Not Even My Wife Reads This

Had a negative driver / cyclist interaction today, caused by confusion about right of way at bike trail / road crossings.

Typical intersection between the W&OD trail and a street.  There's a crosswalk there, which means that cars have to stop for pedestrians (Code of Virginia 46.2-904), including bicycles (Code of Virginia 46.2-924, fifth paragraph).  Unfortunately, there's also a stop sign there for the trail.  The stop sign causes confusion, because there's no legal basis for it. (It's a vehicles-prohibited trail, not a highway, which makes anyone legally using that trail a pedestrian, and pedestrians don't have to stop for stop signs.)  So the trail user has the right of way (because of the crosswalk), but the road user might think she has the right of way (because of the stop sign).

Got honked at, and yelled at, by a driver today.  She and I were approaching the intersection of the W&OD trail and Station St. in Herndon.  She had to stop for the crosswalk.  I slowed to < 5 mph to make sure I could stop if she didn't.  She stopped.  (Yay, a good driver.)  I went.  Then, surprisingly, she honked at me and yelled "you have to stop for the stop sign."  And I yelled back "no, you have to stop for the crosswalk."  And she sped off.

I'm torn as to the right solution.  Clearly having both a stop sign telling the trail to stop and a crosswalk telling the road to stop is confusing.  Just getting rid of the trail-facing stop signs is unlikely to happen (despite their lack of legality) because it might lead to over-confident cyclists charging out in front of traffic and getting killed.  (Just because you see the car and you know he's supposed to stop for the crosswalk doesn't mean he sees you and that he will obey the law.)  I think the right solution is to put up 4-way stop signs at every grade crossing between the W&OD and a road.  There are two of these in Herndon, and they work great.  Drivers seem to respect stop signs more than crosswalks.

The cost is making road users stop when nobody is coming on the trail, but I think that cost is worth it.  It'll save lives.  (We've had three fatalities at W&OD crosswalks in the past decade.  I suspect that in all three cases the driver never saw the bike and never even slowed for the crosswalk.  A stop sign would give the driver ample opportunity to see crossing trail users.)  It'll also make crossing busy streets like Sterling Road and Hunter Mill much easier for trail users.  And if it's too inconvenient for drivers to stop, that'll lead to funding for more bridges or pedestrian signals.