Ok, thank you @[email protected] and @[email protected]! So this is a (mostly)-bicycle-only road because of the round blue sign and car drivers would be expected to know this in this context.
Yes, the sign is all over the Netherlands and many other European countries (I know for sure Germany, France and Belgium). I think it’s part of the Vienna Convention on road signs, which has been adopted by most of Europe and beyond.
Right! Here we only have these green signs, which are purely informational: they indicate the recommended road route for bicycles, but give them no special powers or privileges (by law bicycles are already allowed anywhere they are not prohibited), and definitely do not ban cars on that road.
Even worse are these “share the road” signs, which are also purely informational, but yellow. They somehow manage to both wrongly imply that bicyclists are not allowed to use other roads without these signs, and that sharing the road involves the bicyclist “getting the fuck out of the way” to the side.
Finally this is what my local dedicated bicycle path looks like, after the city finally installed concrete barriers to block it. Before them, car drivers making the turn at the several T-intersections on the boulevard running alongside kept taking their turns too wide (sometimes jumping the curb or sometimes entering through a driveway) and driving on the bike path by mistake as if it were another highway lane.
Damn… Things are quite different here. Although we have these share the road things now as well, called ‘fietsstraat’ aka bicycle street. The idea is that cars are guest and are not allowed to overtake, but in practice it doesn’t feel right when a car is behind you so you make space for them to pass. Often they’ll do it themselves, ignore the no-overtaking rule.
Ok, thank you @[email protected] and @[email protected]! So this is a (mostly)-bicycle-only road because of the round blue sign and car drivers would be expected to know this in this context.
Yes, the sign is all over the Netherlands and many other European countries (I know for sure Germany, France and Belgium). I think it’s part of the Vienna Convention on road signs, which has been adopted by most of Europe and beyond.
Right! Here we only have these green signs, which are purely informational: they indicate the recommended road route for bicycles, but give them no special powers or privileges (by law bicycles are already allowed anywhere they are not prohibited), and definitely do not ban cars on that road.
Even worse are these “share the road” signs, which are also purely informational, but yellow. They somehow manage to both wrongly imply that bicyclists are not allowed to use other roads without these signs, and that sharing the road involves the bicyclist “getting the fuck out of the way” to the side.
Finally this is what my local dedicated bicycle path looks like, after the city finally installed concrete barriers to block it. Before them, car drivers making the turn at the several T-intersections on the boulevard running alongside kept taking their turns too wide (sometimes jumping the curb or sometimes entering through a driveway) and driving on the bike path by mistake as if it were another highway lane.
Damn… Things are quite different here. Although we have these share the road things now as well, called ‘fietsstraat’ aka bicycle street. The idea is that cars are guest and are not allowed to overtake, but in practice it doesn’t feel right when a car is behind you so you make space for them to pass. Often they’ll do it themselves, ignore the no-overtaking rule.