The Freakonimics NYT blog has a short item on bicycling accidents and who causes them - the cyclists or motorists:
When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem to assume that such accidents are usually the cyclist’s fault — a result of reckless or aggressive riding. But an analysis of police reports on 2,752 bike-car accidents in Toronto found that clumsy or inattentive driving by motorists was the cause of 90 percent of these crashes. Among the leading causes: running a stop sign or traffic light, turning into a cyclist’s path, or opening a door on a biker.
This is certainly my experience as a non-serious, get around the neighborhood bike rider here in Washington DC. I ride the roughly mile in each direction between my house, school, gym, and grocery. On advice of DC police, the sidewalk is the official bike lane on Mass Ave and Nebraska Avenue. Even using the sidewalks where legal, going slowly, and all that, I am convinced that riding a bike in DC is the single most dangerous activity in my life. Much more dangerous than driving a car, for example.
My impression is that DC, MD, and VA drivers are like automatons programmed to respond only to other automobiles. Pedestrians register only faintly, and only if there is a baby carriage. Pedestrian crosswalks register not at all. Bicycles are not things recognized by the programming. Yes, it is true that cyclists go through stop signs rather than stop and muscle up again, but the biggest problems are simply that cars do not "see" us. I can see it because I almost always try to make eye contact to be sure the automobile driver sees me - and I can almost see the neurons flare up when they realize Something Is Out There. First Contact, as it were.
Police in DC are not, in my experience, any better. My routes take me past a local precinct house. It is well understood in the neighborhood that you have to be careful driving, walking, or biking in the blocks around the station house when the shift changes, and officers want to get into the station and off shift as fast as possible.
When I ride my bike in Palo Alto, California, on the other hand, all is Bliss. And Happiness. Everyone looks for you. Everyone looks at you. You know that they know you exist on the road. I think they are imagining, 'that could be me, or my kid'. But that requires space for real lanes for bikes, as well as a concerted public education program and, I would guess, a sufficiently large group of local people who both drive and ride bikes, in order to shift and tip the standard of public behavior.
When I ride around DC, I wonder if it isn't a mistake to create bike lanes that aren't really bike lanes, aren't treated by drivers or law enforcement as bike lanes, and are more like a trap for the unwary cyclist who might foolishly believe they mean something. If you really don't have room for bike lanes or the intention of creating a public culture of actual biking - and I should add, upper NW DC is remarkably hilly, at least for Middle Age Guy - then might it not be a mistake, for reasons of doing the Good Civic Thing, to go through the motions of creating, or at least announcing, them?
Of course, there's no easy way to retrofit an older city for bikes. Palo Alto had those wide avenues from the beginning, when it was a glorified cow town.
DC is not an old city. Amsterdam is an old city. (I assume those facts to be true, and I would be amused to learn I'm wrong there.) Bicycling works just fine in Amsterdam. In fact, I'd say it may well be the predominant mode of commuting.
I don't know whether it was easy for them, but the Dutch sure made their city hospital to bikers successfully.
Yes, cars definitely make it far more dangerous than my own riding does. I run red lights and such quite often, but while paying close attention to the traffic around me. Cars, on the other hand, will often veer into my path without so much as a glance at their side mirrors.
I think one step is for Metro PD to get serious about enforcing bike lanes where they exist. Another is to get more bikes on the road, so drivers are forced to be more aware of us.
I understand the desire for exercise, to help the environment, etc., but in an urban environment, especially one with a great many cars, the new trend towards more bike riders is going to lead to more accidents with the bike riders getting the short end of the stick. I don’t think there are any easy answers.
While your anecdotes are interesting and all, did you read this article, which found that 90% of car-bike accidents were the fault of the car, not the bike, disobeying traffic laws?
Boston is reputed to be unfriendly for bikes, but I've never found that to be true. There are plenty enough bicyclists that motorists expect them. I try to ride or drive in harmony with the rest of traffic. When I'm driving I'll go the speed of traffic rather than the posted limit; when I'm riding I'll slow and yield, rather than stop, at a stop sign, or go through an intersection on the pedestrian signal.
My favorite innovation: the parking lane is between the car lane and the bicycle lane. That way open car doors don't force bicycles to swerve into the car traffic.
I wonder how many cyclists, nailed by cars turning in front of them, are nailed because they are illegally riding in the gutter. That is illegal lane usage. If you want to be respected in a turn, occuply the lane. It's the same story with someone nailed by a door while riding in the gutter, between the car and the curb.
And don't ask me, as a pedestrian, to get out of your way when you're cycling. It's my sidewalk, not yours.
I think that one of the reasons of the reasons cyclists fare better in Europe, is that motorists cut them absolutely no slack. It's counterintuitive, but it seems to result in fewer goofy cyclists, possibly by Darwinian means. If you're going to ride your bike on the street, there, you'd better be able to deal with cars going 60 past your left ear (or right ear in the UK). They won't slow down for you, and they expect you won't do anything stupid.
It also helps that European drivers, IMX, are a bit more skillful than US drivers.
This is a common complaint I've heard from serious cyclists. That, and not liking bike trails filled with pedestrians, baby carriages and slow cyclists. Bike lanes adjacent to traffic lanes tend to fill with broken bottles and stones. The cars sweep them from their lanes with their tires, but bikes are unable to do that. Unles they're regularly swept, they become tire eaters.
That makes sense, and helps accommodate the differences between bikes and cars.
As a motorcyclist I have to pay extra attention to other drivers, and the number of people I see, especially in the mornings, on the phone or messing with their blackberries, is terrifying. Who are you calling at 7:30 AM?
(And by the way, DC police do semi-frequently ticket cyclists who ride the wrong way down one ways -- including one stretch of New Hampshire that is scheduled to get a counterflow bike lane in the near future.)
Riding Middlefield Avenue in south Palo Alto is a different experience :-(
Bob Ayers, Palo Alto 1976--2004
That being said, the commenter who mentioned that bicyclists seem to do whatever is most convenient for them at that moment has to have some responsibility. If bicyclists want to have the same respect on the road as cars do, they need to obey the same rules. Being able to lane split, go against traffic, hop between the road and the sidewalk, and all of the other stupid-biker tricks probably contribute as much to car-bike collisions as a driver not seeing a bicyclist while making a right turn do. Just because what the bike rider was doing, say lane-splitting, is legal doesn't mean the car's driver should be at fault when the clip them while trying to make an otherwise legal maneuver.
In thirty years of biking I've had three bike accidents that involved serious damage to the bike and serious aches and pains for me. Two involved unaware parked drivers suddenly opening their doors on me. I've successfully avoided many more such door openings. This type of accident is so common that there's an expression for it, being doored (I assume as a play on being gored). My other serious accident involved hitting a pothole on a bike path while biking home after dark in the rain.
Generally speaking, I find that most drivers treat bicyclists decently and vice versa. A small minority of car drivers have an almost socio-pathic antipathy to bicyclists and a small minority of bicyclists make the rest of us look bad.
Just after 9/11 I consulted in DC for about a year and a half, living in Alexandria and commuting to the Hill. I explored the possibility of biking, but the way bicyclists were treated in the DC Metro area so scared me -- a life-long Bostonian!! -- that I gave up the idea and wound up putting on twenty excess pounds.
Then again I can remember when I started there, early 80s. Fax machines and email didn't exist, so if you needed to get a document from Interior to Justice, even just a draft for editing, you had to call for a bike messenger, and they carried the hard copy. I assume they were paid by the document, because they rode like maniacs, switching from street to sidewalk and blasting thru crowds. Conflicts with pedestrians and even cars were frequent (I remember a case where the guy used his chain lock like a mace to pound the roof of the car) but I only recall hearing of one car-bike collision. I'd bet there were upwards of hundred, and possibly several hundred, of these guys biking at any given moment, all at high speed, so that'd suggest the biking experience was more survivable than it would seem.
Perhaps you missed the part of this article where a study was actually conducted that found your claims to be false, and in fact it was the cars' violations of traffic laws, not the bikes', that was at fault in the vast majority of cases?
I've not had that problem. Probably different populations. [SHRUG] It was at low speed. I'd not dare that at 30 MPH.
If you were passing on the driver's side, you were in the right. If you were riding between the car and the curb, other than in a bike lane, than I have less sympathy.
Things are infinitely better today, especially places like Davis or Palo Alto. It's pretty good where I live too. But I would not commute on a regular basis. If you do it long enough you are bound to get into an accident. I know many bike fanatics who spend fortunes on their equipment and ride all the time. Every one has has been seriously hurt on suburban roads with bike lanes. One guy in terrific shape was run over by a truck as it started up after waiting for the signal light. Fortunately he survived without really serious injuries.
I especially would not ride in Washington DC. Not only do you face danger from the cars, but from street thugs as well. Ditto for New York City. The criminals in NYC are so aggressive that they have actually knocked policemen off their bikes and stolen them. That's hutspah.
Being able to lane split, go against traffic, hop between the road and the sidewalk, and all of the other stupid-biker tricks probably contribute as much to car-bike collisions as a driver not seeing a bicyclist while making a right turn do. Just because what the bike rider was doing, say lane-splitting, is legal doesn't mean the car's driver should be at fault when the clip them while trying to make an otherwise legal maneuver.
From the original post:
This has already happened several times. But, hey, who needs a careful critique of the OP when he can make rants that completely ignore the provided-for premise?
That's because the way the laws are set up, nearly all incidents are reported to be the fault of the driver, even if the biker is the one being dangerous or foolish.
Same thing with pedestrians... a pedestrian can jump out from behind a car or other visual obstruction straight into traffic, far away from any crossing and any resulting accident gets recorded as the fault of the driver. Especially if the idiot turns out to be a kid.
So the statistic is only useful for bicyclists who want to believe that their rampant lawbreaking is safe and consequence-free.
Thanks for the insight re Amsterdam. I know nothing about the transition - all I know of it was from my experience.
I agree with your appreciation for moving the location of car parking. If I was more organized, I'd do a bit of an amateur review of such practices, both with and without the bike lanes.
I've just gotten into biking for the first time as an adult (although I did it a ton when I was a kid, but never on busy streets). It was frightening and intimidating at first, and I still take extra extra care when biking with my 5-yo on a trail behind.
I've always wondered though, WHY laws forbidding bikes from sidewalks are so prevalent. I can understand them in places where sidewalks are so packed with people a bike could never get through, but not any place else. I think the preference for a bike-pedestrian accident over a bike-car accident would be obvious.
If a car goes to turn right, and the cars behind him slow down, but a bicyclist does not and continues to blow by traffic on the edge of that lane and ends up hitting the car in the side, my take is that's the cyclist's fault. In the linked study, that's counted as the car driver's fault.
Lane splitting between parked cars and moving traffic is just dumb if there's no marked bike lane, and can lead both to "open door" accidents and getting turned in front of. I don't know where fault would technically be allocated but I would consider those accidents the biker's fault.
I think the pedestrian mught have a different opinion.
Is this hard to imagine? You're riding either in a bike lane pushed up against parked cars, or you're riding in a regular lane, but not way out to the left lest you anger drivers who want to get around you. Someone opens their door at the wrong time and you're toast. To combat this, you need to ride to the left (angry drivers be damned) and keep an eye out for occupied driver's sides.
I'd guess this is the #1 threat, and all in all cycling in most places is pretty safe. Studies show it more dangerous than driving, safer than walking (though that may not be true in the US). The best way to make it safer is to have more people cycling - that's why Amsterdam generally has no problems.
