[Closed] Apparently cycle lanes make this "The Most Confusing Road in the North East"

Look this poor driver has had to [i]very slightly[/i] adjust his course to avoid colliding with the oncoming car (even though he has loads of room).

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To me, if a driver has to think about it, it's dangerous.

That is quite a concerning article. How anyone could be so inept as to be confused by that road yet still have a driving licence is more than worrying.

I note its the first in a series of hard hitting articles, I can't wait to see what round two brings...

Most car drivers seem to gauge their road position in reference to the center line, which seems to cause all sorts of issues..

To me, if a driver has to think about it, it's dangerous.

I know what you are saying, but the whole point of this layout is to [i]make[/i] drivers think about something - i.e. [i]"Do I actually have enough room to pass that cyclist if there is a car coming the other way?"[/i]

The default behaviour is that they don't think about it and just squeeze on through regardless.

Looks like an extra wide gutter and road debris collection area to me.
Video didn't work, but from the thumbnail, I can only assume there are no signs or markings to suggest it's a bike lane.
I trust a street sweeper goes along daily to hoover up all the broken headlights and stuff?

You have to understand that where this has been done people don't get out much. This is damn radical. Think vicar of dibley and you've got it.

That road used to just have a middle white line. A fairly busy off road cycle route crosses it about halfway up which is probably why they have out the cycle lanes in.

The idea is that cars use it as a normal road and move out if a cyclist is in the lane. Pretty much as they would do on a normal road but because there is no middle line the idiots at the Chronicle think it's going to cause mayhem.

Probably preaching to the choir I'm sure, but a lot of people simply have no spatial awareness, and have no idea how wide thier cars are.

[url= http://singletrackworld.com/columns/2016/01/bez-channeling-the-flow/ ]Hasn't Bez already done an article on the one in Corbridge? It could be that IQ is raised in Northumberland and lowered in Tyne and Wear...that's why it's confusing.[/url]

People can't successfully navigate two or three lanes separated by white lines going in the same direction, why are you on any way apprised they struggle with two directional traffic in separated by lines to tell them where to be?

Says more about the reverse evolution that seems to be afflicting huge chunks of humankind than it does about road design.

As it's the Evening Chronic I'm surprised they didn't blame Sunderland football club for the confusion and have a picture of a sad looking fat man in a NUFC shirt to illustrate their point.

Gateshead Council have done something similar near us. Except that they haven't removed the middle white line, just painted a cycle lane taking up about a third of each carriageway (that was only just wide enough for a car on each side anyway).

The upshot is that cars assume that the half lane that they've been left with is plenty and just ignore anything/anyone that happens to be in the cycle lane. Bloody terrifying.

What bothers me about that road is the standard one concerning bike lanes that width - they encourage drivers to think that just to the right of the white line is an appropriate position to pass cyclists.

Totally agree. On the road I mentioned above, my MTB handlebars (720mm!) are pretty much the width of the cycle lane and I've had my hands gently brushed by wing mirrors several times. I cycle on the main bit of the road now and don't really GAS who I piss off.

It's a load of bollocks and councils all over the place seem to be slapping it everywhere at the moment*.

That said, it's not hard to drive on. Helps if you glance at the Highway Code, where it says stay out of the cycle lanes where possible, but obviously most people don't do that because once they've passed their test anything that they don't see on a daily basis is just some form of incomprehensible new-fangled bollocks that was probably dreamt up in Brussels by raving liberal socialists who are paradoxically totalitarian in their legislative hatred of drivers, whose lives they just want to make miserable by not letting them basically get behind the wheel and fall asleep like any decent taxpayer should be able to.

Sorry, it's getting late. Have a video instead.

* I saw something a while ago about future highways funding being somehow tied to the total length of cycle lanes within an authority area. Might have just been a rumour.