Highway medians are almost always concrete walls. There is a reason those cable systems are not used between lanes of traffic.
Funny you mention this, because most highway medians are a W profile ditch, or a cable catch system (which is similar to what I described).
I'm referring to urban highways where opposing lanes are right next to each other, like the sort of spacing that you would need for a barrier next to a bicycle lane. Those cable systems are only installed in cases where there is generous clearance for debris, which is not applicable for the roadside bicycle lanes we are discussing.
Admittedly it would be much safer for those in the bike lane if we dug a W profile ditch in pace of the car lanes. For some reason I don't see that happening.
https://youtu.be/jyNEnYaBszk
Those cable systems already exist, just not in the US.
Yet far more situations where you'd want to stop the car immediately. What's worse in your scenario, a few people in the car potentially getting injured or killed, or multiple pedestrians and cyclists getting mangled by 2 cars?
Which scenario is more likely? A car having a lane departure event, or a car having a lane departure event at the exact moment the area next to them is packed with cyclists and pedestrians?
Seeing how this truck managed to go for a mile or so in the bike lane without hitting anyone, I'd definitely err on the side of a car going into the bike lane being more probable than a car going into the bike line right next to a whole bunch of cyclists.
If bikers felt better protected, maybe more would bike. In my country something like this would become mass murder. It doesn't though.
Every road is different, and the protections for the people on the roads should be based on how those roads are being used. This road has a bike lane, and it should make sufficient protections for the cyclcist AND the drivers. If the road had way more cyclists, or cycling was becoming more prevalent, it would make sense to put in better infrastructure to protect that use in those areas. You'll note that not every railroad crossing has a dedicated bridge going over it, or armature, or lights, or even a signal. Those protections are put up based on how frequently the crossing is used and weighed against the damage of an accident there. Simply put, that road doesn't have the cycling demand to build dedicated infrastructure, but there is definitely enough demand to make sure that a truck can't just brodoze down the lane.
I think they need to be flexible for fire trucks and ambulances. A bike lane can turn into an E lane if designed properly.