In the meantime, stay off the sidewalks (for two reasons - to avoid pedestrians and to ensure that when you cross the street it's where a car expects you to be), make your presence known, and ride predictably. I think it's okay to run a red light if you check and there's no traffic, personally I don't do it in a city or during the day. I pretty much think the same behavior would be safe in a car.
So the statistic is only useful for bicyclists who want to believe that their rampant lawbreaking is safe and consequence-free.
The myopia evidenced here is always amazing. The "rampant lawbreaking" by cyclists? I dunno- how many motorists are in full compliance with their relevant traffic / vehicle codes? Speeding? Following too close? Rolling stops? Not signaling lane changes?
There's a reason it's called road rage. When you're driving, *everyone* else is always at fault (90% of Americans self-report ass above average drivers, y'know?). Commuting would be so much better if it wasn't for those other pesky drivers, and those idiot cyclists, and those damn pedestrians with their strollers keeping you from turning right.
I know I hate it when those stupid cyclists ruin my commute by getting tangled up in my bumper. Usually adds at least 10 minutes. Morans!
(As someone who walks, bikes, drives, and takes public transportation in a major metropolitan area(tm) I find it fascinating how your persepctive changes depending on your mode of transportation)
I sometimes find this, but not exclusively. I've been mostly defending bikers in this thread, and I haven't ridden a bike since I was 14--- as a driver, I honestly find the behavior of my fellow drivers problematic much more often than bikers. Turning from the wrong lane, running red lights, failing to use traffic signals, going 20+ over the speed limit, driving on the shoulder, tailgating, swerving into lanes, etc., are all rampant.
My own personal experience is that bikers routinely violate the rules of the road. Apparently stopping at stop signs is only for motorists, not for bicyclists.
Of course, I know that anecdotal experience can be vastly misleading, so it would be far preferable to have a careful study.
I agree that the bicyclists are by far the more vulnerable, and so it makes sense to expect that motorists have an obligation to yield to bicyclists whenever possible. (That probably does require the bicyclists to make sure they don't create a perception that they're "taking advantage" of the deference and are attempting to follow the rules of the road in good faith, though, if one wants to preserve motorists' inclinations of deference.)
Not to mention in Palo Alto you get sunny skies, warm (but not hot) temperatures and no humidity. Contrast that with DC's horrible weather in both summer and winter.
Yes there is a WORLD of difference between West coast &East coast cyclists.
The main difference is that West Coast are the most self-righteous people you'll ever find.
Because they are better than anyone else (after all they don't drive those horrid cars) they feel they have a right to do whatever they want. And there is a presumption that the car driver is always in the wrong.
The cyclists are often violent.
What drives me nuts is that Portland (Ore) spend tons of money building bike lanes on roads no sane person would ride on (highways, etc.) and has almost ALL country roads (where a nice weekend ride could be had) without and shoulder or place to ride.
A similar phenomenon occurs at driveways - once a driver sees that a sidewalk is clear of pedestrians he'll often pull his nose right to the curb, cutting off any cyclists on a sidewalk "bike path".
Wait, so the "laws are set up" so that the driver is at fault in most bicycle-driver collisions, but nonetheless it is the bicyclists who are guilty of "rampant lawbreaking"?
Your post seems to be utterly devoid of both logic and an understanding of the OP.
The only time any drivers yelled at me while I was biking, they just screamed that I should be wearing a helmet.
At least in the suburban context:
1. Any bicycle traffic on sidewalks is terrible for pedestrians, who often have strollers, children, dogs, etc. At the very least, cyclists using the sidewalk should pull into the road when they approach pedestrians.
2. Sidewalks tend not to be situated so that motorists crossing them have long fields of view. You can see far enough to spot a jogger but not a cyclist moving at speed. Thus, motorists will often fail to see the relatively fast, hard-to-see bicycles on the sidewalk.
3. Consequently, the street--and particularly the center of the traffic lanes--not the sidewalk, is the safest place for cyclists.
My experience is that most bikers on the West Coast are relatively normal people also, but there's a vocal minority of self-righteous jerks. San Francisco even has this split sort of officialized--- it has the country's largest Critical Mass chapter, but an even larger constructive/nonconfrontational bike organization that's sort of actively "not Critical Mass", the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. They get less press despite being larger, because instead of blocking roads, they do boring things like showing up to City Council meetings, and proposing improvement plans.
Flawed logic: bicyclists break laws at a higher rate than motorists. Therefore, when motorists and bicyclists collide, the collision was more likely than not caused by the bicyclist.
Some key items follow.
Cyclists between the ages of 10 and 20 years of age were highly over-represented in this type of collision. Young cyclists are allowed to ride on sidewalks in Toronto, but they should be taught that walking across intersections increases their own safety, as well as the comfort of pedestrians. It is likely that this age group generally lacks the cycling experience that might help them
anticipate motorist behaviour at intersections.
The rest of the significant crash types [Turns] are not particularly unusual for a large urban area, except that jurisdictions which prohibit right-turns on red lights will see fewer collisions of that type. Analysis of the contributing factors involved is instructive, though. Overall, the most significant secondary factor was cycling on the footpath or crosswalk. This behaviour was most frequent in collisions where the motorist was turning right at a red light (86%) or emerging from a private drive (81%). Typically, the motorist in these situations was looking out for traffic approaching from the left, while the cyclist approached from the motorist’s right. In these situations it is clear that the cyclists would have been better off in the roadway.
Note that the author of the actual study points out that bicyclist behavior contributes to these accidents. They are not 100% the fault of motorists.
To conserve momentum, many bikers are willing to run a stop sign or red light if the coast is clear. But they do so at their own risk. There are no fender benders when car meets bike. Regardless of fault, the biker loses.
It's easy for motorists stuck in traffic to be irritated when a bike speeds by between lanes, even if it causes no real harm. But again, the risk of injury falls on the cyclist if someone decides to open a car door suddenly. Deal with it.
Ultimately, there is no good solution to the problem of driver inattention to bikes, other than cyclists practicing extremely defensive riding. If you don't expect an approaching car to turn in front of you, he probably will. If you expect the worst, you'll be ready when he does, and pleasantly surprised if he decides to yield.
None of this justifies stupid risk-taking by cyclists. I sometimes see bikes during rush hour in the traffic lanes on US 50 in Arlington, a six-lane divided highway with prevailing speeds of 50 mph or so. It may be legal, but that's a poor epitaph.
By the way, my comments concern bike commuters. Bicycle messengers in downtown DC are a breed apart -- they seem to feel protected from their own risky riding by an invisible shield of arrogance and hostility. I don't know how they do it, but their survival is a natural wonder to me.
I've never been hit by a driver that's screamed at me. I don't like it, but I realize that once they scream at me, they've seen me and they've acknowledged that they've seen me.
I have been told to use the bicycle lanes on roads that don't have bicycle lanes. I'm not sure how acknowledging that they don't pay attention to the side of the road is supposed to convince me to move there.
That said, I'm a cyclist who would love to see police ticket cyclists the same as motorists--but only if they also ticket motorists for driving dangerously as well. (Right turns from the left of through traffic is a big one.)
It does cause real harm, since the bike up in front of them is occupying volume that they could, slowing them down.
Some people never had the lunch line in 5th grade ...
Light's green but 'dont walk' is lit? You're a car, cruise on through. Light's red, 'walk' illuminated? You're a pedestrian, (you guessed it) enter the intersection at full speed.
Earlier this month I almost hit a skateboarder for precisely this reason. Going 30mph down a sidewalk into a crosswalk when the sidewal was not designed to provide sufficient visibility to turning cars is a recipe for disaster.
Bob Ayers wrote at 8.29.2009 2:06pm:Agreed about Middlefield. But Lytton Avenue, one block from University and parallel to it (between Middlefield and Alma), is a cyclist's nightmare in my experience. The roadway is in hideous disrepair, with potholes and surface faults of several inches depth every few feet. Many drivers pay no attention to bicyclists riding in the designated bike lanes. In the course of riding that street I have experienced in broad daylight:
-- One collision when a driver paying no attention halfway passed me, then made a right turn when directly beside me, without even bothering to signal. I was in the bike lane, and the driver was in the auto lane until he made his right turn. The collision threw me into heavy auto traffic. I consider myself lucky to have survived with nothing but minor abrasions and a few days soreness.
-- One near-collision I avoided by making a high speed emergency right turn and controlled laydown to avoid it, under similar circumstances as above. The driver was chatting on a cellphone, and drove away oblivious to my existence. She didn't care. She didn't have to. She had more important things to do than drive sanely, and she knew Palo Alto police don't care a fig about motorists who endanger bicyclists. They have far more important things to do -- collecting revenue by enforcing The Peoples Republic's confusing parking ordinances.
-- Another series of near-collisions as a driver (who I believe was quite drunk) decided to pace directly beside me and make occasional swerves into the bike lane. This continued the entire length of Lytton. At the Alma stoplight he began shouting to me to "watch where you're going". I told him to sober up. I would have cheerfully strangled him with my bare hands, but that would have been unlawful.
-- Enough near collisions that I've lost count, with car doors opened by fools who didn't bother to check their review mirrors before opening their car doors into the bike lane. This is sometimes compounded by auto drivers who refuse to honor the bike lanes and squeeze bicyclists into a Hobson's choice between collision with a moving car or a relatively stationary car door.
I admit that I ride quite fast for a bicyclist, especially so for a "senior citizen", and I sometimes pass auto traffic while riding in the bike lane. That is also perfectly lawful. I do obey traffic speed laws, and I ride in the bike lane per the law. Auto drivers apparently don't recognize, or don't care, that the bike lane is for bikes, and not for autos.
To see an auto signaling a turn is a rare experience. They apparently have far more important things to do, somewhat like the city fathers and mothers of the Peoples' Republic of Palo Alto have far more important things to attend than keeping Lytton Avenue in decent repair. It hasn't been resurfaced for several decades in my recollection (except a one block section recently resurfaced by a construction company, apparently as a condition for a building permit). Neither have many streets in the area, except University Avenue, where they can extract tax money from the capitalist running dog lackeys.
In my experience, by far the safest place to ride a bicycle in Palo Alto is on the sidewalks, which is of course prohibited in downtown areas.
For example, when I approach an urban intersection when driving a car, it's rare to see a car driving the wrong way through the intersection on a red light - in fact, it's so rare, I don't have to consciously think about it (the time or two it's happened, my subconscious mind found it so out of the ordinary that it sent an interrupt to my conscious mind to process the exception). However, I have to anticipate and look for cyclists either on the sidewalk or along the curb, going either with or opposite traffic, and quite possibly ignoring the red light or stop sign in their direction. Since these exceptions are so common, the subconscious mind doesn't notice them as "exceptions".
I suspect it would help a lot for traffic control police to crack down on "wrong way cyclists" as hard as they crack down on "wrong way motorists" - thus making cyclists and pedestrians behavior as predictable as automobile behavior is. Perhaps cyclists should also have to have "cycling licenses" with tests/training if they are going to ride on public roads. (Pedestrians seem to be a bit less of a problem because they move more slowly and it's probably impractical to require licenses for walking!)
