Anyone blocking the bike lane should forfeit the protection of law. I should be allowed to take their mirror off as I ride by.
People are like “oh well it was just for a minute I needed to run in” like that makes a difference to someone who gets hit by a car and dies because they had to ride into traffic.
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The UPS truck and the truck loading/unloading goods don’t deserve a call out imo
They do deserve to be called out. They are not bikes.
I’m a cyclist. Delivery drivers and emergency services have to park in no-parking zones to do their job. It doesn’t make sense to park anywhere except on the very right of the road (or left in left driving countries). And that just coincides with the bike lane.
Also, on the bike lane, they’ll bother fewer people than on the car lane. At least in the street I live on, fifty cars will pass before one bike does - as unfortunate as that fact is.
Even if they did park on the car lane, a bike would still have to grind to a near halt because now you have a gap where the driver might pop out in front of their truck to walk to the storefront.
Delivery drivers also frequently block driveways and prevent cars from going in or out. It’s not like they have a vendetta against bikes.
I’m also glad they do their job because having goods delivered might be the only viable option if you don’t have a car. And finally, delivery drivers are mostly underpaid immigrants, cut them some slack.
Delivery drivers and emergency services have to park in no-parking zones to do their job
I don’t have an issue with emergency vehicles, when they are responding to an emergency, being in areas that they would not otherwise be allowed to be. Delivery drivers are not comparable to something like an ambulance, and don’t have special privileges unless those privileges are otherwise explicitly outlined.
A delivery driver using the bike lane should be viewed the same as if they parked on the sidewalk. If the delivery driver is going to be breaking the law anyway, they should just pop on their emergency lights and block the road, they would at least be blocking the correct mode of traffic.
I agree and have often said the same thing! If you’re going to park illegally, inconvenience drivers, don’t ENDANGER vulnerable users!
Where do you propose they park, then?
The real problem here is that bike gutters are not bike infrastructure. They are car infrastructure. They are an ineffective and dangerous approach to separating bikes from cars and are only used when the city doesn’t want to be bothered to do something better. As the other user said, the shoulder of the road is often the only place for delivery trucks to do their jobs. The city was lying when they painted a bicycle lane on the shoulder and gave you the impression it’s exclusively for bikes. They fully expected the shoulder would still be used for other things.
