A bicycle symbol topped by two white chevron arrows is painted in the middle of a travel lane. What does this marking tell a driver?
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A.
Bicyclists share the lane with cars; expect bikes and pass with care. Correct
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B.
The lane is reserved for bicycles and closed to motor vehicles.
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C.
Bicyclists must ride to the far right edge of the lane at all times.
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D.
A bike route crosses the road ahead, so watch for cyclists from the side.
The answer is "Bicyclists share the lane with cars; expect bikes and pass with care."
A sharrow tells drivers that bicyclists share the same travel lane. Pass only when you can give the rider a safe buffer, and change lanes if the lane is too narrow to share side by side. A bike lane is a separate bicycle space marked by lane lines; a sharrow sits in a general travel lane that bikes and cars share. The bike-only reading is the trap for drivers who spot the painted bike symbol and skip past the chevrons on top that mark the lane as shared.
The traps in the wrong answers
B. The lane is reserved for bicycles and closed to motor vehicles.
A sharrow doesn't reserve the lane; motor vehicles and bikes both use it. This answer reads any painted bike symbol as a dedicated bike lane, ignoring that a real bike lane is set off by its own lane lines while a sharrow sits inside a general travel lane.
C. Bicyclists must ride to the far right edge of the lane at all times.
The sharrow shows where bicyclists are likely to ride in a shared lane; it isn't a command to ride at the far-right edge. This answer carries the slow-vehicle keep-right rule of thumb over to a marking that instead shows the rider's recommended line of travel through a shared lane.
D. A bike route crosses the road ahead, so watch for cyclists from the side.
The sharrow marks a lane shared with bikes, not a crossing where cyclists enter from the side. This answer confuses a pavement sharrow with the yellow diamond warning sign for a bicycle crossing ahead.
This question tests your knowledge of Road Markings on the roads of every US state . Source: Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, marking 3C.04 (Shared-Lane Marking (Sharrow))..
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