It strikes me as ironic that the most vulnerable (due to size and lack of crash protection) travelers (on bikes and on foot) are the most likely to blatantly ignore traffic laws. But, I do it also -- I have never intentionally gone through a red light (even after stopping) even when perfectly safe when driving my car but do so often on foot and when cycling (in my case, I look very carefully before doing so). I think this is mostly because even if an officer watches me disobey the law, the odds of suffering punishment is almost nil when I'm a pedestrian or a cyclist but is almost certain when driving.
As I say, earlier this month, I came VERY CLOSE to running over a skateboarder who was doing about 30mph down a hill on a sidewalk into a crosswalk. Given the speeds involved, it wasn't really possible to see him until a collision was almost unavoidable (stopped about 6 in short of him and by that point he had jumped off his skateboard).
If you are riding slowly (speeds of a jogger or slower), sidewalks are probably ok but be prepared to stop (I have been almost run over by cars backing out of driveways while I was jogging). But if you are trying to riding at any speed, sidewalks aren't safe. Stay out of them.
The simple fact is that sidewalks are designed with pedestrians (who use common sense) in mind. Visibility from drive ways and even roads in some cases, is not sufficient for faster-moving individuals whether running, riding, or inline skating. Often times a car cannot SEE you well enough and you have to avoid the car.
There is no excuse for blowing through stop signs and red lights, regardless of whether that would make commuting impractical. I could get to work much faster if I could run red lights, drive on the sidewalk or in oncoming lanes at will. I think I'm skillful enough to do so without causing accidents. I don't because regardless of my opinions about my own skill, it's dangerous and if a police officer saw me do such a thing I would get a ticket. As for the extra muscle power it takes to start up from a stop, boo f*cking hoo. The gas it takes to do the same thing probably costs me hundreds of dollars a year. Your personal lack of muscle power isn't an excuse to break the law.
Honestly I don't mind following at bicycle speed until there is plenty of room to get around if I see the bicyclist obeying the laws. But the guy who just ran a red light can fend for himself.
There is no excuse for blowing through stop signs and red lights, regardless of whether that would make commuting impractical. I could get to work much faster if I could run red lights, drive on the sidewalk or in oncoming lanes at will. I think I'm skillful enough to do so without causing accidents. I don't because regardless of my opinions about my own skill, it's dangerous and if a police officer saw me do such a thing I would get a ticket. As for the extra muscle power it takes to start up from a stop, boo f*cking hoo. The gas it takes to do the same thing probably costs me hundreds of dollars a year. Your personal lack of muscle power isn't an excuse to break the law.
Honestly I don't mind following at bicycle speed until there is plenty of room to get around if I see the bicyclist obeying the laws. But the guy who just ran a red light can fend for himself.
There is no excuse for blowing through stop signs and red lights, regardless of whether that would make commuting impractical. I could get to work much faster if I could run red lights, drive on the sidewalk or in oncoming lanes at will. I think I'm skillful enough to do so without causing accidents. I don't because regardless of my opinions about my own skill, it's dangerous and if a police officer saw me do such a thing I would get a ticket. As for the extra muscle power it takes to start up from a stop, boo f*cking hoo. The gas it takes to do the same thing probably costs me hundreds of dollars a year. Your personal lack of muscle power isn't an excuse to break the law.
Honestly I don't mind following at bicycle speed until there is plenty of room to get around if I see the bicyclist obeying the laws. But the guy who just ran a red light can fend for himself.
Although it is Europe, Paris is far from having such a bike culture as Amsterdam or Copenhague. Things have improved in the last years, due to the massive success of Velib, but it is still quite dangerous to ride in this very dense city. Riding on the sidewalk is not only forbidden, but very impractical : most of them are very narrow and crowded. There are bike lanes as in Amsterdam, between parking space and curb, but it would be unsafe to ride at high speed there : careless car passengers open their doors without looking, careless pedestrians cross without paying attention to even the most frantic honking. Bikes may also use the taxi/bus lanes, but taxi drivers drive quite recklessly and bus drivers often react nervously when they have to slow down at a bike's speed instead of keeping their schedule ; one Velib rider died this way. Two more deaths occured due to trucks turning right without signals: the bikers were in their blind spot. During the day, I prefer to walk, or slowly ride, my bike, past the crosswalk to be ahead of the cars before they start again and, perhaps, cross my way without paying attention. And the "dooring" seems to be as much a problem here as in the US, forcing any biker into a cruel dilemma : slow, careful driving along the parked cars, or cruising at normal speed (for the biker, but not the car drivers behind him) in the middle of the lane.
As a result, it remains unsafe to ride at "normal" speed at most times, especially rush hour : the middle of the night is still the most gratifying time for a ride, even indulging then in the typical biker's thrills of running a red light or taking back a one-way street.
In that case he deserves prosecution for each and every single time he has done that. The attitude displayed in that sentence is one of the prime causes of casualties amongst cyclists: the arrogant presumption that the rules of the road do not apply to them. It is further typified by riding on the pavement (sidewalk), riding without lights at night and riding the wrong way up one-way streets.
In the areas of the UK where I live I regularly see cyclists doing all of the above. It is largely their fault that they are involved in road accidents. When driving I have saved the lives of several cyclists by realizing they were about to do something stupid (of the ilk of the list above) and taking avoiding action before they did it.
There are arrogant, inconsiderate car drivers around. Where I live they are a minority, whereas arrogant, inconsiderate cyclists are the majority.
They lane split to the front of a line of traffic, then hold everyone back when they take the middle of the lane when a stoplight turns green. (The city has even recently created lane-wide boxes at many stoplights which are designated as part of the bicycle lanes to facilitate this crap.) The go from center of hte traffic lane, to bicycle lane, to sidewalk and back again on a whim--whatever's most convenient for them moment by moment. There's a push on to actually change the law so bicyclists don't have to stop for stop signs or red lights.
It's incredibly rare (but richly rewarding) to see a cop pull one of these asses over to ticket him for his behavior. I'd like to see them required to mount a license on their bicycles just an auto, so flagrant lawbreakers could be identified and reported.
Or just exempt them from the traffic laws entirely--and treat them as outlaws. Let Darwin's law prevail. You hit a bicyclist? Eh. It's not like you a hit dog or a pedestrian.
... perhaps using x-ray vision to see through parked cars and other obstructions...
My comment may or may not be applicable here. I'm not advocating any particular position, interest or solution.
It seems to me that if a set of laws requires skills, abilities or attributes not commonly found within humans, then there will be some issues with compliance.
The otherwise lawful relevant act (ie driving) becomes a calculated risk of violating the law (ie failing to spot the concealed cyclist).
Rationally speaking, it seems to me that the rules for cars and bikes should have a significant overlap, since both are using the same space and everyone should be able to have the same expectations of the other driver or person. Having said that, though, it is my view that requiring bikes to come to a full stop is actually more dangerous than what I would call a "pause stop." This is because when you try to restart the bike, you have less control over the bike than if you still have some momentum.
But the real problem is that bikes and cars do not belong on the same roads, anymore than cars and pedestrians do. Bike riders are simply invisible to drivers, for the reasons Prof. Andersen put so well in his post. So when I ride, I assume no one can see me, and also that everyone is going to do whatever action it will take to run into me or otherwise cause me to crash.
When you are on a bike, paranoia is a survival trait.
Motorcycle riders have been saying this since the time of WW I.
Welcome to the Reality Club.
1) I really, really think it would be better if most jurisdictions allowed cyclists to perform the "Idaho stop", where stop signs are treated as yield signs and red lights as stop signs. If this were done, I would have absolutely no problems with aggressive police enforcement against violators.
2) Again, despite all of the anecdotes, the behavior being described by a lot of the motorists is really a lot less prevalent than some drivers seem to think it is. When you start cycling a lot, you begin to recognize how many cyclists are out there obeying the law. The problem is that motorists usually only notice the ones who are riding in front of them when they are in a rush, or who are breaking the law. It is not in cyclists' best interest to ride aggressively -- when we collide with cars, we break bones or die, and I think most of us recognize this.
As far as I am aware cyclists are in fact supposed to obey the same rules as cars. As for coming to a full stop, given the ralities of many intersections this seems like a no brainer to me. The right turn examples are a great example here, it is perfectly legal in many places to turn right on red, depending on the location it may even be legal to do so without coming to a stop first. A cyclist not prepared to come to a full stop is just asking to run into someone.
Just like other road users a cyclist is supposed to pull over if they impede traffic flow. I've seen that rule vary from holding up 3 to 5 vehicles. I'm not sure that I've ever seen a cyclist come to a full stop to obey that rule.
I wonder how hard it would be to modify traffic cameras to catch cyclists who move from the roadway to crosswalks and back. Not that it would do any good until bikes are licensed the way cars are.
It's going to be the people who stick out who give the group their image. Drivers will hardly notice the other cars around them so long as everyone behaves as expected. It is probably a good thing that cyclists go unnoticed for the most part, it shows that the majority of you are doing it right.
I would almost think that the safest place for bike lanes would be in the middle of the roadway. Either side of parked cars and at least some drivers are going to be blocked from seeing the cyclist. This would also likely serve to enforce stopping rules because crosswalks would not be as readily available.
Even better of course would be to have no bike lane and have cyclists who obey the restriction on not blocking traffic flow, even if they have to pull over and let others by.
This is hardly only cyclists--- I rarely see anyone come to a full stop to obey that rule. I live in a tourist town near mountains, and there are plenty of tourists who go 25 mph on unfamiliar windy roads with 40 mph speed limits, sometimes piling up 5-6 vehicles behind them. Occasionally someone will actually pull over to let the accumulated pile of cars pass, but they're the exception.
And I agree that the analysis reported by a bicycle group that says it's all the drivers' fault could possibly be slightly suspect, given the general high-horsing of cyclists. Also, I'm curious about the reporting method for that study. I say this as an urban pedestrian (and sometime skater) who neither drives nor bikes anymore.
I've at least seen officers enforce that rule against auto drivers.
I'm with Angus on this one. From my experience in Chicago (and yes I know the plural of anecdote is not data), the most frequent cause of problems between motorists and cyclist is when a cyclist that was behind the car rides up to the right of car at a stop light. The driver is not expecting the cyclist to be there when the driver either goes straight or turns right. If the cyclist stayed in line, it wouldn't be an issue.
Also, the OP's statement that Pedestrians register only faintly, and only if there is a baby carriage. Pedestrian crosswalks register not at all. applies as much to cyclists as drivers in Chicago. I'm always stunned how cyclists go flying through packs of dense walkers/joggers/runners on the path along Lake Michigan.
The closest you can get is "[t]he most frequent type of crash involved a motorist entering an intersection controlled by a stop sign (73%) or red light (17%), and either failing to stop properly, or proceeding before it was safe to do so." Even then the authors carefully point out that who was actually at fault is highly subjective--the point being that while the car may have violated traffic laws, so may have the bicyclist.
PS. This type of bullshit is very common with the authors of Freakonomics. They should have no credibility among anyone who actually examines the facts.
Is this a study from the Department of Redundancy Department?
Out here in the country the most vulnerable have the right of way, or at least a wide berth.
It just so happens, however, that driver and cyclist collide, it almost invariably involves drivers doing the illegal thing but the cyclist doing the stupid thing. Driver cuts into the bike lane for a right turn? Illegal for the driver, but really stupid for the cyclist to not anticipate and slow down.
Auto drivers often ignore these lanes or, when making a right hand turn at an intersection, do not look right to determine whether a bicycle is beside them. Frequently auto drivers will pass a cyclist as they approach an intersection, then turn right without signaling when the cyclist is directly beside them on their right. That's what happened to me.
