Who Causes Cyclists’ Deaths?
freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com
freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com
However, as a motorist, I am often very annoyed at the cyclists (including the ones all dressed up like they should know what they are doing) who seem to think they can ignore things like stop signs, red lights, and other traffic warning devices. If you're gonna ride on the road, and expect me to follow the rules, you should too.
~JW
I was hoping this article would have some data on helmet vs non-helmet deaths.
Anyway, it's no surprise that most accidents are caused by the drivers: 1. A bike can make small maneuvers and brake much more quickly than a car can. 2. Bikes usually aren't going as fast as cars. 3. Bicyclists are also more likely to get hurt in an auto vs. bike collision. 4. Bicyclists are a bunch of morons who almost never stop at stop signs or lights, which most likely bothers drivers so much that they vow to run over the next bicyclist they see.
Please don't assume all cyclists are assholes. Sure, some cyclists are complete douchebags. Idiocy abounds here in Chicago. I recently saw a guy on the Lake Shore trail in Chicago talking on his phone and smoking a cigarette. And don't get me started on the hipsters riding their fixies with their iPods cranked up. Trust me, I want to punch them myself - but not all cyclists are to blame.
By that standard, it's just as impractical in a car.
> Should you stop if there's traffic? Definitely yes.
The question is rarely what should one do, but what one does.
> Trust me, I want to punch them myself - but not all cyclists are to blame.
No one said that they were. However, the excuses for "bad behavior" by drivers and bicyclists are very different.
Which is why we should get rid of the stop signs and traffic lights. In addition to slowing traffic, their presence is correlated with increased accidents vs. intersections without them.
Last time I checked, you don't have to unclip to stop your car. And anyway, I live by a stop sign, and I have never seen a car come to a full stop either.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever ridden a bike? You get a sense of what rules you can and can't ignore. A stop sign when you are on the non-conflicting side of a T intersection? Probably safe to slow for, rather than stop, unclip, wait, and clip back in. A red light at a major intersection? Might as well wait.
Anyway, I am pretty conservative in breaking the rules, but I don't feel at all bad ignoring a stop sign when there is literally no traffic.
The last time I checked, clipping was a choice. We don't excuse drivers who make choices that make it inconvenient for them to obey traffic laws....
And no, "training" isn't an excuse either.
> Just out of curiosity, have you ever ridden a bike?
Yes, what of it?
> You get a sense of what rules you can and can't ignore.
Oh really?
> I don't feel at all bad ignoring a stop sign when there is literally no traffic.
That's nice, but observing bicyclists shows that "no traffic" often means "can I beat it if other folks give me a pass?". (My assumption that they're checking may be unfounded.)
Rolling through stop signs is a calculated risk.
So true. I don't think I've ever ridden on the north side of the Lakefront Trail without experiencing at least one moment of sheer terror. A nice ride, but I had to give it up. People talking on their cell phones, riding on the wrong side of the road, little kids playing on the path, joggers that jump right in front of you (got a new wheelset out of that), sand all over the road surface around blind curves... (and yes, I went down hard because of this). When it's raining, though, it's a great ride. A drop of rain and the entire city goes inside, leaving the entire trail for me :)
The south side is much better (but a very boring ride), and I have never really felt unsafe on the road.
Anyway, I am just waiting for someone to get really hurt... it is bound to happen some day.
There's definitely suicidal bikers around blowing through stop lights and weaving through traffic, but I don't think that if they were gone, car drivers would be perfectly happy sharing the road with bikes. We're slow and a pain to pass, plus there's the occasional aura of moral superiority. :)
The aura of entitlement rather, the one that typically takes up a lane and a half.
All in all, the hatred towards cyclists will not go anywhere until there is a proper cycling accommodations on the roads. Separate lanes, separate licenses and separate fines. With rights there should come the responsibilities, with responsibilities - the penalties and enforcement. Neither of that exists at the moment (at least here in Canada).
If one wants to cycle - at least pass the exam, show you know the rules. Perhaps you learn that one must walk your damn bicycle when using a pedestrian zebra crossing and such. Instead what I am seeing is a righteous middle finger waving and yelling, and that does indeed makes me want nothing else but to run over such lovely road companions.
This is why I lobby to ban cars. With everyone wanting to "run over" cyclists and pedestrians, I feel that non-commercial motor vehicles should be made illegal; they are just too dangerous in the hands of self-identified murderers.
Your automobile is not a toy, it is a multi-ton industrial machine.
Killing people with it is not a joke.
If you find that driving so aggravates you as to leave you feeling a desire to run bicyclists over, you need to reevaluate the amount of time you spend driving.
