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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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