I was raced on road and off, was a bicycle messenger, and used it as my primary transportation. Often cars were openly aggressive, I had a brick thrown at me, various cars would try to run me off the road. It's fairly common to be on a long distance ride and have one issue or another with a motorist that believes the bikes shouldn't be there. I've had numerous things yelled me along the lines of "bikes are for kids" and "bikes don't belong on the road". Threatening by swerving, passing way to close to be safe, revving the engine, "rolling coal", etc.
Fortunately cell phones have helped quite a bit, pictures and videos have lead to convictions. There's even boards where locals share info about hazardous drivers. The cyclist death tolls are definitely non-trivial, I've ridden by quite a few memorials. For some reason hitting a pedestrian is often considered manslaughter, but hitting a bicyclist is often called an "accident", as if it was an act of god, not a driver not paying enough attention.
Apropos of the validity of your story I feel that one, well, who carries a brick in their car, and two, the kind of psychopath who /does/ carry a brick in their car for the purpose of throwing at anyone or anything, not just a cyclist, is not the kind of person to be dissuaded by any of this.
sounds fun
I doubt you could get more people to switch to commuting by bike if you required them to take those extreme measures, and it certainly doesn't seem to help me in the city much.
[edit] A simple thing a motorist can do to improve the safety of cyclists is to open a door using the "Dutch reach"[1]. It pretty much necessitates looking to the left before/as you open your door, and makes the check easier too!
Sounds like you've never commuted by bicycle before. I've seen people decked out in high-vis clothing carried away in ambulances or their bikes found under car wheels with their headlights and tail lights still on. But don't take my word for it[1], the actual studies themselves aren't very conclusive either[2].
The actual root cause is likely inattentive drivers, poor roads/infrastructure, and the all too common drivers' mentality that "bikes don't belong on the roads" many cyclists encounter on a regular, day-to-day basis when drivers feel justified in passing too close, cutting cyclists off, or turning into them.
[1] https://motorbikewriter.com/professor-debunks-hi-vis-clothin... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/jan/1...
The infrastructure bit is also not going to be solved by these laws (directly, anyway). Maybe more liability is the way to go for carelessness, but I do worry about those drivers who really do everything reasonable to avoid an accident, but still manage to hit someone.
Pretty much nobody does this. You're lucky if you get a signal; half the time the only way you know the driver wants to turn at all is that instinct and experience is telling you their driving is otherwise erratic.
On occasions that I wish were more rare, you'll see a driver take a right from the leftmost lane, blinker be damned.
The other common problem is that Uber drivers tend to believe the bike lane is their personal drop-off lane. I've had Ubers stop in the lane when there is parking right there next to the lane. In San Francisco of all places.
As a driver, and a biker, bikers: a red light applies to you. I've had a few close calls with bikers running reds. Laws like the proposed make me wonder how I'd "prove" it, if I didn't have a dashcam. (Which reminds me that I really need a dashcam.)
All of this is operator error, not problems with visibility. People are too damn lazy, so lazy they can't be bothered to follow the law, because 99% of the time it is without consequence, for them.
> so go at a speed that lets you stop before hitting anything you don't see. Why aren't drivers taught this?
This was part of my driver's education curriculum.
Sure a rider dressed completely in black at night will be hard to see, but if you can't see a cyclist in front of you in broad daylight and have enough time to react to them then you're either driving dangerously or you're eyesight isn't good enough to be driving.