Eight years ago, Dave Steele, an avid Milwaukee biker, was riding along 35th Street when a car clipped his handlebars. The shock threw him to the pavement and cracked his helmet.

Steele was not seriously injured and while he still uses his bike to commute, the incident was a jarring wake-up call. Milwaukee has a lot of drivers edging cyclists off the road.

A recent online survey conducted by the Journal Sentinel on poor and dangerous traffic habits in the Milwaukee area showed that many readers agree with Steele. Many respondents complained about drivers using bike or parking lanes to pass cars on the right.

Respondents referred to the phenomenon on social media as doing the "Milwaukee slide" or using the "Milwaukee lane."

"I've lived in Boston, N.Y. and Dallas as well as in other parts of Wisconsin. ... But here, it's crazy," said one survey respondent who cited passing on the right as a serious issue in Milwaukee. "No wonder everyone's cars are so banged up. I'm afraid to cross the street at times."

The North Avenue and Locust Street bridges over the Milwaukee River are two places where the impact of the "Milwaukee slide" is readily apparent.

Last summer, Milwaukee installed its first sets of bike lanes fully separated from traffic by protective posts on the two bridges. The posts were part of a plan meant to address the 350 car crashes in the area between 2012 and 2016. Those crashes resulted in 136 injuries, 50 of which were sustained by pedestrians and bikers.

A year later, most of the protective posts have been run over. While the city has put up orange barrels in their place, drivers continue to dent or knock them over.

According to Andy Tillman, the city's Chair of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Task Force, Milwaukee is working to identify more permanent options to protect cyclists without damaging the bridges.

Tillman said the task force has been collaborating with other departments on Milwaukee's Pedestrian Plan to promote engineering-based solutions throughout the city. Curb extensions or bump-outs could be used to keep drivers from passing into bike lanes. More speed humps could help slow cars traveling on smaller streets.

According to Tillman, these solutions would be more cost-effective than increasing driver's education requirements or law enforcement surveillance.

"Milwaukee can't have a cop on every street," Tillman said. "What we can do is engineer our corners and our streets to accommodate both cars and people on bikes and pedestrians."

Some cycling advocates have suggested importing solutions from other cities.

Steele said Guatemala City had managed to reduce instances of reckless driving with a specialized traffic police force. Evan Pack, the founder and director of Vulture Space, a downtown bike shop, said some regions of Mexico have installed protected lanes and bicycle stoplights.

"If they have it in this small city in Mexico, why can't we have it," asked Pack.