Sharing the road: how to cycle safely with motor vehicles

This story first appeared in the 2025 Cycling Guide, an annual special section aimed at telling the stories of the businesses, people and local efforts that have made The Corridor a cycling destination.

Commuting on his bike from his Iowa City home to his Coralville office, Matt Burkey sees things.

“I can see into people’s cars,” Burkey said. “They’re on their phones or they’re eating a sandwich. One driver had their knees on the steering wheel … flossing.”

As manager of the Iowa Bicycle Coalition’s Safe Routes to School program, Burkey works with school districts and city governments to identify potential cycling hazards. His daily observation of distracted drivers is a reminder of why only about five percent of students walk or bike to school — most are dropped off by a parent.

“’I don’t want to let my kid walk to school because there are all these cars dropping their kids off,’” Burkey said of parents’ reasoning. “’I’ll drop them off from my car.’”

Burkey is encouraged by Gov. Kim Reynolds’ support for updating the state’s distracted driving law. The coalition has lobbied for years to update the 2017 law, which defined “cell phone use” as simply talking on the phone, meaning scrolling through texts or even online browsing behind the wheel is legal.

“It was a big deal when the governor mentioned it in her (2025 Condition) of the State speech,” Burkey said.

Cedar Rapids police responded to 18 cycling accidents in 2024, up from 11 in 2020. Fortunately, there were no fatalities during that period. Cyclist injuries dropped from 10 to eight in 2024, with the most decrease (from 10 to five injuries) coming in 2021 as more people worked from home.

Iowa City cyclists experienced 28 accidents last year, including a fatality, nearly double 2020’s 15 accidents.

The ideal for safe cycling, completely segregating bikes from motor vehicles on dedicated trails, often isn’t possible in congested neighborhoods.

“If you think about where trails are, you need a long continuous area of land,” said Sarah Walz, assistant transportation planner for the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) of Johnson County. “They’ll be in areas that are difficult to develop — flood plains, easements. That’s where you see a lot of your trails.”

“In older neighborhoods where you have limited right of way, there’s only so much you can do,” said Ron Griffith, Cedar Rapids senior traffic engineer and a member of the Corridor MPO’s Transportation Technical Advisory Committee.

When sharing the streets with vehicles is a necessary reality, cyclists can take some simple precautions. While not a legal requirement, helmets are all but mandatory among avid cyclists. One device incorporates radar into a bike’s taillight, linked to the rider’s handlebar-mounted phone or cycling computer.

“If a vehicle is coming up from behind you it will show the distance and where the vehicle is at on the computer or the phone,” said Andy Brimeyer, co-owner of Goldfinch Cyclery in Cedar Rapids.

Mirrors mounted to the handlebar or clipped to the rider’s helmet are also popular.

“A good headlight and taillight, even in the daytime, is super important,” Brimeyer said. “You don’t have to dress in all high-vis(ion) stuff, but just some bright colors hanging on your back is good.”

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Safety considerations are a driving force behind the popularity of fat-tire bikes for riding on gravel roads.

“There’s a lot less traffic out there, and you can see and hear the cars coming better,” Burkey said.

“I was a road cyclist well before realizing gravel was a much safer opportunity for long-distance riding,” Brimeyer said. “You’re out there in the country as opposed to being out on the pavement. The vehicles I do run into on gravel are just generally nicer — if there’s a hill coming up, they’ll wait to pass.”

Where bikes and vehicles must share streets, Cedar Rapids’ standard calls for a six-and-half-foot width for buffered lanes — those bike routes outlined with pavement striping.

“That gives about five feet riding area, not including the gutter space,” said Griffith, himself a regular bike commuter. “On some of our busier traffic corridors we’ve got a buffered bike lane with a one-foot stripe adjacent to the driving lane. That gives a greater visual impact, and we try to make the bike lane about seven-and-a-half feet.”

Where there’s no separate path for cyclists, riders should stay to the right side of the lane, three or four feet from the curb, but they have the right to the entire lane if cracked pavement or debris forces them from the curb. Cyclists riding in traffic should also maintain a straight line.

A side path — a wider sidewalk within the highway right of way — can be an effective compromise. Much of the 16-mile Iowa River Trail from Mehaffey Bridge at Coralville Lake to Iowa City’s Terry Trueblood Park consists of sidepaths.

“Along the arterial streets we like to establish an eight-to-10-foot wide-sidewalk,” Walz said. “A good portion of that is within the street right of way.”

Cedar Rapids’ Bowling Street trail, up for renovations this year, is a sidepath for much of its length.

“That was already in place but wasn’t in the best shape,” Griffith said. “It wasn’t designed ideally, so we went back and redid that, pulled the trail back from the roadway.”

Some sections of on-street bike lanes in downtown Cedar Rapids are protected by bollards or are placed inside of parking spaces, leaving parked cars between cyclists and traffic. Iowa City’s downtown streets are too narrow for that, Walz said. Iowa City staff is working with a consultant to plan for its first bollard-protected bike lanes, to be installed this summer.

“They certainly improve the comfort level for some cyclists,” Walz said. “But the areas where bicyclists are most at risk is at the intersections.”

Simpler and cheaper steps toward safer cycling include making existing intersections four-way stops instead of two-way and banning right turns on red lights.

“(Motorists) are looking at the traffic, they’re not looking at the crosswalk,” Burkey said. “That’s a really easy, cheap thing to do, and lowering the speed limit is huge.”

Reducing school-zone speed limits from 40 miles-per-hour to 20 miles-per-hour lowers the fatality rate from 80 percent to 5 percent, according to Burkey. Recent “traffic calming” efforts also help both cyclists and pedestrians.

“Turning one-way streets into two way-streets slows traffic down, and makes people look around more,” Burkey said.

Griffith noted recent work reduced 42 nd Street NE in Cedar Rapids from four traffic lanes to three, allowing cyclists more room.

“They still function perfectly fine (for motorists),” Griffith said. “In fact, they’re safer because you add the turn lanes. You really want to try to keep speeds reasonable.”

Cycling safety remains a key part of the Corridor MPO’s update this year of its 2015 master plan for trails.

“There is a push to more separated facilities for the cyclists,” Griffth said. “In terms of getting more people comfortable using their bike as an alternative transportation. Any time we have a paving project or development project, we’ll be looking at trying to provide that.”