I bike on Orange also and I share your concern about traffic safety in this part of East Rock.

There was another issue raised the other day about cars rolling through the stop sign at Cold Spring and Livingston near the pre-school, and I know the cross traffic at Canner and Orange can be just as aggressive with cut-through I-95 traffic.

The stop sign at the first and the yield light at the second leave a lot to be desired. Traffic tables at both those intersections would likely help a lot.

All of that said, I don't think those measures are going to make drivers any more attentive to bikers. The fact is that in the bike lane on Orange you are squashed between parked cars (with doors that could pop out at any moment and that are sometimes parked all the way to the corner, blocking visibility of cross traffic) and a tight lane of moving cars that often are trying to get out of the neighborhood, especially on that block. Maybe speed humps would slow them down, but for the worst of the drivers, they are only going to be in more of a hurry.

In a world of balanced budgets, rational planning, and better town hall dialogue, the neighborhood would be much faster and even safer for drivers, bikers and pedestrians. We would convert some of more of the streets into one-ways, remove some street parking, and/or add protected bike lanes that aren't next to parked cars.

I imagine Cold Spring would go one-way west, Willow would go one-way east (to the Cold Spring intersection), and Orange could lose street parking on one side and we could put in protected bike lanes on Orange (and/or Whitney if we wanted to do it right). There'd be less cut-through racing, less turns and log-jams, and more visibility and protection for everyone. For the time being though I'd argue that you are safer biking on 2nd avenue in lower Manhattan than on Orange street in East Rock. But I'll stop now before I start going off about the bus routes.