The auto driver can only fail to notice the cyclist when passing if they are not paying attention to traffic when they drive halfway past the cyclist.
Frankly I think such driving is inexcusable. It's also illegal.
F*** bicycles.
If it has wheels and is propelled on the street, make cyclists riding such adhere to the same laws as those who are driving automobiles.
The first rule of the road for all drivers is not to collide with things in front of you just because you don't want to bother watching where you're going.
Many times I have in fact "anticipated and slowed down", actually come to a screeching halt, when some idiot did this. These are annoyances but not what I called "near collisions". Near collisions are when I dodged a car by inches or less when they did something insane and illegal when approaching and overtaking from behind.
But the simple fact is that one cannot always reliably "anticipate" what a fool will do. Bicyclist should not be expected or required to stop every time an auto begins to overtake and pass them.
Except even if the driver doesn't go into the bike lane they still have the right to turn. And many places do not require a turn signal in that situation. The cyclist needs to be prepared to stop at an intersection where a car can turn in front of them.
Sorry, I just don't think that he should have been there. He was probably slowing up thousands of people, costing far, far, more in gasoline than if he had driven to work.
The other place where I have had a problem with bikers is coming down the west side of Independence Pass into Aspen. The road is barely wide enough for two cars, and so you can't really go around them. On the way up, they go far slower than the slowest camper, and on the way down, if the road is wide open (i.e. not jammed with tourists), they are moving pretty good, but many of the cars faster, and all of a sudden, you come around a corner, and there they are, in the middle of a lane, and a car is coming up in the other lane. It is worse than if a car were going that slowly, since you don't see them as fast. Of course, it is a great workout for the bicyclists to slog up the pass, and a fabulous ride to go back down - but they have destroyed the joy of driving that pass.
As I said, that situation would solve itself if cyclists were ticketed for impeding traffic.
Sure, else why would I have bothered responding? I spoke too glibly, as bike accidents can often be tragedies and needless deaths should not be made light of, and for that I apologize. But I have observed cyclists breaking traffic laws far, far, far more often than drivers. As someone who rarely drives, I'm far more interested in the incidences of bike-pedestrian accidents, and I'm pretty sure I know which group is to blame for just about all of those. I also noted the source of the statistics. Forgive me for suspecting bias, especially when the notion of a country of law-abiding cyclists being run down by reckless motorists diverges so dramatically from my own experience (and, apparently, the experiences of quite a few other commenters). But thank you for reiterating the thesis of the article, that was very helpful.
If you drive with that attitude, just hope the bicyclist you decide to take out is really dead when you leave the scene, and isn't a lawyer.
Soronel Haetir wrote at 8.29.2009 7:03pm:
The situations I described were not of cars oncoming in front of me making turns without signaling. The cars overtook me about half a car length, then made a right turn while alongside me, without signaling or looking to the right. Put another way, I was alongside and to the right of the windshield when the overtaking car would suddenly turn right. That's very close, but not quite the same as, being struck from behind. One cannot stop in the middle of one's designated lane every time an auto driver begins to overtake.
In the collision I noted above, I did see the expression of horror on the auto passenger's face as she screamed at her hubby to stop. I managed to slow down my heavily laden bike sufficiently in that fraction of a second so that the auto's right rear bumper clipped my front wheel in the middle of the intersection, upending me into traffic along with my grocery purchases. It took the auto driver a good fraction of a block to stop after he realized he had struck me.
Signaling is required by law in California except in very limited situations. The situations I described are not among the exceptions.
I regularly offer thanks to Pete Snell, whose unfortunate death made life a bit safer for so many, mine included. He certainly saved me that day.
Alright, I have been thinking mostly about the situation of approaching an intersection where many cyclists here have defended not coming to a full stop. Certainly a car simply turning onto a side street, the driver needs to check the bike lane if there is one.
Here in Washington I drive over the passes frequently. I have NEVER seen anyone (cyclist, car, camper, etc) ticketed for impeding traffic.
Oddly as I write this I looked out my window at a 4-way intersection and watched a motorcyclist (not a bicyclist) run the stop sign.....
Is there something I should know about that dead lawyers can do?
But basically everyone drives, so such behavior is invisible, even to the drivers themselves. I don't doubt that people on this thread are being sincere when they say, for example, that they "have observed cyclists breaking traffic laws far, far, far more often than drivers." Maybe we can call it the motes and beams fallacy.
Come now, Kenneth. I'm sure you know it's not about whether it's a good idea or not. It's about whether it makes the liberals who think up these things feel good or not.
I think that the police in Cambridge, MA did a fabulous job of balancing the needs/safety of motorists with the needs of bicyclists.
Also, anyone who thinks bikes should "wait in line" at intersections is crazy. I'm all for obeying traffic signals. But if a line of 20 cars is stopped at a red light, I am going to ride my bike on the right of the stopped cars (but to the left of any parked cars) up until the red light. At the intersection is where I will stop. When the light turns green I will check to see that any motorists to my left can see me and/or are not turning right before I proceed straight through the intersection.
If I am turning left, I ride my bike between cars on the rightmost edge of the rightmost left-turn lane. I stop when I reach the "white line", signal a left turn, and when I do turn, I make sure to stay on an arc well outside of where cars go.
I don't run red lights, and I don't ride on sidewalks.
I don't see why I should have to stay in a line behind voluminous, lane-blocking vehicles when I have chosen to use a much more maneuverable, compact device. Plus, to my knowledge, riding between cars stopped at red lights is not against any traffic laws.
DC cab and bus drivers are jerks, and the "messenger" crowd is no better on bikes. Neither group is considerate of pedestrians or other vehicles. Neither group takes the time to signal for turns or to stop at the stop line rather than in the crosswalk.
The problem isn't fundamental incompatibility, it's selfishness. I realize not everyone can or should follow traffic laws 100% of the time, but 95% would be nice. To date I've been clipped by one driver (taxi) and had no substantial injuries. If we can't have more aggressive ticketing by police for dangerous infractions, perhaps we can have more severe financial penalties for each one.
A focus on who is acting illegal gets you nowhere. If you want a safe environment to bike, you need to change street design and have shared cultural norms and expectations between cyclists and drivers, as we have between pedestrians and drivers. Cursing at drivers will get you nowhere.
A friend once pointed out to me that running a red light when it is safe to do so is safer for the bicycle.
Cars pile up at red lights and when the light turns green there is a space where all the cars are jockeying for position. A bicycle has no place in the middle of that melee. A second advantage is that when you cruise through the red light every driver waiting for the light to change sees you. This is a good thing. It may make them mad but my friend believed there was a great distance between being angry and killing someone on the street. The trade off is that if the bicyclist misjudges the cross traffic the results are his fault.
Stop signs can be ridden through. We don't need to stop like a car because we can examine the intersection while approaching it. We are moving much more slowly and have greater visibility and the ability to hear traffic. There is a high energy cost in getting back up to speed after a full stop. Certainly if a car already has the right of way the cyclist should yield even if it requires a full stop.
As for the right turn hazard it seems to me that drivers have no concept of how much distance a bike needs to stop. We cannot stop on a dime the way a pedestrian can. Once the car has passed the bicycle the bicycle no longer exists for that driver. I was nearly killed when this occurred on a steep downhill run.
Bikes need to ride with the flow of the traffic. The key factor here is the closing velocity. An overtaking auto can reduce the closing velocity to zero by slowing to the speed of the bicycle (10 to 20mph). In a head to head situation the car has to stop completely and then only reduces the closing velocity to the bicycle's speed.
I probably check every parked car I pass to see if anyone is in it to open the door.
I have never had any issue with someone opening a car door, probably because bike lanes either have no parking next to them or leave enough room for a door to open without nailing you.
The local paper's list of all the bike-car fatalities from 96 to 06 plus my recollection since gives a tally of 7 caused by motorists and 4 caused by cyclists.
Swinish riding is very common. If legal customs changed to give cars the same immunity from enforcement that bikes receive, I suspect human nature would take over and make things quite dangerous.
The further into the South, the more actively aggressive the drivers become. I have had stuff thrown at me. A couple years ago east of Memphis, a nearly full can of 7-Up missed my head by about three inches, launched from a pickup coming from behind. This on a country road with no one coming the other way, and as far to the right as I could get.
In Montgomery AL, I have had drivers (including semi drivers) blast their horns just as they are passing.
In Pensacola, FL, obscenities from a Jeep. (Satisfying moment though: I go a lot faster than most cyclists, and caught him at the next signal.) There is a bridge across Escambia Bay, the right lane of which really isn't wide enough for a car and a bike. Stay to the right, and motorists will happily put their sideview mirrors within inches of your shoulder. Stay in the center of the lane -- which is legal, BTW -- and drivers are an inch off your wheel, honking and shouting.
I have had drivers coming the opposite way passing another car, without the slightest concern that the cyclist, with nowhere to go, is going to have that vehicle's left sideview mirror inches away, coming the other direction at 60+ mph.
The further from the South, the more considerate the drivers become. I have no idea why this is.
Re: stop signs. Mostly, I slow, but do not come to a complete stop. Why? Because if I time it right, it is my turn, and since I get through the intersection more quickly, other drivers are able to get on their way sooner.
There is nothing, short of making a complete stop every time a vehicle begins to overtake you, that can prevent such idiotic driver behavior, whether in a car or on a bicycle. Even then, the idiot might decide a stopped target is easier to hit. Remember: part of the overtaking vehicle is behind some part of the target vehicle at all times during the event.
Certainly nobody sane wants the epitaph "He had the right of way". But there is very little a bicyclist (or a car driver) can do if another driver engages in such inherently unpredictable behavior. It's called "illegally merging into an occupied lane", or "running someone off the road", or "sideswiping", or "vehicular manslaughter" depending on the outcome.
The difference is that car drivers don't ordinarily do that to other cars. But many car drivers in my experience think nothing of doing it to bicyclists. An emergency RH turn, if there is empty roadway on which to turn, is the only escape. If you stop instantly when the idiot begins turning, he will still strike you with part of his car.
Allan L. wrote at 8.29.2009 8:51pm:I phrased that poorly. But now that you've mentioned it, I'll just say if zombies are scary, zombie lawyers are an unspeakable nightmare. They don't stop at eating living brains, and they use zombie process servers.
Just be glad if they aren't banjo players too.
Also, I have found that wielding a long umbrella and a vicious look is sometimes an effective preventative measure.
SideWALK. Not sideBICYCLE. See? It's right there in the word itself.
And yes, I'm a road cyclist. Just not a sidewalk cyclist.
Part of the problem is that what used to be the main cyclist-advocacy organization, the League of American Bicyclists, is increasingly dependent on the bike industry for funding. They lobby for lots of segregated bike facilities (like bike lanes and bike paths) because those entice non-cyclists to buy bikes.
The LAB's Bicycle Friendly Communities program is little more than a measure of the amount of road paint (and whether a local government has paid a sufficient consulting fee to an LAB-related consulting firm for writing a customized "Bike Plan").
The LAB used to fight for the right of cyclists to use the road competently. One of the last remnants of those days is the League Cycling Instructor program.
So we spend taxpayer money on "bicycle facilities" that make cycling more dangerous because the facilities make cyclists who won't bother to learn to ride in traffic feel special. At least some of the money gets into the pockets of special interests.