Funny you say this, I worked in San Antonio for a while and there is a pretty popular area for hardcore cyclists, due to the hill-country style roads. One of the guys I worked with constantly reminded us how much he couldn't stand cyclists because even if they had plenty of room to let someone pass, they would hold up traffic simply because it was their right.
I honestly loved seeing the cyclists, it looked like fun and they seem to have quite a community. His reaction was still pretty funny and somewhat horrifying when he'd talk about his dislike of them though, got so worked up when I mentioned I was thinking of biking to and from work.
I think this is just a misconception. Anytime there's not enough room in a lane for a car to safely pass entirely within the lane, the safest thing to do is to take the entire lane so cars will pass you in the next lane. It's not about holding up traffic; it's about avoiding opportunities for drivers to maim by miscalculation.
You do realize that rush hour is caused by too many cars on the road, right? If cars were banned from the streets at rush hour, roads would probably have higher throughput. You can fit about four people on bikes in the space that (usually) one person is taking up with their car.
Blaming people for traffic is ridiculous. Everyone causes traffic. If you want free-flowing roads, price congestion.
But gas is already too expensive, and riding public transportation is too inconvenient! Let's blame a minority group for all our problems!!
I both drive and bicycle, and as a careful driver, I've never had a risky incident with a bicycle. However, I have been hit by a cars twice while riding my bicycle, both in cases where the inattentive driver engaged in illegal behavior.
One of the incidents sent me to the emergency room.
Observing automobile drivers over the years, I wouldn't hesitate to say that most people are barely qualified to operate a Segway, much less pilot a 4+ thousand pound automobile at 30+ miles per hour on a mixed-used road.
Lastly, your invective is misplaced. After writing three sentences on how bicycles are nothing like cars, you call them morons for not rigidly following the exact same rules as automobiles.
That said, I've had two incidents.
One involved an actual collision; I was coming out of a parking lot, and stopped waiting for a break in traffic to pull out into the street, and suddenly heard a strange noise. A cyclist coming through the lot had simply ridden straight into the side of my (motionless) car. He brushed himself off, got back on his bike, waved at me and went on.
The second miraculously did not involve a collision. One morning I was heading home from running some errands, and was driving along a road that serves as a partial bypass for a highway that goes through town. There's one lane of traffic in each direction and the speed limit is 65 miles per hour. I came up over the crest of a small hill, and suddenly saw a cyclist, pedaling along in the lane in front of me, and slammed the brakes to slow down and keep from running him over. He took no notice of me, and kept on pedaling with me behind him (speedometer said he was doing about 15mph). To this day I believe that he and I were both incredibly lucky: he was lucky in that I was able to see him and react in time. I was lucky in that I didn't hit him, and that nobody else coming up behind slammed into me. Doing 45 under the limit on a road with blind spots is not a safe practice.
The massive irony of that one, by the way, is that a paved bike lane runs parallel to that bypass, and I live in a town which takes pride in maintaining a healthy network of quality bike paths. On the occasions when I've talked to cyclists about why they still use the roads, they've been unanimous in their opinion that they don't like the paths because they have to be shared with foot traffic which just gets in their way and slows them down.
I'm going own a hill at about 60km/hr, and a car pulls out directly in front of me from a side street - presumably to see round another car illegally parked on the corner. trouble is, he didn't see me coming from the other direction. Note that I have right of way at this intersection.
I had no time to stop/avoid, so I smack into the side of the car, level with the front wheels. The whole bike rotated around the front wheel, with me still on it, so that my head smashed into the bonnet, leaving a nice old dent, before my bike and I rolled off the other side ofthe bonnet and ont the curb.
Naturally, I was concussed, and not terribly sure about who I was at this point of time, but I do remember the guy yelling at me for about 2 minutes, before jumping back in his car and storming off. He also made the comment about it being my fault that I hit a stationary car...
I do remember the walk to the hospital - the front forks of my bike had been bent back far enough that the front wheel's back edge was behnd the bike's frame, ie you couldn't put the wheel straight. So I had to hold the bike vertical, rolling only on the back wheel, whilst trying to walk 5km in cleats, whilst concussed. I don't recommend the experience.
The massive irony of that one, by the way, is that a paved bike lane runs parallel to that bypass, and I live in a town which takes pride in maintaining a healthy network of quality bike paths.
This doesn't mean much. There are many more accidents where a motorist turns across a bike path without looking than there are where a motorist hits a bicycle from behind. Playing the numbers, you're safer on the road than on the bike path. That is why "experienced cyclists" avoid them.
