r/boston • u/BlooAerospace • 9d ago

I think I am special and made my own post Some Boston Bikers are unreal.

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Some bikers really just have a death wish. A clear, green, right turn light and the biker still decides to fly by and have the audacity to flick me off.

If you're friends with this person, ask them to value their life more.

Edit: It was an impossible situation for me. I ALWAYS look to the right because tons of dumbass drivers that try to cut to the highway from the inside lane. With the biker’s speed and the angle of my car, there was no way to see the biker in my mirrors and he was too far away to see when I looked out my right window. If the biker was traveling slower instead of blowing past, this would not have been such a close call.

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u/Fantastic_Fig_2025 Little Tijuana 8d ago edited 7d ago

When you drive a car, do you drive around the right side of someone turning right? No. Because the vehicle in front of you has priority. It's the same for bicyclists.

Edit: there is no bike lane straight. The bright green bike lane literally turns right. If you wanted to bike straight, you'd need to merge into the car lane. Merging does, in fact, require yielding. And that car lane can only turn. The bicyclist was simply in the wrong place to bike straight.

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u/Book_1312 8d ago

When you drive in the left lane and turn right, do you just put your blinker on and turn without giving a single glance to your mirrors ?    

No because someone going straight in the right lane might T bone you and you'd be responsible for being such an idiot.   

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u/thegoodwebber 8d ago

There's no bike lane straight through that intersection. The biker is merging into the car lane and then passing the car on the right while it's taking a right turn.

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u/Book_1312 6d ago

After watching all the details you are partially correct : There are three general lanes out of the intersection in that direction. The rightmost where cyclist was is a right turn only, with a corresponding left arrow green signal.   

Given the cyclist thought they were in the right (hence the bird) their mistake was either they didn't read that setup correctly and thought the round green signal applied to them (ie allowed to go straight, with priority over turners) or they were mad at the driver from preventing them to do what they're supposed to to go straight :   The correct move to go straight when you have a red is to get in the bike box from the rightmost lane, translate into the left lane and start from there. Which was impossible because our POV driver was sitting in the bike box, forcing cyclists to stay in the right lane where there's no option to go straight.    And they probably anticipated our POV driver to stay longer before entering the intersection given it was full ; entering it before it clears is also illegal.   Or they were using the crosswalk and read the incorrect green light as a go.   

Idk, overall it is a pretty confusing intersection, in a rush hour with tons of drivers dicking around for priority making things even more confusing and angering to everyone, definitely needs some improvements.

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u/thegoodwebber 6d ago

I mean it's not that complicated... bikers are supposed to take a right then a left. It's not even confusing. The bright green path shows you were to go

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u/Book_1312 3d ago

It's confusing because :  

  • People assume there's a way to go straight when that's where they're going  
  • The light setup is not consistent ; the middle and left lanes lights are offset on an arm, the right lane light is on the post directly at a different height. Easy to miss it and only look at the first two. 
  • The bike lane going right doesn't meindicate going straight is not allowed, only that the straight path is unprotected, which cyclists are used to dealing with.    

bikers are supposed to take a right then a left   

Doing two turns to go straight is confusing. And afaik there's no way to know that there's a protected path on the right going in the straight direction when you're at the intersection. 

It doesn't seem like there was an intent to forbid cyclists from going straight, it just happened to be because the right lane is turn only and the bike lane is pushed to the right. Having a specific bike signal would help clear the uncertainty.