it's a bike LANE!

There's a good reason it's called a bike lane. There's a good reason why these lanes are marked off with white paint. Why that white paint is the same paint used for all those other painted lines out toward the middle of the street. It's because a bike lane is a real-life lane of real-life traffic made up of real-life human travelers!

Anyone who has ever regularly ridden a bike has undoubtedly run into the problems of bike lanes not being respected as such. These problems primarily include car drivers who help themselves to right-hand turns without glancing behind them, kamikaze style left-hand turns which cut right across the bike lane with no thought by the drivers except for how quickly they can get through the intersection and on to McDonald's, and the always popular drivers-who-sneak-around-the-other-eight-cars-in-front-of-them-to-turn-right-at-a-red-light-but-who-then-can't-quite-fit-so-they-just-park-right-there (yes, that's their name) . . . in the bike lane!

All these scenarios are crazy because no car driver in his or her right mind would do these things to another car lane. Nobody would just suddenly cut across a whole lane of traffic to make a turn without using their blinker and carefully checking to be sure the lane they're about to cross is clear. No car driver would ever just decide to park at a red light with 70% of their car intruding into the lane next to them. Yet these things happen all the time to bike lanes, and every time they do, it puts a biker's safety in jeopardy.

Bikers, when following the laws and pedaling in designated bike lanes, are entitled to all the rights of a car driver. We all use the same roads, have our own lanes, follow the same laws, and therefore ought to be entitled to the same safety and consideration.

Respect all traffic lanes as such, and we can all just get along nicely. There's no need for bikers to ever get crunched by inattentive drivers. Finally, this respect goes both ways: if us bikers demand respect for our bike lanes, we have to use them properly as well, and that means hand signals, lights at night, and overall common sense. With that said, don't be discouraged from giving that car that just cut you off a nice, loud whack on the trunk and a shaking fist of fury!