When Our Neighbors and Friends and Fellow Citizens Ride a Bike or Try to Cross a Street

When we biked to school this past spring, I ran into a dad every morning who would sort of gaze at our bikes and I knew what he was thinking--that he would love to do that, too.

Finally, one day, he told me that he was going to start riding his bike to school and then work, that he worked right here in Dunwoody (at the Concourse). He'd wear those wrinkle-free pants or bring a change of clothes, he said, thinking it through. Mid-summer, I saw him one day while I was riding and he told me, excitedly, that he had just bought a bike. I'll have to check back with him to see how it's going, because, frankly, it's tough out there.

Atlanta is one of the very worst cities in the United States for bike riding. Not only are we the city with one of the fewest number of bike lanes, but it's hilly, it's hot and many drivers don't follow (or perhaps don't know) vehicular safety rules pertaining to bicycles. It's no surprise that the AJC reported recently that bike accidents have increased as more people have started riding their bikes in Atlanta's unrelenting traffic.

Bike riders have the right to take up an entire lane when there is no other safe place to ride (which is pretty much always), and they must move all the way to the left lane to make a left-hand turn. Riders who do this are not being obnoxious or trying to hog the road. Honestly, they are just hoping they make it to their destination in one piece. By the way, in-town riders are having particular trouble with traffic lights (for which they must stop, just like cars) that only change when they are tripped by the weight of a car on the street. The bike riders could sit there all day.

If you are considering commuting to work in the Perimeter area by bike (or want to explore other commute options), click here.

As for biking to school, here's what we've learned. We ride on the sidewalk, even though bikes are not supposed to be on the sidewalk. This is because there is currently no safe place for us to ride in the street, and our experience as pedestrians has led us to believe that the sidewalk is the only safe option for children. We stop and walk every single time a pedestrian approaches us so that we do not inconvenience anyone or put anyone in danger. We also walk across the street as pedestrians at crosswalks.

Our continual experience at crosswalks is that, on average, at least ten cars go by before anyone stops. My conclusion about this is that many drivers in Dunwoody simply are not aware that it is the law to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. This means as soon as the pedestrian leaves the curb, all cars are legally required to stop. The two common experiences we have are that no one stops at all, or cars will only stop when we are at their part of the crosswalk (in other words, we'll be halfway across and a car will make a quick turn in front of us if we are not exactly at that point yet).

I noticed that Decatur and other places around Atlanta have little sandwich-board-type plastic signs in the middle of the street at crosswalks that say something like, "Stop for pedestrian in crosswalk." I find these signs very effective at alerting me to a crosswalk I may not immediately notice. I called the Dekalb County Department of Transportation and Engineering and spoke with a very helpful man named Ben Glover. I told him that drivers of cars consistently do not respect crosswalks in Dunwoody and that children are in danger. I requested the placement of several of these signs. He told me the county has not adopted these signs for placement in the middle of more crosswalks because they cost money to maintain (they must be removed every night and replaced every morning, apparently) and that local areas must budget for them. He recommended contacting peds.org for more guidance on how to make our community safer for pedestrians.

As we move forward with city-planning for Dunwoody, we may want to consider a couple things: expanding bike lanes, avoiding traffic-light timing mechanisms that don't take cyclists into account, being mindful of the challenges faced by cyclists and sharing the road when no bike lanes exist, and stopping for pedestrians in a crosswalk. Do we really require a police officer to sit there and make people stop when our neighbors and friends and fellow citizens try to cross a street at a crosswalk? Do we really need those little signs?