07-14-2016, 11:15 AM
So many good points to address!
Education: While we're sharing anecdotes: I rode the wrong way down bike lanes when I was in my first year at UW. This was until someone took me aside and told me that they were lanes of traffic and I was about as wrong as could be. My little podunk town in Northern Ontario had zero infrastructure for biking (and my house was too far from town to make it worth the trek) so I just had zero idea about how to properly behave on a bike.
Even with mandatory cycling education in Ontario Public Schools there will be students who didn't take it because a) they didn't have a bike b) they weren't educated in Ontario Public Schools c) they were educated in a region that didn't have cycling infrastructure, so rules about bike lanes and MUTs and things will likely be missed.
And there will be still others I've missed who just treat bikes as a sort of "fast-pedestrian" mode of transit instead of a "slow-car" mode, which is how it is regulated. Not sure what to do about them.
Pedestrian Beg Buttons: when I arrive at a street whose signal I do not trust to activate, I activate my kickstand and walk to the beg button to hit it, leaving my bike in place. I only have to do this in one place on a very lightly used street with low speeds, so YMMV, but I find it the clearest statement of intent and, thus, the safest. (Also, my bike isn't the most expensive to replace so I'm not risking too much leaving it in the lane for a few moments).
Education: While we're sharing anecdotes: I rode the wrong way down bike lanes when I was in my first year at UW. This was until someone took me aside and told me that they were lanes of traffic and I was about as wrong as could be. My little podunk town in Northern Ontario had zero infrastructure for biking (and my house was too far from town to make it worth the trek) so I just had zero idea about how to properly behave on a bike.
Even with mandatory cycling education in Ontario Public Schools there will be students who didn't take it because a) they didn't have a bike b) they weren't educated in Ontario Public Schools c) they were educated in a region that didn't have cycling infrastructure, so rules about bike lanes and MUTs and things will likely be missed.
And there will be still others I've missed who just treat bikes as a sort of "fast-pedestrian" mode of transit instead of a "slow-car" mode, which is how it is regulated. Not sure what to do about them.
Pedestrian Beg Buttons: when I arrive at a street whose signal I do not trust to activate, I activate my kickstand and walk to the beg button to hit it, leaving my bike in place. I only have to do this in one place on a very lightly used street with low speeds, so YMMV, but I find it the clearest statement of intent and, thus, the safest. (Also, my bike isn't the most expensive to replace so I'm not risking too much leaving it in the lane for a few moments).