Here's a hint on reading cycling political rhetoric. "Bicycle advocacy" is generally done by bike industry funded groups and focuses on segregated (and often expensive) special bicycle facilities like bike lanes and bike paths. "Cycling advocacy" or "cyclist advocacy" generally focuses on teaching cyclists how to ride safely in traffic.
I can't believe no one's jumped on Wordsmith yet for this. "impossibly tiring"? Good grief. Sure, it costs a lot of energy, but if that increment or several times it is really enough to make it impossible to bike, you shouldn't be biking.
As for me, I live south of Palo Alto in Mountain View. I don't own a car, nor do I intend to for as long as I can help it; I think biking is much more fun. I bike to and from work every day, and I do other riding on roads in the area down to Sunnyvale, up to Palo Alto, and various other points as well. I always do the full stop at red lights; stop signs I slow enough that I could stop fully if necessary, very visibly look both ways, then continue if I'm the first at the light or if no one's there. (I sometimes jump other cars at the light if they appear notably indecisive, my logic being it's better for everyone if we resolve the situation than if a "duel of politeness" wastes our time too much.) At lights I ride to the head of the line to the right of cars in whatever lane I'm using, unless I see a turn signal in cars near the head, in which case I'll hang back behind them. If there's a line of cars at a stop I'll pass between cars and parked cars at a reasonably slow speed (about the same speed as I travel on sidewalks with pedestrians, see below) until I reach the front. The only way I'm going to have problems there is if either side opens a door in front of me, but the parked cars are usually pretty clearly empty and the ones on the road, well, I expect people are generally nice and won't be intentionally malicious.
Regarding sidewalks, if I'm on one and pedestrians are near, I slow to the pace where I can push myself along with one foot, leaving the other on the pedal. It's not much over walking pace, so it's not inherently unsafe. If I come up on pedestrians, I say "Excuse me" and, if they let me by (can't remember a situation where someone didn't), say "Thanks" in passing.
Regarding general traffic maneuvers, my position is that if I get hit, whether the car's right or wrong or whether I'm right or wrong is really quite immaterial, from my point of view after the fact. punditius has it exactly right: "When you are on a bike, paranoia is a survival trait." It shouldn't technically be necessary, but it doesn't cost much to continually look before you act, and the potential payoff might be large. If I'm heading north on Shoreline over the bridge across Central, I look behind me before crossing the ramp to enter Central heading west, same on Shoreline passing the entrance ramps to 101. The same policy applies to left turns where I have to move across a couple lanes of traffic to get in the left-turn lane (assuming traffic's thin enough; if it's not I'll pull up to the intersection and use the pedestrian crosswalk when I get a walk sign). I can't remember any other particular interesting situations I encounter generally, but I'm sure they exist.
Anyway. To sum it up, I carefully take advantage of bike-only opportunities when they occur, look before I act, and give a tip of the hat to pedestrians when I'm on their turf asking for a little space. None of this strikes me as unreasonable, and while I'm sure I don't always live up to this exactly, I can't believe I'm that far off the mark.
Pretty much everyone on the road violates the law when 1) it's convenient, 2) they don't think they'll hurt someone, and 3) they think they can get away without a ticket.
Most motorists think they have a God-given right to drive 5-10 mph above the speed limit. That's breaking the law. Few motorists always signal for a long enough period before changing lanes. That's breaking the law. At residential four-way stops, few motorists come to a complete stop. That's breaking the law. When a light turns yellow, many motorists who could stop don't. That's breaking the law. I see motorists stopped in no-stopping zones all the time. That's breaking the law. Few motorists will stop for a pedestrian crossing in an unsignalized and/or unmarked crosswalk. That's breaking the law. I could go on and on
and on.
Maybe more stricter traffic enforcement on motorists and cyclists would be a good thing, but Motorists who call for that stricter enforcement should be careful what they ask for.
I have a hard time taking people seriously when they complain that bicycles should have to follow the same laws as cars(they generally do in most jurisdictions) or call for registration for bicycles. The general tone of such complainers tends to make me think the preferred solution is to get the bicycles off their road. Most of the ones that yell at me(despite the fact that I am obeying the laws) can't even seem to agree on what I should do in order to make them less angry, short of buying a car and driving around with a cellphone stuck to my ear.
If bike lanes must be striped at all, they should disappear at intersections, at least at intersections where right turns are allowed. It's really stupid traffic engineering to put a straight-through lane to the right of a lane in which vehicles can turn right. Also, being so far to the right makes cyclists even less visible to traffic on the cross streets. And how would you stripe a lane that's useful for cyclists turning left, going straight, and turning right?
Generally speaking, it's stupid to stripe bike lanes anywhere near an intersection. That's why they have very little value (and are often dangerous) in most parts of most urban areas. They are mainly striped to make cyclists feel special about themselves and to let politicians claim they have done something for cycling.
Yeah, let's compare the annual pedestrian vs cyclist fatalities, compared to cyclist vs car. Keep whining. What, is that a bruise on your shin? My cyclist friend just got his head scattered across the road. Keep whining.
Inconvenience on your pedestrian-part versus death on a cyclist's part is no competition. Stop whining.
People use their hatred for cyclists to justify fatalities. Seriously, it feels like that. Drivers are idiots... but that's nothing next people's hatred for evil cyclists. Stop whining.
I find biking in Washington not too bad. Traffic never seems to move very fast. I would never bike in the burbs because there is no shoulder, the cars go way too fast, and no one expects to see a biker.
That's because without physical separation and strong counter-motivation, motorists thirst to murder cyclists.
*In some states this is legal.
That the collision is often considered the fault of the automobile driver simply means that the laws don't respect real human behavior and the limitations on a driver's attention and visibility.
A motorcycle suffers from some of these problems, although it is more visible. It does not, unlike bicycles, tempt a large percentage of its riders to violate traffic laws in order to conserve kinetic energy.
A bicycle is often almost invisible, especially in the rear view mirror where "objects may be closer than they appear."
I think bicycles on the road are primarily a jobs program for personal injury lawyers.
Having nearly hit a skateboarder who was moving fast from the sidewalk into a crosswalk recently I disagree. I think sideWALKs are desighed for slow-moving pedestrians only and become rather dangerous for anyone else.
I should note that I used to do a fair bit of running too. When I used to run, I got nearly backed over several times by folks backing out of driveways. I would punch the car hard enough to make a noise and jump out of the way (punching the car is to get them to hear that there was an impact and STOP). That's harder to do on a bicycle.
SideWALKs are designed for very-slow-moving pedestrians. Ride a bike on one at your own risk.
I hear a lot of petulant drama from cyclists about their dead or injured comrades. But instead of reconsidering their options, they double down on their commitment to the dangerous activity. It's difficult for me not to see this as immature (especially in combination with the arrogant envirobunny factor), and a case of misplaced priorities. You enjoy biking, go find a country lane or a park with good paths. Worried about the environmental impact of your commute?? Use your feet and the bus. There's no compelling reason to mix it up in traffic.
I am a lifelong walker. I was almost thirty when I started driving, I am fairly unsympathetic to car culture, and the cavalier attitude of most drivers makes me very uncomfortable. I am that rare driver who signals every lane change, etc. I find it impossible to get behind the wheel without reflecting on the awesome responsibility involved.
But even I don't spend a lot of time looking out for cyclists. The human brain can only do so many things at once, and other cars are a much bigger threat. If the "awareness" campaigns get a lot of drivers to divert attention from the usual demands of driving to pre-emptively checking for every conceivable situation in which a cyclist might pop out of nowhere, then we'll just have accidents with each other, or pedestrians, instead. Simply by virtue of bringing something so different into auto traffic, you're throwing a monkey wrench into the system. To what end?
In my city, they have an annoying habit of riding in the car lane, but at its extreme right, so that depending on the angle you're viewing him from, it's completely ambiguous whether the cyclist actually intends to occupy the lane or not, which can lead to all sorts of trouble. Most of the cyclists who insist on using traffic lanes do not appear to be capable of the necessary speed - either that, or they're actually deliberately holding up traffic to make a point. The recreational bikers I see on the trails appear to actually be much better at cycling, and more considerate, even though in the absence of cars they don't have to be. All cycling "awareness" seems to be is to spread the trend for biking in traffic to a population of guys who have more pride than sense or athletic prowess.
I'm very sorry about your friend, but I must tell you that your post seems naive and narrow-minded to me. To wit: I once knew a person, an accomplished driver, who was killed in a car accident while driving in traffic. Consequently, it's just not a risk I can imagine taking for myself, and I can't help but question the judgment and/or motivation of people who insist on doing so.
I don't hear any petulant drama from most drivers about their dead or injured comrades. Instead they double down on their commitment to the dangerous activity. It's difficult for me not to see this as immature, and a case of misplaced priorities. You enjoy driving, go find a dirt road and get a Jeep. Worried about having to bike 45 miles to work each day?? Quit your job and move closer to the city. There's no compelling reason to mix it up in traffic...
You inadvertently explain why cyclists should usually use the full lane. Most traffic lanes are not wide enough for a cyclists and motorist to share side-by-side. Hugging the curb sends an ambiguous message and tempts motorists to try to squeeze by. Using the full lane makes it clear to motorists that they will have to pass. Plus, it deters right hooks from motorists who might overtake and turn right. It also makes the cyclists more visible to motorists on side streets.
I prefer to ride on multi-lane roads. These have higher traffic speeds, but there's always a passing lane. Sometimes motorists have to wait 3o seconds to find a space in the passing lane, but waiting 30 seconds here or there is part of driving and riding in traffic.
I know the Cambridge PD has done some ticketing of bicyclists. I've also seen Cambridge PD (bicycle division) doing some wild stuff like riding the wrong way up a divided avenue. I don't usually ride at speed on Boston City Hall Plaza, but I followed a bunch of Boston PD bikes to a ride/rally the mayor was holding there.
Let me see if I've got the rest of this thread straight: Bicyclists shouldn't lane-split, and they shouldn't ride in the middle of the lane. (I figure if the motorists pass me while I'm riding on the right -- perfectly reasonable if I'm going 10mph and they're going 30mph -- there's nothing wrong with passing them at similar distances when I'm going 10mph and they're stopped.)
I bike-messengered one summer in New York when I was a lot younger. A few times I did ride straight into a crowd of jay-walking pedestrians. I won a door prize, but the worst accident I was in was when I made an illegal left turn -- I was so hung up on the moral dillemna that I forgot to look for oncoming traffic. Completely my fault. That was the year (1980) NY tried some avenue bike lanes. I gave up on them when my way was blocked first by the ramp of a truck (the alternative would have been carrying the cartons across the lane one at a time) and then by a parked police cruiser. There used to be (maybe still is) a sign in Herald Square that said "Walk bike to next sign" -- I figured I'd do that when they added the companion "Get out and push car to next sign"; just as I'll put a foot down to prove I've stopped at a stop sign when I see motorists open their doors to touch the pavement.
Sidewalks: As an Ex-NYer I'm one of the few people to walk in the suburban paradise where I now live. The general rule in Massachusetts is sidewalk bicycling is prohibited in business districts. There are some stretches (like a quarter-mile upgrade with no driveways to cross) where sidewalk riding makes sense for a slower rider.
My wife was never a bicyclist, but her attitude seemed typical when we saw a bicyclist quickly and predictably navigating a rotary (traffic circle - many of these are free-for-alls even for cars, the rule being the bigger or crummier vehicle has the right of way) - she remarked that she could see what he was doing and would have no difficulty sharing the road with bicyclists who operated that way. Traffic harmony: it's a good thing.
