The N.C. DMV Driver's Manual provides the useful guidance, "Bicyclists usually ride on the right side of the lane, but are entitled to the use of a full lane. A bicyclist staying to the right in their lane is accommodating the following drivers by making it easier to see when it is safe to pass, and easier to execute the pass. Drivers wishing to pass a bicyclist may do so only when there is abundant clearance and no oncoming traffic is in the opposing lane. When passing a bicyclist, always remember the bicyclist is entitled to the use of the full lane."

This paragraph informs the misconceptions presented in the Aug. 7 article "City steers toward bike-friendliness."

Make "roadways more friendly to bikes"? Only people can be friendly or unfriendly to other people.

"Accommodate" bikes? Five-lane Avent Ferry Road and any other road are plenty wide for 30-inch-wide bicyclists and motorcyclists. If motorists wish to pass a slower moving vehicle like a car, farm equipment, stopped bus, delivery vehicle, scooter or bicycle, they can change lanes.

However, "accommodating" bikes with bike lanes is actually making it "friendly" for motorists by sequestering bicyclists out of the way. Bicyclist space is reduced to a narrow, debris-strewn area at the worst part of the road. The bike lane, little more than a named shoulder, actually defines the area bicyclists should avoid.

There are several reasons motorcyclists are trained to avoid the right one-third of the lane, and why 4-wheeled drivers are seated on the left side of the vehicle. Yet bike lanes are intended to "accommodate" bicyclists at that hazardous spot. Who is really being accommodated?

Wayne Pein
Chapel Hill

Learning to share

Inspired by the argument between bicyclists and motorists outlined in "City steers toward bike-friendliness" (news story, Aug. 7), I would ask every bicyclist, from commuter to licensed racer training on local roads, to really reflect on the Department of Transportation's comment (source isn't cited in the article) to "ride responsibly and courteously, so that cars may pass safely."

Many times I have overtaken training group rides on rural Orange County roads with riders two and three abreast and have conversed many times with riders who ride two and three abreast who insist it is their right to the road. Of course, as noted in the article, it isn't their "right," but that is truly beside the point. On narrow, rural North Carolina roads, it isn't safe and it isn't courteous to drivers.

Moreover, for every pair of riders arrogantly occupying a near lane-width of rural N.C. roads, there is an equal number, if not more, of North Carolina drivers who have concluded that bicyclists are an arrogant, entitled lot with whom they only grudgingly share the road and for whom they would never vote to fund road improvements.

On the other hand, if bicycling groups were to attempt to really share the road, not own it, they might find, given a couple of years of sharing, motorists are more likely to respond in kind and return the favor.

(I am a lifelong cyclist, former racer and have bicycle commuted in Orange County for 10 years).

Bill Messer
Chapel Hill

Buses and bikes

Your Aug. 7 Life, etc., article on expanding bike routes in the Triangle was great. Unfortunately, the solutions being considered are much too conventional. Simply put, drivers and cyclists never mix well on the same road, and the danger discourages the vast majority of would-be cyclists.

Separate off-road, paved bike paths integrated into communities as those communities are built are expensive, but they are the only way cities will ever support safe cycling of large numbers of people.

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