Bike-Friendly Driving / Bike-Safe Driving

Most people who drive genuinely care about the safety of people who bike. Yet many drivers—of all ages—have little or no personal experience of biking on streets today. It makes sense they might not automatically think of some areas of concern! As a passenger recently, the driver appreciated our sharing that it would be helpful to go slower than the speed limit, and be extra alert for anyone on a bicycle, when rounding a curve at the bottom of a hill on Garden Road in Monterey. Why? Because there is commonly debris (e.g., broken glass, rocks) as well as vegetation overgrowth in the next stretch of the bike lane, which forces people on bikes to move over to the motor vehicle travel lane. Sure enough, immediately after the driver cautiously rounded that curve, they saw the bike lane conditions we’d anticipated.

TIP: A simple habit can help prevent “dooring” a person on a bicycle (which can lead to fatalities or serious injuries): the Dutch Reach. Watch a 1-minute video, “Tu Familia,” and learn about the Dutch Reach, in https://bikemonterey.org/distracted-watch-out-were-all-family.html. The Dutch Reach is also one of the seven topics of the videos below.

Bicycle Friendly Driver videos covering seven topics—in Spanish and English—are available on the League of American Bicyclists (Bike League) Youtube channel:

Bike-Safe Driving is a one-hour webinar from San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. https://sfbike.org/event/bike-safe-driving/

Among bike-related dates in our Autumn Bike Buzz (news through December 20) are free online webinars from some of our California Bicycle Coalition / CalBike Local Partners. In addition to Bike-Safe Driving, here are examples of other topics:

November 15. Carrying Things by Bike one-hour webinar from Bike East Bay. https://bikeeastbay.org/classes/1hr/

December 6. Biking in Wet Weather one-hour webinar from Bike East Bay. https://bikeeastbay.org/classes/1hr/

December 12. Night and All-Weather Biking one-hour webinar from San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. https://sfbike.org/events/category/education/adult-classes/night-and-all-weather-biking/