Via Catherine comes MyBikeLane, an effort to document (with license plate annotation!) drivers' lack of respect for bicycle lanes. This is a subject dear to my heart as, during my twice-daily commute through Thomas Circle, I often keep myself bitter/amused by pondering how unimaginable it would be for a driver to be ticketed for violating the space defined by the bike lane.

Thomas Circle is a hotbed of bike lane atrocities. Putting such a lane on the outer edge of a traffic circle is a bad idea to begin with: you're inviting cyclists passing through the circle to cut directly in front of vehicles leaving it. Without the bike lane those cyclists would presumably join the regular flow of traffic, making them a lot more likely to be noticed by drivers.

But it's not just a problem of design. Drivers have no respect for the lanes, and unless they've noticed a biker in sight are all too happy to drift into them, whether from wanting to turn less sharply, a desire to pass stopped traffic or simple carelessness. Fair enough — I'd be looking for a shortcut if I was stuck on 14th at rush hour, too. But given drivers' general awfulness at noticing bikes, there really can be no middle ground: they need to stay completely out of what few lanes we've been given.

Perhaps most mystifyingly, a hotel located on the Southern edge of the circle has helped itself to ten feet or so of the bike lane, setting up white traffic cones in it, presumably to save themselves a spot for their valet service or something similar. Bad enough that they feel entitled to do this — but white? The color of every miscellaneous marking on the road? A color perfectly suited to blending into the gray background noise of the street? Who would make a traffic cone white?! An idiot, that's who. I don't know about anyone else, but I've already creamed one of those asinine cones, thankfully without injuring myself in the process. Next time it happens I'm taking the goddamn cone home with me.