THE BIG STORY
The People d. Sharrows!
Konk Life Staff Writer
Last month, I described my harrowing adventure, bicycling over the cheerful “sharrow” arrows and bike icons encouraging people like me to bike in the boulevard. I felt both scared and ridiculous, making the point that FDOT should NOT be encouraging fat-tired, 8 mph conch cruisers like me to be endangering their own lives while impeding car traffic, especially with a wonderful 12-foot promenade to bike safely on.
The amazing good news is that common sense has prevailed, and everyone wins! There are maybe five devoted bikers in town who love the sharrows, and whom we cannot get to write their side of the story, but they have won, too. The sharrows are probably going to stay, unless I can get Secretary of Transportation Ananth Prasad to correct another FDOT error, as he did with the one-way changing to two last year. But I am not hopeful.
But we don’t need him, actually. A remarkable combination of our civic leaders, law enforcement, and we the people ourselves have neutered the deadly sharrows. The city manager and numerous commissioners have publicly advised against biking in the boulevard, sharrows be damned. The sheriff’s deputies will continue to pull over bikers impeding the flow of traffic, as they have in the past and with me personally, sharrows be damned.
And we the people are using our common sense to bike on the promenade, as we did before, sharrows be damned. I bike about 30 miles a week, mostly on the boulevards. In the last month I have seen exactly two slow bikers in the traffic lane. They were hugging the curb, and as I watched, they got out of the traffic and onto the sidewalk near Radio Shack.
So we have all defeated the sharrows by basically ignoring them! What a brilliant strategy—take that, FDOT! At the same time, the five guys who applaud the sharrows have won too, because the law is on their side—and it is a law that is usually a good law, encouraging more biking and less driving in the state of Florida.
Yes, our sharrows are silly and dangerous, encouraging people on bikes like mine — remember, all the asphalt and sign icons are of fat-tired, high-handlebar bikes, not racers — to invade the traffic lane right next to a broad promenade well know as a bike path. But the sharrows are generally used in areas where such promenades are not there, and bikes like mine really need that traffic lane.
Surprisingly, Florida has written some laws very encouraging to bikers. The sharrows may be the most bike-trumps-car law we have. Pedestrians and cars can be stopped and cited for impeding traffic. But bikes enjoy an odd exception. Generally, bikes are supposed to stay to the right, so cars can pass them. But a complicated clause in the law says the lane must be wide enough to let them pass safely.
The statute does NOT say how wide the lanes have to be, but a calculation resulting in a lane width of 14 feet now has the force of law where sharrows are concerned. Hardly any lanes are that wide. So, by law, sharrows can be created on almost any street in our cities.
When is this a good thing? In dense urban areas where more people should indeed be using bikes instead of cars, and the sharrows not only encourage more bikers but make it safer for the bikers already there. Also, an intended effect of having bikes use the road is in fact to slow down traffic, motivated by wanting to make the streets safer and, I think making driving less pleasant compared to biking. If the drivers cannot beat you, maybe they’ll join you.
So hooray for anything encouraging more biking. The sharrows encourage a good attitude statewide towards biking. The five touch bikers rule in Key West — sharrows forever!
Actually, FDOT has discretion in using the sharrows. The statute allows them, but does not require them. Note they could also be on South Roosevelt, but they are not. The worst would be for these sharrows to bring disrepute to their cause elsewhere. It is bad enough they are ignored objects of scorn here, by civic leaders, the law, and the people ourselves. I dread a slow biker who believes the sharrows make him safe, and then some night is killed by a driver who for whatever reason is not ready for an eight MPH speed bump in his lane.
Our sharrows would be ultimately bad for that biker. And harmful to the cause of bikers in the entire state. Let us pray it doesn’t happen. Yes, you may, but of course you shouldn’t, bike the boulevard.
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Rick, I appreciate your attempts to bring reason to bear with regard to bicycle safety in this town. I’m once again commenting on this subject yet I’m finding that it is a total waste of time and a no-win situation. There is certainly more than 5 bikers out there who disregard not only safety but any rule of the road. It’s so bad that I curse myself everyday for not installing a dash-cam in my vehicle to capture the insanity I see on a daily basis . . . and this does not exclude idiot motorists too! Notwithstanding, this subject seems to be some sort of sacred cow and any critical opinion about the poor practice of bicycle safety in this town seems to fall on deaf ears. Consequently, I’ll pick and choose my battles and advise motorists to drive defensively. In the meantime, I will indeed install that dash-cam to protect myself from lawsuit and insurance rate hikes when that rouge bicyclist eventually ends up under my car and the finger is pointed at me.
Jim, I think you’re doing what you have to do–taking a deep breath, and living in the imperfect world we have–while doing what YOU can control, installing the dash cam. I think this is in the spirit of the One Human Family, which respects not only surface diversity, but also each others’ foibles and failings.
I try to be a very considerate biker, but I space out. I expect to get run over at Florida and Albury as I regularly drift through the stop sign. I feel I should post the flowers pre-emptively. I have instructed Cynthia to pay $5,000 to any motorist who kills me when I am running that or a similar stop sign, ear buds in and practicing my karaoke, to help alleviate THEIR pain and suffering in having run over the idiot.
Hope it’s not you, Jim.