Opponents of headlines with question marks in headlines should probably stop reading now: There's not a great answer to the query within. We already know that it's dangerous for transit company drivers — that's cabs, Uber, Lyft, etc — to pull into the bike lane to pick up or drop off passengers, and we've all been frustrated by drivers who just stop in the middle of the street to do their duty. But a crackdown on the latter behavior by police seems like it just might cause an uptick in the former, as a driver has to stop somewhere, right?

The crackdown I'm talking about was recently featured on KRON 4, from a report by (of course) Stanley Roberts. He follows a crew of San Francisco Police Department officers who were nabbing and citing TNC drivers who stopped in an active lane of traffic to deposit or retrieve passengers.

(Roberts' note that savvy drivers know to hop out of the vehicle to swap a moving violation for a double-parking ticket was an interesting one, eh? I had not thought of that!)

As worthy as the effort to keep drivers from stopping in the middle of the road is — and I think we can all agree that it is indeed a worthy one — the first thing I wondered is if this campaign might send drivers "back" (ha ha like they all left or something!) into the bike lane. After all, the SFPD is at least anecdotally notorious for not enforcing bike lane offenses, so I could see a driver aware of the SFPD's traffic-blocking offensive making a Sophie's Choice to block cyclists instead.

Of course, what they're really supposed to do is pull up to a corner or into a "side street," as Uber instructs their non-employees in this video.

According to San Francisco Bike Coalition spokesperson Chris Cassidy, the SFBC consulted with Uber to create the video in an effort to keep them out of the bike lanes. Given that it's only been watched 2,408 times since its September 22 publication, it's safe to assume that not every transit company staffer in San Francisco has viewed it, but what it recommends is simple common sense: Basically, stop your vehicle outside the flow of bike (and, presumably, vehicle) traffic.

The question, I guess, is how possible that is in areas where there don't seem to be these convenient nooks and side streets? As you see from Roberts' video, transit drivers who pull up to the curb in no-parking areas are also being ticketed. The advice to drop a passenger at a corner might force a driver into a bus lane or a crosswalk, also a violation, and "side streets" can be a rarity in busier parts of the city.

Add to that transit company passengers who demand to be picked up and dropped off at an exact location, and it seems like these drivers are being painted nearly into a corner.

Before you argue that cabs have managed to pick up and drop off passengers for decades without these problems, I'll remind you that the much-delayed expansion of San Francisco's bike lane infrastructure didn't begin until 2010 — before then, cabs and limos could basically just pull over near the parked lane of cars for dropoffs. Uber was founded in 2009, and launched in SF in 2011 so we've seen an increase in the number of transit company vehicles on our streets at exactly the same time we started building out our bike lanes, making for a volatile combination, it seems.

This isn't the part where I proclaim that motorists, transit companies, bike lanes, cyclists, or the cops who enforce SF's complicated system of road rules are the root of all evil, because that would be stupid! Unfortunately, I don't have an awesome solution to offer you, either, because all of those things are most likely here to stay, and they all need to successfully coexist. But until transit planners find that awesome solution, I suspect we'll see a lot more of these segments from Stanley, as the cops continue to play a game of whack-a-mole with drivers, cyclists, and everyone in between who are all struggling to find a way to safely get around this city.

Related: Streetsblog Editor Confronts City Employee Parked In Bike Lane