On Bicycle Accidents At Freeway Off-ramps: Personal Experience & A Controversial Solution

I was involved in a painful yet survivable bicycle accident on Friday at NW Couch and 14th Avenue. The driver was brand new to the area and pulled out in front of me from the stop sign. I was travelling so fast down the hill I couldn't slow down fast enough and struck the car door pretty hard with my shoulder. I'll be ok, nothing is broken, luckily enough, but I have had to take a couple days off. 

My accident is not the first or last bike accident to have happened on 14th Avenue. Tracy Sparling's ghost bike was on the corner for years, and the enhanced bike markings the city put in served to remind us the danger of that intersection. Yet I rode down 14th Avenue to get to work every day. As I recouperate at home, thinking about my experience, and the near-misses, miscommunications and actual accidents I see all the time in various intersections like that around town, I'm becoming more and more committed to the idea that there are more roads in Portland that should be clearly marked "dangerous for cyclists."

And not because I'm a totalitarian car fanatic, but for our cyclist's own safety. If a cyclist knows what he or she is doing, and can merge with traffic in the car lane, I feel like they have every right to be anywhere they want to be. But accidents happen all the time, and they are bound to increase as we freely give tourists a bike and a helmet for $25 a day and say "have fun!" I appreiciate the signage and mapping the city has done to help encourage cyclists to stick to safe routes, but I feel it could be taken one step further than the green boxes and bike paths. Why?

Freeways bring people from all over, and many of those drivers are unaccustomed to the amount of bicycles on the road we have here.  

It's a fact we cannot change.

I know I'll take a different route to work from now on. Once Couch has a stop light that was timed to the one on Burnside, I will take 14th again. Until then, even though there is an ample bike lane with tons of markings, I deem that road dangerous for cyclists.