Agenda - 05-28-1991 - Laserfiche WebLink

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HILL HERALD PAGE 5 Wide - roads and wide vehicles: the search fora 14 -foot lane Bicyclists are very interested in road widths, for instance, wide roads and narrow motor vehicles provide viral margins of safety. We know cyclists who have been clipped by wide truck mirrors. One of us was al- most smacked by .a protruding bulldozer blade when a dump truck towing the trailer. mounted bulldozer cut in front of us. Recently a woman cyclist was killed and another badly in- jured on N.C. 751 near Jordan Lake when they were hit from the rear by a pickup truck. N.C. 751 is a very narrow road with a 55 mph speed limit. That recent accident has been very much on the minds of bi- cyclists in these parts. We fancy it's also been on the minds of many motorists because we think we've noticed motorists are just a bit more willing late ly to share the road a little bet- ter. Not long ago we read in an- . other local newspaper that the standard lane width for North Carolina Highways is 14 feet We think they printed what the DOT told them. We had our doubts. We seem to remember that the maximum legal width for heavy trucks, (and, presumably, lighter ones, too) used to be 8 feet but it was changed to 8 feet 6 inches a flew years ago. If one subtracts 8 feet 6 inch- es from 14 feet, then the differ- ence is 5 fleet 6 inches. A bicy- clist is about 2 feet wide. The N.C. highway code says that motorists should leave a mini- mum of two feet of clearance when passing slower moving vehicles, including bicycles. All that seems to show there's 'room in one of our standard highway lanes for a bike and a big truck. However, we've often had the feeling we didn't have that much space. 5o we decided to find out. We armed ourselves with a clipboard and one of those mea- suring tapes and we set out to measure some roads and some vehicles for ourselves. The first thing we measured was a road v.ety near where we live — Estes 1) rive Extension be- tween Horace Williams Airport and Carrboro. In some places SHARING THE ROAD in much smaller cars. This ap- plies to both bicyclists and mo- torists. There are lots of statistics about how people who ride in big cars are less likely to be in- jured or killed than people who ride in small cars. We've never seen any data as to whether people who get hit by.cars are more likely to die than people who get hit by small cars. But TERRY & ICILJ.()L �1 we can guess what they might show. this road, the whole road from grass to grass, is 22 feet wide But in others it's about 21. A cyclist can depend on lane width, half the road that is, of no more than 10 % feet That means Joe's big rig ca Pass us on Estes Extension with- out crossing the center line, but we might get truck tire sidewall scuff marks on our left sleeves. Next thing, we went to visit the Farrington Point boat ramp parking lot on Jordan Lake. We wandered about, furtively mea- suring boat trailers. We discov- ered most of the new low -slung jobs are at least 8 feet wide. We found one that was over 9 feet. Time was, boats were carried on trailers with the wheels underneath. Now, boats are slung low to the road and the wheels are way out on the sides. Every bicyclist who has ridden in the Jordan Lake area has been passed by these things. Then we proceeded to N.C. 751 to see how much space it has for Moot wide boat trailers to share the road. We found in most places it does have room for two 9 -foot boat trailers to meet — just barely. Except where the Corp of Engineers widened the road when they built the lake. N.C. 751 is most- ly 20 feet wide, grass to grass. We found one place where it's only about 18 feet wide, grass to grass. We're constantly hearing about how bigger cars are safer cars and how bad it would be if we're forced into buying small- er cars. It's certainly true that bigger cats are safer for their occupants. But it seems obvious that for us to be as sate as we can be, we should want the other. guys to be riding around Bicyclists know it's much safer to share the road with a m narrow vehicle than with a wide one. The smallest cats, like a Tercel or a Justy, average a around 6 -foot wide including their mirrors That means on a 10 -faot wide lane there may be n just enough room for a two-foot wide cyclist. his two feet of le- gally mandated clearance, and a very small car with small mir- rors. We don't think it's very safe, but there it is. We measured a "standard size" American pickup in our Parking lot at work and we found that it was 8 feet 2 inches wide including its mirrors. That's over two feet wider than a small car. We also found there a trailer such as a con- tractor might use to tote a mod- est size tractor- mounted back - hoe. It was fully 9 feet wide without any mirrors and with a Place proclaiming it met all ap- plicable safety standards. Even on a 12 -foot wide lane there's not enough room for a "standard size" pickup or a backhoe trailer or one of those wide boat trailers to share the lane with a bike. And we could find very few 12 -foot wide lanes on the byways that cyclists try to use, much less those standard 14 footers. We finally did find one of the 14•foot wide lanes we have seen reported as standard for our state. We found it on a busy new part of N.C. 54 between Chapel Hill and Interstate 40. We had to measure fast to keep our tape from being run over. Actually, two of these 14 feet . are to the .right of the white line where. we like them to be. So were still in search of that 14 -hoot standard lane. Dick Terry and Paul Killough are bicycle enthusiasts who live in Chapel Hill.