I must confess that I was doing what I typically recommend against.
The north side of this intersection (closer to the Field House) is
*much* safer, since all of the turning traffic uses Little Street and
that left turning dingus. On that particular night, there was very
little traffic on Monroe, and the walk light was on, so I went that way.
The two other very important things I put into action here were 1. to
be lit up like a Christmas Tree (it was dark) and 2. to make eye
contact with the inevitable motorist wanting to make that right turn
when the light went green. Not just make eye contact, but also watch
their vehicle language (just like body language, but on wheels.) Both
of those street crossings are huge and well-striped, so motorists have
no call to wonder what we're doing there.
As long as I follow the rules as if my life depended on them, which it
does, waiting on the sidewalk works just fine.
YMMV,
Michael
On Dec 2, 2009, Kathryn Kingsbury wrote:
When traveling east on the Missing Link, should I
(1) completely cross the crosswalk across Monroe, then wait on the
sidewalk for the walk light to cross Regent? or
(2) cross only partway, stopping in the rightmost next to hotel)
lane of Monroe and waiting for the green light to cross?
Pro of (1) is that's what people expect you to do, but con is that
motorists who don't know the intersection (or who know it but still
pretend there aren't cyclists and peds there) have a tendency to
turn a right directly into all the folks in the crosswalk that
crosses Regent.
Pro of (2) is that one is much less likely to be "invisible" to
right-turning motorists, con is that they may give you unkind looks
and wonder what you're doing there. (Last week, I was forced to do
#2 by a motorist who was blocking the crosswalk with his car - had
no option of making it over to the other sidewalk. He didn't have
his right turn signal and, when the light turned green, moved as if
to to pass me on my right to go straight across Regent, which caused
me to scream "Don't hit me" which caused his passenger to say - if I
read lips as well as I think I do - "Ohmigod whatthef--k")
Both options are legal, as far as I can figure out, which isn't
saying much.
Really, I preferred the intersection this summer when there was no
sidewalk there. Then (1) wasn't a choice and when I did (2), I
surprised no one.
_______________________________________________
Bikies mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
