Originally Posted by
cyccommute
The first protected bike lane installed in Denver was on 15 Street in Downtown. It was placed on the left hand side of the street because 15th has a lot of bus traffic. No one expects bikes to be on the left side of the street so people pulling out of business and hotels (especially visitors) don't expect a bike to be going down that side of the street. Another, even worse, problem in that once it gets to Larimer Street, the protected lane ends and the cyclists are expected to return to the "normal" right side of the street in the distance of a 3 lane intersection to a nonprotected lane across a busy intersection.
At least this one isn't designed around floating parking lanes which are almost worse. And heaven help you if you don't want to ride in the protected lanes.
One of my good friends was hit by a right-turning vehicle while he was travelling on a segregated two-lane bike lane, but against the normal flow of traffic. It was exactly as you described--driver focused his attention to the left of him on the traffic. Cyclist coming from the right of him on the bike lane. My friend should have been more vigilant, but he was a bit of a newbie to this whole cyclo-commuting thing.