Wayne Pein: Bad planning hinders bicyclists
Regarding the March 21 news article “Amid cycling boom, penalties for careless drivers remain light”: Penalties for motorists at fault for striking bicyclists were light long before any so-called recent “cycling boom.”
The article also failed to recognize that penalties ought to be levied against transportation planners and engineers for the manufactured conflicts they have created in their zeal to segregate bicycle drivers with all manner of “innovative” facilities that treat them like pedestrians with wheels and overload the human factors abilities of motorists.
The rental bike users within the pedestrian crosswalk in Des Moines, Iowa, in the photo accompanying the article were an ironic example of this flawed concept of operations.
Wayne Pein
Chapel Hill
This story was originally published March 28, 2016 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Wayne Pein: Bad planning hinders bicyclists."