I made this video after I was nearly left-hooked while riding the brand new (and totally wonderful!) protected bike lane on SW 4th Avenue in downtown Portland last week. Then today I learned my friend Marley Blonsky was injured in a right-hook while biking on the new bike lanes on NE Broadway at 21st.
Portland is doing great work improving our streets. That’s a great thing. But I wanted to underscore that as long as we have so many drivers who don’t drive safely and who disregard the well-being of fellow road users, there will still be risks of collisions.
Watch the video in the player above or on the BikePortland YouTube channel (which you should totally subscribe to if you haven’t already!).
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I was almost hit crossing Morrison when I was using the new 4th ave bike lane last week!
I am on the far side of this debate: I doubt we will never make walking or biking safe if the City relies on drivers doing the right thing vs just eliminating the possibility of them killing someone.
4th avenue is still a 4-lane, 50 foot wide arterial street. It´s intersections still rely on driver care and awareness to provide for safety. (Original was too harsh)
When I was stationed in Germany, I learned that getting a driver’s license in Germany was much more difficult and much more expensive than in the U.S. One aspect of that was more driver training & testing around pedestrians and cyclists.
As more bike/ped infrastructure and micro-mobility comes to be, we should ensue that Oregon DMV is requiring that new drivers are trained & tested being able to safely drive through bike/ped infrastructure.
Also, obviously, enforcement of driving laws is necessary, but I sadly don’t have very much hope for this based on my 20 yrs of experience walking & biking in PDX.
However, maybe we need more camera enforcement. I don’t like government surveillance, but I’ll live with it, if it results in less carnage on our public streets.