To those of you who pull over in your car to talk on your cell phone, I commend you! Thank you for making a responsible choice. Driving is the most life-threatening thing most people ever do, so it means a lot when you give your caller your focused attention.  However, there are ways to be even safer, which I’ll highlight below:

1.  If possible, choose a parking spot to pull over in. You won’t have to pay if you sit in the car and are just there for a few moments. Please make this choice especially if there is an empty parking lot less than a car length away from you. Please, please make this choice if there is an empty parking lot and open street side parking on the same block you want to stop.
2. If there is no available parking spots and no shoulder, it may be better to wait to answer the call until you find such space. If you must stop you vehicle in the middle of the street, please turn on your hazard lights. If you can’t turn on your hazard lights for some reason, at least turn on your headlights. 
3. A bike lane is part of the street. Conditioned cyclists can ride 25-30 mph, the same pace as cars in city and residential streets, so a bike lane is very much a part of the street. Think of it the way you would think of a carpool lane; part of the road but not intended for everyone. Go ahead and use it in the event of an emergency, that’s cool, but if it’s not an emergency, you may be causing more danger than you are fixing. 

I encountered this situation as I was riding into work. The morning was dark, wet, and rainy. I heard the tiny “ding ding ding” of a bike bell long before I saw it. As I strained my ears to figure the source of this patient, yet persistent “ding ding ding”, I saw in front of me a large SUV parked in the bike lane and a cyclist stopped behind it dinging their bell. “YOU WANT ME TO HONK MY HORN?” I yell at the top of my lungs as I approach. The SUV obviously didn’t hear his persistent “ding ding ding”

“AAAAAWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN”

I laid on my air horn and it was fully charged. A loud blaring honk jolts the driver, causing them to point their finger angrily. Neither me nor the quiet cyclist could tell what he was pointing at. He obviously heard my honk and he obviously wasn’t moving. Because the SUV was wedge in the bike lane between the curb and a parking lane bump out, we had to get off our bikes and walk into traffic to get past him. Sometimes I see delivery trucks or whoever using the bike lane as loading zone, which I am completely OK with when there are no other options. It’s obvious the driver is making the safest choice in their given situation. However, most of the time there is a perfectly good shoulder or parking spot just a few feet away. In this particular case, this SUV couldn’t have picked a worse spot to pull over. As we passed we could see he was on the phone. The person on the other end probably heard my air horn, too. The cyclist was amazed by the OOMPH of the air horn. I told him it was effective on "green light texters" as well.

I often hear that the shoulders and street side parking of many roads were eliminated so bike lanes could be added. This pisses people off, and I sometimes wonder if people park in bike lanes out of spite. To that end, I have a few points to add:

• Adding bike lanes allows more people to ride their bikes, meaning fewer people on the road, meaning car drivers can get where they are going faster and with less traffic!
• If there was not a bike lane, people like myself would still be biking. Except we’d be on the road. Slowing you down!
• That doesn’t mean I agree with the City’s decision to add bike lanes at the cost of parking. I don’t. But the City didn’t listen to me. It doesn’t help you to take it out on the cyclists. If your neighbor comes over and drops a big bowl of dog food on your floor and your dog eats all of it, you’d take this up with the neighbor. You can’t blame your dog for eating the food, that’s what dogs do. You can’t blame the cyclists for using the bike lanes, that’s what they do. Would you rather the alternative?