Charlotte ranks poorly on bike safety in new study. Here’s what could help change that.

Bicycling on Charlotte streets tends to evoke two reactions. Drivers moan when cyclists slow them down, and cyclists fear for their lives when forced to ride next to cars.

Mixing bikes and cars in the same lane often makes bicycling in Charlotte unsafe. That combination is even more dangerous because bike awareness and safety gets little attention when drivers receive their license and when students take drivers ed in high school.

Charlotte ranks 97th out of 143 large cities in bike safety, mainly because of a lack of protected bike lanes and a disconnected bicycle network, according to PeopleForBikes, a Colorado-based bike advocacy group.

An interactive map created by PeopleForBikes shows how Charlotte’s bike network often doesn’t connect one bike lane to the next, making it difficult for cyclists to find a safe and reliable route.

“It’s tiring to be on red alert when cycling,” said Eric Zaverl. He’s an avid bike rider who is former bicycle and pedestrian program coordinator for Sustain Charlotte, a nonprofit group that is advocating to make the city more accessible to cyclists and pedestrians.

Zaverl has cut back his bicycling after several near accidents. He’s concerned drivers are more distracted since the pandemic. “You have to pay attention every second unfortunately right now, just to be safe so you get home.”

Bike lanes to nowhere

On April 3, Charlotte City Council member LaWana Mayfield urged colleagues to personally check out Charlotte’s bike network. Motorists are using bicycle lanes as parking spots, she said.

“As we’re building out and connecting, we will have a bike lane that begins nowhere and ends nowhere,” Mayfield said, “as if (the cyclist) is just going to float up in the air to get to the next spot.” Transportation planning needs to include protecting bicyclists, she said.

Street safety affects everyone. “When a street is safer for people who ride bikes, it’s safer for people who drive and safer for people who walk,” said Rebecca Davies, a PeopleForBikes program director.

A lack of visibility and excess speed contribute to the dangers.

“Most vehicles are horizontal, easy to spot … (but) bicycles are vertical. That shape makes it difficult for a lot of drivers to see them,” said Mike Jones, classroom coordinator at Jordan Driving School. The school provides driver education for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools “When there’s not a (protected) lane … for cyclists, then you have to really understand, hey, give them space.”

Speeding cars and trucks are big risks for bicyclists sharing the road. Nearly one-third of bike crashes resulting in deaths or serious injuries at non-intersection locations involve motorists overtaking bicyclists, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

Speed requires separation

The agency’s research shows that as speed and the number of cars increase on roads, bike lanes need to be separated from car lanes. When a road has a speed limit of more than 35 mph, and carries more than 8,000 cars per day, the agency recommends at least one protected bicycle lane.

Pamela Murray, an instructor for CyclingSavvy, a program of the American Bicycling Education Association, said, “Even though the speed limit is 35 miles per hour, people are going way faster.” She’s avoided an accident after an estimated 70,000 miles on her bike, but adds that a driver “could end my life in an instant.”

To be sure, veteran bike riders like Murray stress that bicycling can be safe with precautions and education.

Charlotte bike-related deaths have decreased over the past five years and pale in comparison to auto fatalities. And efforts are underway to make Charlotte streets safer for bicyclists.

A recent $4.4 million grant from Safe Streets for All included money to install more separated bike lanes to create safer routes to schools, among other efforts to improve intersection and pedestrian safety.

Gaps in biking network

Still, Zaverl said the lack of a city-wide biking network makes it difficult to get around safely.

“It would be like you built a section of interstate highway and it stopped and turned into a dirt road,” he says. “You could never use the interstate. It would be useless.”

Even long stretches of bike-friendly greenways aren’t always usable. “A lot of them have been built in flood zones,” he said. “If we have a lot of rain…you can’t ride on them because they’re flooded.”

Instead of what he calls “band-aid approaches” of unconnected bikeways throughout the city, Zaverl recommends focusing on corridors that connect a neighborhood or several neighborhoods to a community or employment center such as Uptown.

Poorly maintained bike lanes, lack of neighborhood lighting and constant construction add to the risks, says Miles Fowler, head triathlon coach at Queens University of Charlotte and an avid bicyclist. Debris including glass, gravel and trash often ends up in the bike lane.

No street lights make cycling dangerous at night and early morning. And road closings frequently force bicyclists to reroute.

Learning about bike safety

The shortage of protected bike lanes in Charlotte makes it more important for drivers and bicyclists to understand the rules of the road.

Bike safety education is particularly important for young people. Between 2015 and 2019, 15-year-olds were the second highest age group to be involved in bicycle accidents, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. People who were 27 were involved in the most bicycle accidents.

Bike safety education is not part of CMS health and physical education, although organizations and nonprofits provide outside resources.

Elementary schools have access to a program on bicycle and pedestrian safety skills, but it is not mandatory and is dependent on the school’s resources, Murray said.

Bike safety is only briefly mentioned in the North Carolina driver handbook. “There should be a rewrite of the driver’s manual,” Zaverl said.

The risks of ‘dooring’

“Dooring,” or opening a car door in the path of a bicyclist, is a particular hazard. Yet that danger is not addressed in most states’ driver manuals.

North Carolina is one of only nine states without a dooring law, which requires motorists to ensure there is no oncoming traffic before they open their door, according to the League of American Bicyclists.

“Checking the blind spots will let you know who and what’s literally coming beside that vehicle,” said Jones of Jordan Driving School. He advised, “Look twice, look twice, look twice.”

Plenty of distractions keep people from focusing on the road. A lot of Zaverl’s close calls happened because people were “not paying attention, not stopping when they should,” he said. “They didn’t even realize they almost hit me.”

Bicyclists share the blame for unsafe practices. “There needs to be awareness for motorists to look out for cyclists, but cyclists have to look out for themselves as well,” Murray said. The most frequent cause of falls, she added, is poor bike handling skills.

To stay alert for “dooring,” Murray teaches cyclists to be aware of both the strike zone — the area when they’re going to be hit by the door — and the startle zone. “If the door opens, and you’re startled, you’re going to veer out into traffic, and you’re going to get hit” unless you’re alert and predictable to motorists.

Murray believes a city’s bike-safety ranking should be based more on its bicycle education programs.

New bike riders often tell her “I’m so scared... Any amount of talking is not going to convince them” otherwise. But when she rides with them and provides a safe and pleasant experience, “They’ll say, ‘Gosh, that was not hard. And that was not scary.’ ”

Ellie Fitzgerald of Dublin, Ireland, is a student in the James L. Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte, which provides the news service in support of community news.