I walk with that attitude, loser.
Just hope you don't cut me off, I've leveled more than one of you after picking myself up off the pavement.
Several years ago, I drove two vehicles: a big truck and a normally thin bicycle. To get into our driveway at the time, I had to make a left turn, usually stopping to wait for oncoming traffic to clear.
When at the left of the lane on my bicycle signaling a left turn, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, I'd get honked at as traffic built up; when filling the entire lane in the truck signaling a left turn waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, motorists would either patiently wait, or more often just go around on the right if there was room in the parking lane.
The urban biker must be paranoid to survive, and must keep all his senses alert. I know that my personal health and the fitness of my bike to ride were protected by a willingness to do a shoulder roll, bike in right hand, over the hood of those pass half-way and turn right folks--so I am sympathetics to the biker perspective.
However, I cannot understand what process goes through the minds of urban bikers who wear ear buds while on the street. You want to be able to hear door latches. You want to be able to hear engines, even those eerily quiet prius engines. If you choose to insulate yourself from the sounds around you, you have a death wish.
When I learned to drive, my mother ued to recite what I assume is an old Burma Shave jingle. "He was riight, deadt right, as he sped along, and he is just as dead, as if he were wrong"
My dad used to say,
"Under this stone lies Robert Day
Who died defending his right-of-way."
I would not try commuting to work in DC on a bike -- it's too dangerous, and I suspect downright impossible when it comes to crossing the Potomac. Plus in DC people wear suits, and you can't exactly arrive to work sweaty.
[Taking Notes.]
arbitraryaardvark:
I've found the top compartment of a handlebar bag is fine. One blank, two shotshells, and two +P HPs. Actually, that's the loadout for dogs, but it should work just as well to get you killed in ntraffic. ;-)
RowerinVa:
That's something I've little patience for. Just because you can go fast on a bike, doesn't give you any more right to blast through a pedestrian filled area than a motorist has to blast through a peloton.
As a pedestrian I do not make way for bicyclists, and even less for Segways and scooters. I will body check them.
I think there's something about the independence of cars that fosters this 'eats hit' sort of attitude. Motorists care about the safety of other motorists, because they're all out drivin independently like good 'Mericans. But cyclists are just obstacles and, more importantly, 'not like me.'
Glen Bowen walks hard. What are some facts about Glen Bowen?
Traffic laws obey him.
Some cities have bike lanes. But we're all in the Glen Bowen lane. It's called 'earth's orbit.'
The bi-cycle got its name when Glen Bowen roundhouse kicked the thing in half.
Those pads in cycling shorts aren't for comfort. They're for when you pee pants upon seeing Glen Bowen.
Nonsense. Motorists care about the behavior of other motorists because those motorists are a potential thread. Bicyclists assume that motorists are responsible for the bicyclist's safety because of right-of-way laws that utterly ignore the issues created by hard-to-see, unpredictable road roaches.
And I do. Risk of angry pedestrians versus risk of stupid steel behemoths? As scary as Dennis and Bowen are, they're far less dangerous than little Suzie Nezbit in her mustang convertible. 'OMG! Just hit biker! ROFL!'
Does anyone here know about legally stuff? If so, you might want to check me on this- I believe that a taxpayer's use of public roads is a right, whereas driving is a privelege. Now, that's no reason for a cyclist to go breaking the laws of man or physics, but it draws a deep contrast between the views of cyclists versus the views of entitled drivers. John, sorry to burden you with the need to pay more attention in a car, but it sounds to me like you're just arguing that you can't drive your car safely. And I'm supposed to sympathize.
It's amusing to me, how I'm supposed to have sympathy for drivers, concerning how hard it is to -not- kill cyclists. Yeah, poor you. The law should totally be more lenient on the one with two tons of steel and two hundred horsepower.
They ignore every rule of the road, mostly -- I think -- to save a few leg strokes. Not stopping at red lights is the main one.
So I guess when you are driving down the road, and a little boy or girl chases after a ball that rolled into the street, that's an inconcievable situation that might pop out of nowhere, and we just have understand that drivers simply cannot swerve out of the way to avoid hitting said boy.
Got it.
Harry: "The ONLY reason I have not killed a bicyclist yet is that I am alert for them. "
Which is exactly why we bicyclists double down and keep on biking even when it's dangerous. The more bikes on the road, the more the motorists get used to them, and the more they will be aware of them.
As a bicyclist, I am probably more aware of the cars on the road than the drivers are of other cars. Not because I want to, but because I have to.
In 2007, 24 pedestrians were killed in Washington, DC. Montgomery Co. had 15 in the same year. Most were killed crossing the street.
The fact is that doing anything can get you killed or injured.
* a winding two-lane suburban or rural road
* no shoulder, curb, sidewalk, or bike lane
* visibility under a quarter mile, due to curves
On these roads, it isn't uncommon to see bicyclists become 'rolling roadblocks,' with a column of several cars crawling along at five or ten miles an hour where the speed limit is 25-35, waiting for a place where it's safe to pass. It also isn't uncommon to see cars veering far across the yellow line when passing a bike, posing a menace to oncoming traffic. Sadly, however, it's uncommon to the point of unheard-of to see a bicyclist with the simple courtesy to pull over and stop to allow those cars to pass him/her.
Given that I see such behavior so frequently, is there any particular reason why I shouldn't conclude that a lot of bicyclists are arrogant fools, who get a kick out of tempting fate and then putting on a protective veneer of phony virtue, yapping with mock piety about "careless drivers" when in fact they are the ones acting in a dangerous fashion, and somewhere deep down they know it?
The little boy or girl has limited impulse control and is unable to anticipate the consequences of his actions. What's your excuse?
That's a typical driver response, "you ought to thank me for not killing you."
Worst thing is, Harry is right. The only way that a cyclist can survive their morning commute is if drivers are paying attention. The only problem is, drivers roll their eyes, as though paying attention and not killing people is too much to ask.
Is it any suprise then, that the study shows that 90% of all accidents are due to driver inattention?
I'm gonna stick my neck waaay out and say that if a cyclist ran a red light and was killed, that the study probably took into account the cyclist's liability.
You need a quarter mile visibility in order to drive safely around bikes? I see your problem- you're driving at mach 2!
The study didn't say the accidents were due to narrow roads, low visibility, or any of that.
Inattentive driving was the cause for 90% of the accidents. Why not just drive responsibly, and this will be less of a problem?
Also (and check me on this), cyclists have a right to the road, and drivers only a privlege.
It's not at all amusing to me how bicyclists want to repeal the limits of human capabilities, and expect perfection from drivers, while at the same time impeding drivers and running red lights and driving the wrong way.
If your definition of "drive a car safely" is to drive it so as to avoid all collisions in conditions where no human could be expected to do so, then, yeah, folks can't drive safely.
How about this... we establish separate lanes for cyclists, and turn signals just for them so car drivers won't inadvertently cut them off. And, we tax the bicyclists to pay for all of this.
Seems fair to me.
Motorists should pay for any segregated bike lane system because such a system would benefit motorists more than cyclists. As a traffic cyclist, I find that most segregated facilities make it less safe and more difficult to get from Point A to Point B. Why should I pay for a system that makes my commute harder?
A segregated bike lane system creates a lot of logistical difficulties. How do you put a bike lane to the right of the regular lane if motorists can still turn right? I guess you could add a separate time signal for the cyclists at every intersection, but that would increase the time motorists see red lights, probably a lot more than the occasional times motorists get temporarily stuck behind a cyclist. How would buses drop off and pick up passengers? How do cyclists turn left? How do you keep pedestrians out of the lane? If there's no physical barrier between the motoring lanes and the bike lane, does the city have the budget to do the extra (possibly daily) street sweeping needed to keep the lanes free of debris swept in by motorists?
The most simple solution is usually the best. Once you start striping special lanes or building physically segregated lanes, things start to get complicated and expensive.
All but a few roads work just fine for cyclists, so your proposal seems to be for the benefit of motorists, not cyclists. That's another dirty little secret of "bicycle facilities." From a traffic management perspective, they benefit motorists more than cyclists. They very slightly speed up motorist traffic and very significantly slow down cycling traffic.
Motorists should pay for segregated bike facilities because those facilities primarily benefit motorists, not cyclists. I'd consider supporting a user fee for segregated bike lanes if I could avoid paying the fee by continuing to use the road.
Motorists don't pay the full cost of using the roads. Gas taxes don't pay for most local roads. And no tax or fee covers the costs of the pollution that cars produce. Cycling costs government almost nothing.
Yes, some build bike paths, but those governments also build lots of other recreational facilities that anyone can use without paying a fee. Sure, some cities impose segregated bicycle facilities on cyclists, but many of us don't want them.
It would be interesting if cities imposed a small bike lane tax on cyclists who wanted to use bike lanes. My guess is that many would figure out that the lanes aren't safe and aren't worth the money. Cycling on the road makes more sense.
If I were the kind of person to put bumper stickers on my car, it would be "If I were on my bicycle, you could pass me when I drove the speed limit."
Exactly. Ban bicycles on roads and sidewalks. Extremely simple.
I'm amazed by the disrespect for the rule of law expressed by bicylists here. The arguments above amount to:
* I do not have to obey the law because I find it inconvenient.
* I do not have to obey the law because other people in other situations also disobey the law.
* I do not have to obey the law because the law does not make sense in my view.
* I do not have to obey the law because I think it's safer to break the law.
* I do not have to obey the law because another system would be better but has not been adopted where I live.
and to top it all off:
* Police should not enforce the laws that I break.
Would you apply this same attitude to other areas of your life? What would you think of someone who did?
Filter out John's hyperbole, and you'll find that that's what I'm saying. Cars must drive safer.
The difference between John's argument and mine is that mine is supported by the facts, not just by overblown anectdotes.
Yet somehow, cars are responsible for 90% of accidents. How do you reconcile this?
That's only the natural corollary to the idea that cyclists are entitled to just do ~whatever~ without regard for the circumstances, and it's other's people's responsibility to make sure they don't get hurt.
Anybody - whether driver, pedestrian or cyclist - who goes out on the street with the attitude that defensive driving [cycling/walking] is beneath them, is asking for trouble. Only among cyclists has that kind of narcissism been raised to the level of an ideology.
I hear your claim. But how do you reconcile that claim to the findings of the study?
90% of car-bike accidents are due to lazy drivers.
The only counter-arguments I've heard are:
1) Cyclists are jerks, that's why! and,
2) The law systematically conspires to make drivers look bad.
Now in the face of everyone's red-faced, pop-veined anger at cyclists, the only proposed solutions are:
1) Get off the damn road! and,
2) Pay for your own separate but equal bike lanes.
How do you reconcile this with the legal reality that bikes have a right to the road, whereas driving is a privelege?
If you want to be snooty about it, every city has bike lanes... you're just driving on them!
My complaint was about cyclists' lack of respect for the law as expressed in these comments, not whether they cause more accidents, so there's no need to reconcile the two.
In addition, the abstract of the original study (which is all I can find online) does not give enough information to evaluate whether it would be accurate to conclude that cars are primarily responsible for 90% of the bike-car accidents in Toronto during the time of the study. For example, in the most frequent accident type, cars are listed as primarily responsible when they turn left after the light has turned red and bicycles have woven through the oncoming traffic, but that collision could only occur if the bicycle is also running the red light. Similarly, a bicycle in the pedestrian crosswalk in that situation would also be running the light.