Your case is very, very rare, and the solution is to bring the speed limit on that section of road down to 25. Then everyone is safe.
So here's a map of the spot which may help you understand what's going on here:
The smaller strip of concrete to the north is the bike route. As you can see, it's not exactly "in town" -- again, this is a bypass connecting a couple of highways with a route that doesn't go through the town.
"There are many more accidents where a motorist turns across a bike path without looking than there are where a motorist hits a bicycle from behind. Playing the numbers, you're safer on the road than on the bike path. That is why "experienced cyclists" avoid them."
This contradicts what I was told by a number of "experienced cyclists".
See this, too: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=459119
and then the driver turns out to be a crackpot: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pack-pileup-driver-accus...
but still got off pretty much scot free: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cycle-pack-crash-driver-...
Sounds like a reaction time or misuse of your brakes, rather than a general rule about the amount of time required to slow the bike.
Go somewhere where there's no traffic (or obstacles), get your bike up to speed, and slowly engage the front brake. Now do it again, but more quickly. Eventually you will learn how much force you can apply without flipping the bike; this is a skill you need to ride your bike safely.
Just pulling the rear brake is not going to stop the bicycle quickly; the wheel skids and you develop no more braking force.
The issue (just from what I've been told) is a question of contact area - bikes don't have much, cars have a lot more.
The best solution I can think of is to drastically reduce speed limits in areas where bicycles, cars, and pedestrians are going to be using the roads. Nothing moving faster than 20mph, and the once-fatal accidents become mere annoyances.
It will never happen, though, because people would have to take public transportation to get to work quickly. The horror!
Wanting respect by cars is one thing, but pedestrian hostile cyclists deserve to get clotheslined.
It seems like it would be harder to pass a car going 5 mph under the speed limit, which I presume happens more often. More people need to recognize how humans tend to perceive the actions of minorities and adjust their sentiments accordingly.
Really? Of everything in this content-less article, this is the one I find surprising and for which I would be interested in some data. Other than New Yorkers witnessing crazy bike messenger antics, who thinks that bicycle riders are usually at fault in bike-car interactions?
I am sure Europe is very similar.
(As an aside, I noticed while in Copenhagen that they have laws to prevent cyclists from riding safely. In some places, you are forced to ride on the sidewalk, sometimes separated from the street by trees, which leads to dangerous encounters at intersections where the cars are turning across the flow of forward-moving bicycle traffic. This is where most accidents happen, and is why it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk in the US... in many places, anyway.)
Well, there's a context-free assertion. but that's OK, because it means we can fill up that Important Daily Blog Post with a rather obvious and unsurprising statistic. It might have been interesting to correlate accident levels with surveys of driving manners in different cities - I hear New Yorkers are famously discourteous drivers, which may have prompted the quote above - but this didn't happen. Indeed, the discussion here, even among people who consider this irrelevant, has been considerably more education than the trite little article that inspired it, and for which I hope the writer was paid a mere pittance.
Read the comments on any newspaper article about a car-bike collision. Hard data would've been nice, but it's still a fact.
I know I'm being pedantic here. Perhaps an interesting freakonomics post would examine different perceptions of few, some, man,y most, all and other such terms, the softness of which is often abused in public discourse.
I honestly don't know what would possess people to ride a bicycle on a busy street, bike lane or no.
Quality of life -- I do it so that I don't have to deal with the anger, frustration, and sunk time and money that seems to be inherent in driving (and owning) a car.
I haven't died yet. Knock on wood
Those are all facts, but not necessarily a condemnation of peoples' choice to ride a bicycle. One could just as easily see it as a critique of our car-centric culture.
But the same total awareness is impossible in a car, even among the vigilant. That's why the visibility aids, legal/customary traffic rhythms, and assigned places for different travelers on shared paths are so important.
The cyclists who scare the crap out of me seem to believe that everyone will see them even though they're in dark clothes, at dusk, with a dim taillight if anything at all, and traveling in an unexpected place (like against traffic, in crosswalks/from sidewalks as if they were pedestrians, or making turns at places or angles where other vehicles don't). I tend to see them -- though never as soon as if they were in normal flows -- but it only takes one momentarily inattentive driver for disaster to strike.
(And don't even get me started about joggers who prefer to jog in the street, often with headphones on or in dark clothes at dusk, when there's a sidewalk right there. I think the "runner's high" impairs judgment as much as some other highs.)
http://www.projectfreeride.org/team/cycling_health_and_safet...
Anyway, my advice is to calm down a bit and drive slower. You'll make the roads safer for everyone, "special suit" or not.