Surviving on two wheels

By Joe Schoenmann

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008 | 2 a.m.

If you ever dared navigate a bicycle down Sahara Avenue, you might be astonished to learn that the League of American Bicyclists considers Nevada relatively “bicycle friendly.”

In the ranking that came out last week, Nevada was 19th best, beating many states typically thought of as more welcoming to bikes.

Don’t go pumping fists, or tires, just yet.

First, know that the ranking is based on 75 questions submitted to each state on such topics as public spending on bicycle matters, law enforcement training, availability of maps of bicycle routes and whether a bicyclist has the same legal status as a vehicle driver.

Andy Clarke, president of the league, says Nevada scored well because it has fairly current bicycle laws, giving bicyclists “the same rights and responsibilities as motorists.”

The state Transportation Department also has at least two people working on bike and pedestrian issues.

“That’s above average,” Clarke says.

The state even has a Bicycle Advisory Board that meets quarterly.

Sounds good on paper.

Real life isn’t always so rosy.

Nevada’s cyclist fatality rate was fifth highest in the country in 2006, with 4.01 fatalities per million people, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports. That is 10 deaths statewide. The national average was 2.58 deaths per million. Florida was highest at 7.3 fatalities per million (132 total).

Jacob Snow, Southern Nevada Regional Transportation Commission general manager, rides his bike 19 miles from Henderson to downtown Las Vegas to work. As commission chief, he touts the region’s hundreds of miles of bike routes and lanes, and the nearly 2,000 miles of similar lanes planned.

He has “had some close calls.”

“Really, it all depends on where I’m biking,” Snow says. “The thing you have to be most concerned about is the automobile driver.”

Jim Cullen is a bicycling instructor, but he doesn’t teach bike riding skills. He teaches survival.

“Most people didn’t learn how to ride from an authority figure,” says Cullen, 58, a retired geology professor. “Most people didn’t learn survival skills.”

Cullen’s rule of thumb: “Bicyclists have to cycle not only defensively, but also in a paranoid fashion.”

That doesn’t mean herky-jerky and swerving and doing wheelies. It means being alert.

“When you bike in Las Vegas, you rapidly learn which areas are safe and which aren’t,” says Cullen, who lives in the Lakes area. “When I go downtown, I cut east on Alta. I sure as heck wouldn’t ride on Charleston or Sahara.”

Here’s another nuts-and-bolts survival tactic: A cyclist going straight through an intersection with a right-turn lane must be in the right-most lane that goes straight through the intersection.

“He cannot be in the right-turn lane or in the vehicle recovery lane and then go straight through the intersection,” Cullen says. “We had a cyclist killed a few years back who did exactly that. He got clipped by a truck that was properly turning right in the right-turn lane.”

Cullen wishes more riders knew such things. Unfortunately, he hasn’t had any bicyclists take his class for two or three years.

“It’s hard to get the information out that these courses are available,” Cullen says. Plus, when he approaches cycling shops to spread the word about his class, “they figure their cyclists already know how to ride bikes.”

If cyclists learned to pedal with the same uniformity as most drivers, Nevada might be one of those states with no cyclist deaths. “The motorist is a little anxious and concerned and watching because the cyclists all have their own unique way of cycling,” Cullen says. “That can lead to problems.”

Even in bicycle-friendly Nevada.