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Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

I was thinking about this the other day:

What if we had a dotted bike lane on EVERY road, so cars could straddle it, but when trying to pass a bike would have a clear indicator of how much space they need to leave.

You could still have dedicated solid-line bike lanes where you had high bike traffic, but you might not need so many of them because the dotted lane would get you part of the safety/bicyclist comfort benefits.

Edit: I guess this exists. It's called "Advisory bike lanes" http://www.minneapolismn.gov/bicycles/advisory-bike-lane

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Those "lanes" decrease safety. We have plenty of them here because it's just paint so it costs nothing.

Just look at the picture on the linked site. Left of the dotted line is where I would be just to keep enough space to opening car doors. But now there is a dotted line and lots of bicycle symbol paint in it so I get all the nutjobs driving at me to tell me I should ride in that "bicycle lane". And beginner cyclists who do end up riding in that lane get a double whammy, car doors in their face and cars passing way too close because they think the dotted line somehow means you don't need to keep space when overtaking.

Notice that cyclists in those lanes have priority over turning vehicles! You have to be suicidal to get anywhere close in one of them to a vehicle that has "mysteriously slowed" (no signal of course) though. I see bikes in those lanes getting cut off every single commute.

Part of what makes them dangerous is that virtually no one performs a legal turn when a bike lane is present. You are supposed to change lanes into the bike lane and then turn after you are driving in the bike lane. Turning across a lane is super dangerous, but everyone does it when the lane is a bike lane.

In the UK, you should really treat overtaking a bike as you would a car. This just doesn't happen in reality. I pretty much got bulldozed off the road only two days back. I'm not a fan so much of bike lanes, but do prefer wider roads.

As a twin cities human, i'm surprised that the bike lane thing isn't in more places.

That said, knowing many people who bike, advisory might be the operative word. People have told me that most drivers treat it more as a "guideline" at best.

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