What's this doing in the bike lane?

Share your pics, videos, streets, stories of what you find in the bike lane of the non-bike variety that has an impact on your ride and/or your safety. I've decided to keep it a little more open ended - cars, snow, buses, garbage, cabs, etc. If they shouldn't be in the bike lane, go ahead and add it to this thread. Please be safe if you are taking pics or video! :-)

My hope is that we can collectively build some evidence of what we see when riding in the city with the overall hope of better enforcement of "bikes only" and improving maintenance.

Update: More Hashtags to Capture Vehicles in the Bike Lane

With popular hashtags:
#BikeLaneShaming

#LaneSpreading (Chicago Bike Selling)

#ClearTheWay (ActiveTrans), there are many options to capture violations.

We think you should use ALL of them AND post your photos on The Chainlink. ;-)

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ben R. on November 15, 2017 at 11:57am

He stood up after I arrived and was talking, I saw him take a picture of the license plate on the car. I am not a doctor, but I suspect he will be ok in time, even after the adrenaline wears off. I saw a helmet on the ground, so, I suspect & hope he was wearing that. that's actually him in the grey shirt in the first photo, the motorist is the one standing in the 3rd photo on his cell phone in the puffy jacket.

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Permalink Reply by Gage B. on November 15, 2017 at 1:09pm

I've witnessed several collisions in this exact same spot for the exact same reason. and have been almost involved with a couple of other ones.

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Permalink Reply by Ben R. on November 16, 2017 at 7:05am

Its always good to know where the problem spots are on our usual routes. I would love it if there were some good visualization of statistics showing where the bike related accidents happen in the city. My guess is that they would simply correspond to where the bike routes/lanes are, but at a more granular level to see what specific spots or intersections along those routes stand out.

In general, anytime I'm passing cars on their right my spidey sense is tingling - curmudgeon that I am, I think all the new 'protected' bike lanes are actually more dangerous than the old ones were - at least at intersections. With the old lanes I could easily shift over to the left to avoid that dreaded right hook.

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Permalink Reply by sleutho on November 16, 2017 at 12:48pm

Hey that was me that hit the car. I ended up ok, bruised and sore, but no broken bones or internal injuries. The driver cut across the bike lane from behind stopped traffic right when I was going by. The light had just turned green, so I was cruising at a pretty good pace to make it through the light, and he just gunned it across to get to Walgreens. He didn't stick the nose of the car out or anything as a warning, just tried to shoot across. I hit the front of the car, then the windshield and landed on the other side.

Big thanks to everyone who stopped to help and gave me contact info. And also for keeping me calm. I wasn't in a great mood after that, so hopefully I didn't come across as an ass when I started yelling at the guy. Overall I was pretty lucky, my bike wasn't even too messed up other than the rear wheel. Now just hoping insurance pulls through for me.

Thanks again and ride safe!

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Permalink Reply by Ben R. on November 18, 2017 at 8:26am

Glad to hear you're mostly ok, it seemed like you would be. Good luck with the insurance thing. I went through all that after getting T-boned a while back, I recommend seeing a doctor or Physical therapist to get checked out and saving all your receipts/records and keeping a journal or any pain or nightmares or even extra cost incurred because you're temporarily without your normal transportation. you may also want to consider contacting a lawyer to negotiate with the insurance companies, it can be frustrating to interact with them directly and will take some time to finalize/process, there was one email back and forth in my case that had me so upset with the insurance company going back on things I thought were already settled. I just needed to leave work because I couldn't focus anymore and go work out to burn off the stress.

Sorry If I didn't stick around after the fire truck showed up, I didn't really see anything useful arriving too late, but I know some people were talking about moving the car etc. before the cops showed up to make a report- which I was recommending against.

If you need a higher resolution version of the video I can find a way to send that. I think it pretty clearly shows the position of your bike, your shoe, the car, the bike lane, and you on the other side before anything got moved and shows that you had a light on blinker mode at the time of the accident. Those can be factors in assigning % of fault for insurance coverage. Its nice to have visual proof to back up your statements of what happened - if there's any disagreement about those facts with the insurance company or the other driver etc. Remember, its in the insurance company's interest to pay out as little as possible, you aren't their customer just a cost for them - I definitely recommend getting your 'ducks in a row' before you contact them so you can come across as responsible and organized to try to minimize any 'run around' that they may try to give you.

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Permalink Reply by sleutho on November 18, 2017 at 12:39pm

I think I have enough pictures combined with the Police report that I have solid evidence that I was not at fault. The run-around from insurance companies, including my own health insurance company, has already started. Unfortunately the ambulance came before I could get a picture of the insurance info, so I am stuck with the limited info on the police report. I am starting the process of getting a lawyer now, but this whole process is new to me so I'm kinda figuring things out as I go...gotta love the legal system...

Thanks again though for the help, especially for suggesting to keep the car in place. I think that definitely helped the with the report. I was worried that the were going to say it was an accident without fault.