This is my favorite kind of argument by a nonlawyer. What do you mean by "right" and "privilege"? Do you even know? Is there some constitutional amendment in your state giving the right to bike? Do you think that laws cannot be passed requiring you to register your bicycle and to have an operator's license? If so, then what do you think of traffic laws that do apply to bikes?
Here's a hint: The lack of regulation of a given activity doesn't turn it into a "right."
How is opening your door "clumsy or inattentive driving by motorists"? Why assume that a driver making a turn is at fault? What if the cyclist was riding on the sidewalk or against traffic (both illegal in California) and therefore came from an unexpected direction?
The blog also mentions that cars "cause" 75% of motorcycle accidents. I ride and wouldn't really blame a driver who hit me while I was darting in an out of lanes or passing on the right, or riding faster than the traffic pattern. With greater freedom comes greater responsibility.
So here we seem to have the motorists, who by virtue of the size and, well, power of their vehicles, insisting that everyone obey the rules, and cyclists, who have no vehicular power, focusing on outcomes - risk of collision resulting in injury or death, practicalities of starting up after a stop (even worse for recumbents than standard bikes), ways in which bike lanes actually work to make cycling less safe.
BTW, for the guy who blew his horn at the cyclist who was delaying traffic by going slower than the cars - that's a good way to startle someone into crashing. Go stand in front of your car and have a friend sound the horn. It's a lot louder than you think it is, and to make such a sound to occur suddenly behind a guy on a moving bike is negligent behavior.
As for stop signs &lights, I stop when there's a car there ahead of me, or otherwise has the right of way, or when there's more than one car around. Otherwise, I don't. I focus on outcomes.
Motorists are required by law to observe exactly the same rules for those lanes that they are required to observe for auto traffic lanes. In particular:
1. Do not merge cross a solid white line. The exceptions are crossing to park or otherwise leave one's own traffic lane in an emergency. The desire to beat the bicyclist to the intersection is not an emergency.
2. When merging into a lane delineated by dashed lines, do so safely after determining that the space into which you are merging is not occupied. Failure to do that is called "sideswiping". If you merge and a vehicle is occupying the space into which you merge, you are at fault for the collision, whether you strike a car or a bike.
In my experience, when bicyclists and bicycle lanes are involved, far more motorists violate those two rules than observe them.
Unfortunately for bicyclists, the results of motorist failure to observe lane discipline law are far worse than for motorists. What would be a "fender bender" for two autos can result in bodily injury or death for a bicylist struck by an auto.
To address the issue frequently raised in these comments, about bicyclists on sidewalks, here are some facts I have observed riding in CA:
1. There are very few magnetic traffic light sensors in roadways that will "register" a bicycle.
2. The overwhelming majority of "push to cross" buttons on lightposts near intersections are only accessible from the sidewalk. I know of only a few that are accessible from the roadway.
Those two facts leave bicyclists very poor choices at a heavily trafficked cross street. They may either wait for a car on their street to approach and set off the signal cycle, or they may ride or walk their bicycle on the sidewalk a short distance to the "push to cross" button. That usually also means they must at least begin to cross the intersecting roadway in the pedestrian crosswalk, then merge into traffic lanes from the crosswalk.
Many times I have almost been struck by autos who make accelerating right turns immediately upon the traffic signal light turning green, both as I a bicyclist and as a pedestrian. Motorists seem not to realize that striking anyone in a pedestrian crosswalk means almost automatically that the motorist is at fault. In CA, even causing a pedestrian to break stride in a crosswalk is illegal. I learned that at traffic school (for an unrelated automobile infraction) decades ago.
Precisely. When applied in a specific situation, it's called "the doctrine of necessity."
More generally, from the perspective of someone who has been biking (and driving) as an adult for just over 40 years, my conclusion is that if following a traffic rule is more dangerous than not following a traffic rule, I don't follow it. If I were to get a ticket for that - which has never happened - I'd just pay the damn thing. (I've had 3 tickets in my life, all driving, &beat 2 of them. On the other, I was wrong so I just paid.)
David Chesler's post [8.30.2009 8:59am] is excellent, and this is great suggestion he mentions: "Sidewalks: As an Ex-NYer I'm one of the few people to walk in the suburban paradise where I now live. The general rule in Massachusetts is sidewalk bicycling is prohibited in business districts. There are some stretches (like a quarter-mile upgrade with no driveways to cross) where sidewalk riding makes sense for a slower rider." Terrific idea: a reasonable and balanced, non-absolutist approach. As DennisN mentions [8.30.2009 4:03pm], fast biking through a pedestrian-filled zone is crazy: "That's something I've little patience for. Just because you can go fast on a bike, doesn't give you any more right to blast through a pedestrian filled area than a motorist has to blast through a peloton." Nicely said.
In contrast, see the post by "RC" [8.30.2009 12:20am] for an example of how not to contribute to a civilized discussion. Apparently, having to body-check a cyclist to protect one's child is "whining," worrying about child pedestrians being injured or killed is "whining," and even raising the issue equals "hate" toward cyclists. For the record, I rode 37 miles this weekend solo, averaged 19.3 mph (I'm a little proud of that!), so I'm not anticyclist. But the only serious injury I've ever received related to cycling was from a cyclist-commuter who hit me, a pedestrian, from behind, in a crowd.
I'll say it again, for those such as RC who may not be familiar with the language: SideWALK is what you walk on. "Road bikes" are for biking on the road. Sometimes you can take the road bike on the sidewalk safely, but never, ever in a people-crowded business area if you are doing anything faster than walking speed, and even then you need to be super-careful about kids and other people who might not be as visible as the average adult.
Huh. From where I sit, it looks more like the cyclists who are obsessed with rules. They've done all they need to do if they merely follow the law, and are willfully insensitive to the realities which law can never fully describe. Or rather - they see coping with those realities as somebody else's problem.
As mentioned before, those are exactly the same rationales that drivers use every day, especially drivers in DC. They believe that they don't have to signal turns and lane changes, stop at yellow/red lights, obey the no stopping signs, obey the no left turn signs, refrain from double parking, yeild to legally crossing pedestrians, merge properly in merge zones, or drive anywhere near the speed limit. Contrary to popular belief, you are not the center of the universe and your desires do not trump the safety and convenience of everyone else.
The solution is to (1) have rational laws to protect safety and efficiency on the road* and (2) vigorously enforce them so that the idiot driver parked in the no stopping zone blocking a whole lane of traffic during rush hour pays and the idiot cyclist barrelling past pedestrians on the sidewalk at 20 mph also pays.
The thing is, the potential harm and inconveniece to others caused by doing illegal things in a huge metal car is much less than the potential harm caused by the smaller, lighter bicycle.
* Allowing bicyclists to treat stop signs and maybe red lights as yields would be rational; assuming cyclists, unlike many drivers, acually slowed to look and yeilded if appropriate. Having rational speed limits (i.e. not 55 on the Beltway and not 25 on Rt 7 in Falls Church) would help; once people start violating one traffic law b/c it is so obviously stupid, they find it easier to justify violating all the others.
There is an accessory available to trigger the loop detector. It's a big magnet mounted under the bottom bracket. If you wish to use the pedestrian facilities, walk your bike. Or at least operate it at pedestrian speeds.
RV:
Well said.
I said less than a quarter mile. I try to be a safe driver and leave plenty of room for getting around any obstacle. But I will take your point and assume that henceforth I need to be pellucid, lest in true ambulance-chaser fashion you seize on any vagueness to attack me. In fact a quarter mile is extremely generous. It's usually a lot less -- like, 150 or 100 yards. Close to the crest of a hill or a sharp bend, it could be 50 yards or less. I defy any safe driver to get out and around a cyclist when less than 100 yards from a blind spot, around/over which another car might appear at any second at a closing speed of 60mph.
Also: lane-changing. Drivers don't signal when they change lanes. The often don't signal when they turn from a non-turn-only lane.
Related to this is the hare-brained idea that we shouldn't make accommodations for cycling until cyclists shape up their act. By this logic, we should stop building and roads for cars until drivers stop speeding and start signaling.
If you're interested in improving the behavior of motorists and cyclists, then you need to look at better roadway design. If you design a residential street to be wide, without visual cues that this is someone's neighborhood, drivers will drive through at 40 mph regardless of the speed limit. If you design roadways with their lanes and signals and other controls for cars, with no provision for bicyclists, is it any surprise that bicyclists behave as if those controls are not for them? This doesn't make it right for cyclists to violate these controls, but if what you care about is improving safety and people's behavior, then you will want to make provisions for more than just one class of people who use the roads. If, on the other hand, you mainly are interested in moralizing and punishing cyclists, well, then I guess that explains a lot of the comments on this thread.
In areas where I ride, sidewalk biking is not banned everywhere. For me, a sidewalk is a last resort to avoid high speed traffic with occasional drivers that seem intent upon driving through bicyclists as if they weren't there, sometimes in combination with extremely bad bicycle lane roadway (as in "bounce you into auto traffic or puncture your tires" bad).
I do not ride on crowded sidewalks. Period. The first rule of the road (but certainly not the only one) for bicyclists as well as motorists is to avoid collision with anything that is in front of you.
M-W.com informs me that 'pellucid' means "3 : easy to understand." Yes, it's pellucidity is a good defense against snark. Except I had to look the word up- how pellucid is that?
Motorist negligence results in 90% of accidents, while cyclists (with their mean old 'disrespect', I suppose), are responsible for 10%. If it was more about preventing accidents, and less about who makes you mad, then I imagine you'd focus more on the 90%.
People, we can argue about exactly what that 90% -really- means, or whether the test method is flawed. But 90 is a big number, and it's only being countered by "b-b-b-b-ut cyclists are jerks!" and "give them a road of their own, and make em pay for it." There's a point where I wonder if this irrational fingerpointing at and anger over cyclists actually contributes to accidents.
I don't know what I mean. All I can do is parrot what the CA DMV tells me. And I also know that it's possible to lose a driver's license, but not a biker or pedestrian license. And that public things are for public use. But no, I don't believe that a taxpayer's right to walk down a road is enumerated in the US Constitution.
I don't know about the legal side of rights vs privleges (that's why I've asked, a couple times in this lawblog thread, for illumination), but the law does indicate that on Maslow's hierarchy of getting your butt around town (legal term, look it up), cycling is baser, more fundamental, and harder to take away than driving.
Except when I ride on it. I'd rather be a pedestrian hit by a bike than a cyclist hit by an inattentive motorist... the same sort of inattentive motorist that is responsilble for 90% of accidents. Reckless biking results in bruises, while reckless driving results in fatalities. (Note that I never drive or ride recklessly)
I find it curious then, in a thread about 90% of accidents, people whine (yes whine) about the 10%. When's the last time you were killed by a cyclist while walking down the street? Never! QED.
In my time in Cambridge, I only had one driver yell at me. It was because I was riding on the sidewalk (near Huron Avenue, IIRC). The supreme irony is that the car was currently driving on the sidewalk. It baffles me to this day.
While I'm talking about Cambridge, did they ever make that "push to cross" button on River Street function? I walked that path for years and never ever ever saw the "WALK" signal lit.
I don't think that's a given, a biased study notwithstanding.
Traffic signals are changing to use cameras to detect demand. I don't know if they pick up bikes or not.
Often, the same folks who believe that bikes should have less access to the roads also believe that bikes should suffer identical traffic penalties as cars. But any rational law would punish many car infractions worse than bike infractions.
