Sharing the Road - Bicycle Safety

Biking is a healthy, earth friendly and affordable way to travel and it’s becoming more popular among Fargo residents. During the summer of 2011, the City of Fargo striped dozens of roads to include bike lanes or shared lanes which are designed to help drivers and bikers share the road safely. Whether you’re a driver or bicyclist, it’s important to understand and follow safety guidelines so that everyone can use the road safely.

Safe riding and driving tips:   

• Motorists should not park in bicycle lanes. 
• Motorists may make turns across a bicycle lane to enter a parking space or to enter a drive way, etc., as long as they signal their intention and yield to bicyclists.
• When parked next to a bicycle lane.
• Motorists should always look for bicyclists before opening their car door. Bicyclists should always watch for motorists opening a door by looking ahead into a car’s rear window.
• Bicyclists are not mandated to use bicycle lanes.
• Bicyclists may exit a bicycle lane at any time as long as they look for traffic behind them before leaving the bicycle lane, yield to motorists and use appropriate hand signals.
• Most bicycle lane lines become dashed just before an intersection. The dashed lines notify bicyclists and motorists that this is an area where they will be mixing on a regular basis.
• A shared lane marking is a stencil applied to roadway lanes when there is not enough space for a bicyclist to safely share a lane with a motorist due to the width of the roadway lane.
• The shared lane marking shows bicyclists the most appropriate place to travel in the roadway lane so as not to encourage motorists to “squeeze by” when a travel lane is narrow. Sometimes shared lane markings will guide a bicyclist to the center of a travel lane such as on Broadway between NP Avenue and 6th Avenue North.