Here's my legal brief on this issue: If I give an unwilling victim a noogie (or bodycheck), I might get fined for assault. But if I shoot at someone, I could go to jail whether I hurt them or not. The potential for damage is a factor in the penalty for an infraction, in addition to any actual damage. As it happens, the potential damage of a cyclist's actions is much much smaller than of a driver's actions.
That people continue to lounge about in their high-powered, air-conditioned cars and complain about what's 'fair', even in the midst of a study showing that drivers are 90% at fault, shows that these people are being quite irrational.
And those who claim that the study in question is biased have only responded with (1) anecdotes, and/or (2) 'Cyclists are jerks. It's not fair.'
These irrational attitudes, if anything, make road safety worse. I sentence you guys to a car radio full of nothing but 'smooth jazz.' No, wait! That would inspire road rage of its own...
Unlike others on this thread, I have found it safe to make left turns from the left turn lane, as long as I'm in the center of the lane. Some left turn signals don't work, of course, so as with any other vehicle when the signals aren't working you have to choose a safe time to enter the intersection.
Weirdest interaction I ever had as a result of that was with a police officer who saw me make a left turn on a non-working light from several blocks away; came to talk to me and tell me I should be getting off of my bike and going to the walk signal to turn it on and then going back to my bike to wait for the green.
I asked him to demonstrate how he would do it. This is normally a rhetorical question--I don't really expect them to do this because it's dangerous (and also because I don't expect officers to respond to requests). This officer came to a stop at the red light, got out of his vehicle, and began to walk to the crosslight. But before he got there, traffic began to pour through the other side, so he had to rush back to his car before he got hit. In the meantime he ended up holding up traffic because his own car set off the green light in his direction before he got back into driving position.
I didn't have the heart to tell him that it didn't even matter--the walk light from the direction I was coming didn't trigger a green light. It only triggered the walk light.
That said, from a economic perspective, it's to be expected that cars would be at fault for most accidents, since the cost of car-bike accidents is significantly lower for cars, so bikes can be expected to exercise more accident-avoidance strategeys (which is not the same thing as obeying the law).
Also, it's rather curious that so many people (myself included) get so annoyed with bikes flouting the law, when they're posing a significantly lower risk than cars obeying the law.
If we're talking solely about the damage the cyclist does to others, I agree with you. However, if we include damage to the cyclist himself (in other words the societal cost of the cyclist's actions), then I would argue that the potential damage from a cyclist's actions is much higher. An accident between two cars on a surface street is almost always going to be confined to some property damage or minor injuries. Fatalities and serious injuries will be rare. An auto-bicycle collision, on the other hand, is much more likely to result in serious injury or death to the cyclist. Because cyclists are more vulnerable, their mistakes have a much greater propensity for devastating outcomes.
If we want to keep living in a free society, we need to immediately disabuse ourselves of the notion that when someone assumes a risk to themselves, they harm others in a way that we have a right to regulate.
This issue interests me, but I don't know anything about it. So I'll try to keep the snark to a minimum (a one-post promise).
One could argue that some liability in an accident lies with the driver, who controls and is responsible for a much more powerful device. Or perhaps the cyclist is 100% responsible for his own irresponsible actions. (Note that I'm talking about distinguishing scenerios here, not some cut and dry suicidal idiocy on the part of a cyclist)
The 100% cyclist responsibility would encourage good behavior by cyclists. But the some-car-responsibility way of doing things would encourage better car behavior, which ends up doing society more good, including for those drivers when they are riding their own bikes. More power, more responsibility- is that what I'm trying to say?
I'm a responsible-for-one's-own-actions kind of guy, so I'm kind of torn over this issue. Because, as you may have guessed, I want team two-wheels to win as many points as possible... but this particular issue isn't looking good.
Because if I argue that those with more power have more responsibility or should take care of the weak, then we end up breaking into all kinds of big-brothery, nanny-statey hippie crap.
Woops! The snark has broken loose- I better end this post three sentences ago.
Where should we draw the line?
That's a good question. I'm a responsible-for-one's-own-actions kind of guy too, but we make regulations in all sorts of other areas that are intended to protect people from themselves. Just confining the discussion to transportation, I can think of mandatory helmet and seatbelt laws, requiring safety features like airbags, crash test requirements for automobiles, etc. In this case, I'd probably just argue for not trying to make damage a factor in the penalty for traffic infractions and for equal enforcement of traffic laws for both bicyclists and motorists.
As far as the broader question goes, I think that bicycles' characteristics are different enough from those of cars and pedestrians that trying to share facilities with either is asking for trouble. In my mind, a real bike lane needs something more than a line of paint separating it from traffic. Rather than trying to turn every street into a bike route with a can of paint, pick a few corridors to concentrate bike travel on and turn them into serious bike routes: eliminate curbside parking, put in Jersey barriers between bike lanes and traffic, and add no-turn phases to lights to give bikes a chance to cross. Combine this with vigorous enforcement of traffic laws against bicyclists, including laws against riding on the sidewalk, and the number of potentially hazardous interactions between bicyclists and motorists and pedestrians would decrease dramatically.
The danger to a bicycle riding on the sidewalk is from a car, when you cross the road or when a car is pulling out of the driveway. The vision requirements for driveways don't expect reasonably fast-moving individuals on the sidewalk. Just don't complain to me if a car backs out and cuts you off or hits you. I hope it doesn't happen but don't complain to me if it does.
This shows how complicated and expensive it gets to create a "safe" bike lane system. It takes a lot of money and a lot of space (which comes from existing traffic lanes or by widening the road). Plus, it slows down the flow of traffic for motorists and cyclists by adding an additional step in the traffic light cycle.
As a kicker, pedestrians tend to migrate to the bike lanes, so they wouldn't even be true bike lanes. They'd be a glorified sidewalk. Would the city be willing to ticket pedestrians who walk, run, or wait for the bus in a segregated bike lanes? Probably not. If so, the price would likely be the ticketing of cyclists who used the road. So we cyclists would risk losing our right to use the road in return for the duty to share a glorified sidewalk with pedestrians. Not a good trade.
If a city is willing to spend that kind of cash, it could get a much bigger bang for the buck by hiring a bunch of certified cycling instructors to teach classes to cyclists. They could also more aggressively ticket dangerous motorist behavior, like red light running, speeding, and changing lanes without signaling.
I also try to ride on streets with less traffic. Have a good workout route that takes me to a very rich houses, wide-lane, no through traffic area. Have to get through some city streets, but still...I minimize that. I do do some riding around town for errands/exercise, but also try to time that for daylight (not always observed, but a definite push for that). I have a long ride scheduled back from dropping a car of at the mechanic...and asked around to figure out a decent route that minimizes traffic.
I do understand the poster who said bikers should take their vulnerability in mind. I guess I still want some rides and the above methodology is my self-rationale for a halfway solution. Basically risk mitigation. I'm sure that I'm still taking some higher risk though.
I actually try to do this even with DRIVING! If I have standard routes, I take through town, I try to think about intersections that are more dicey and avoid them. In the city, there are places where good visibility (especially in a low car) are difficult at stop signs or where a yeild is required, etc.
Opinions/advice? Practical suggestions (as well as the lawyerly debate?)
Usually when I used to do a lot of running, I used to run with roller bladers. I could keep up. On the whole, my observation was that roller bladers could stop almost as well as I could while running. This is different than a bicycle which is far wider (a bigger target for a backing car) and doesn't stop quite as well.
The big hazard with running on the sidewalk is that you are usually moving too fast for cars to adequately see you while pulling out. I was nearly backed over a couple times due to this problem. The easy response to a car backing up towards you is to slap the car with an open palm and move away from it a bit. The driver hears the impact and usually stops. The problem though is that if you are on wheels of any sort, moving out of the way is a little harder than it is if you are running.
Honestly, my advice would be to:
1) Avoid high traffic areas.
2) Slow down and look both ways before entering crosswalks.
3) Act as a runner, not a bike. Use sidewalks where appropriate unless forbidden by law.
It isn't a matter of the morality of automobile drivers or bicyclists. The two vehicles simply are not well suited to sharing a lane. This is something that should only be permitted at all in places where there is virtually no traffic and there are no sidewalks.
Sidewalks are better than car lanes. And, in the event that this isn't good enough in high traffic areas, sacrificing a row of onstreet parking every couple of blocks in order to install median protected bike lanes may be the best answer.
Also, since when do suburbanites ever use sidewalks?
Nowhere in the study does it mention that blind spots or 'bulkiness' is the root cause for the inattention that results in 90% of accidents. The inherent danger of cars is why drivers inherently have to pay more attention.
This is expected of heavy trucks, semis, etc, where the requirements and expectations are higher. No big rig drivers are taken seriously when they say that cars are flighty and vulnerable, and should stay the hell off our roads.
I told the guy I had right of way...and he started to blather...then I cut him off and used the command voice and dressed him down. No gesture exactly (is murder in your eyes an assault? and would a battery be justified?). I was very keyed up...ready for violence. Guy shut up and got back in his car and closed the door. Damn jerk had one of those cell phone robot things on his ear too.
Had a good lift at the gym...
This is the sort of arrogant nonsense often spouted by enthusiasts of a quaint 19th century means of transportation. If you actually believe you have a superior right to the dominant means of transportation and engine of commerce, just go on smoking that really good stuff. And don't go darting in front of cars. Broken bicycle bits wreck the tires.
TCO:
Hooah! Seriouisly.
In a more just world, perhaps. ;-)
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Glad you weren't hurt.
This arrogant nonsense is also legal reality.
I may be arrogant, but I'm also right.
Let us consult the scales o' justice, shall we?
On one hand, we have a study that says that accidents are 90% the driver's fault, and a legal reality that says that driving is a privledge.
On the other hand, we have 'That study is biased,' and 'Bikes suck. They better stay of my roads and sidewalks.'
I will also repeat my legal analogy, that semi drivers are held to a higher standard because their vehicles are bigger, more dangerous, and yes, they have bigger blind spots than cars. Should cars be released from that responsibility, just because 'bikes suck'?
Bikes have a more fundamental claim to the roads, driver inattention is responsible for accidents, and precident shows that those with the powerful, clunky vehicles have a responsibility to take extra care.
Yeah, and since it's "legal" "reality", then it is reality.
NONSENSE
Reality is that cars and bicycles don't mix on most roads, period. It's isn't the fault of the drivers of either - it is the fact that the two modes are incompatible. All the rationalizations and denial isn't going to keep you from getting clobbered and some poor motorist being sued or prosecuted for your arrogance and ignorance.
No, since it's "legal" "reality", then it's legal reality.
"Reality" is, I obey both the laws of physics and of man. I have not been clobbered, nor have I sued, nor am I ignorant. But physical laws are one thing, and law laws are another. Here, we're talking about law laws.
1) Bicyclists have a more fundamental claim to the road.
2) Drivers are responsible for 90% of accidents.
3) It is already established law that the more powerful and dangerous vehicles (like semis vs cars) have a greater responsibility, not lesser.
If these established and not-here-disproven points upset you, then go cry in a pillow.
But spare me your bloviations about me getting clobbered by a car. I know how to protect myself. And, as a completely different matter, I seem to know the law. So give me a reason (a justified reason) why the law should change.
To conform to the laws of physics.
To often, those trained in the law confuse legal reality with the real thing. You are a master at it.
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