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My motorcycle instructors phrased it this way: You might be in the right, but cars have the "right of weight."

Being right won't help you too much when you're dead.

Motorcycles face many of the same problems, but we tend to be a bit pragmatic about it. The advice I got amounted to: ride like every cager out there is out to intentionally kill you, and you'll make it home at night.

I fully agree with this.

To stay alive, act like everyone is out to kill you.

Unfortunately it doesn't help us move towards a safer world by addressing any of the root causes, but it does keep more of us (poeple who use the road) alive.

When I was a child my I was crossing a one way street with my father and thinking I was smart I only looked one way. I was pleased when he noticed and stopped me crossing. Thinking I had one up on the old man I announced I didn't need to look right as it was a one way street. Dad looked straight at me and said "You only need worry about what cars are doing, not what you think they should be doing."

I'm planning on learning to ride a motorbike and when I talk with my other half about it, I say "I will be careful, I'll paranoid about EVERYONE wanting to hit me" and her reply is "Yeah, but you're a good driver", then it's hard to explain that it doesn't work like that.

I'll use this next time :)

We should not have such different kinds of vehicles sharing the same road in the first place. The solution is not gimmicks but more dedicated bike paths.

Incidentally, one of the speakers in the video is from Malmö, Sweden. I lived there for a year, and it is by far one of the best biking cities that I know. And not because they hand out reflective sprays.

it shifts the blame for the continued stream of fatalities onto the cyclist

If Lifepaint wouldn't have helped stop an accident then suggesting you should have been using it is ridiculous - but conversely, if it (or an equivalent product) would have stopped an accident, and you chose not to use it, then you are culpable to some extent. If I drive my car down the road at night with my lights switched off then it's my fault if someone hits me. Why wouldn't that be true for cyclists?

> if it (or an equivalent product) would have stopped an accident, and you chose not to use it, then you are culpable to some extent

Speed limiters on cars would prevent a large number of deaths in which pedestrians are killed.

Are all drivers culpable for pedestrian deaths because they do not have speed limiters even though such things exist and you chose not to use it?

If we stop considering them "accidents" perhaps we can move beyond the "Oops, you're dead" culture and start thinking that these are all avoidable incidents.

Cyclist death hasn't been attributable to visibility... but to a wide variety of causes ranging from poorly designed junctions, a class of vehicles not suitable to rush hour city use, some individual drivers, some individual cyclists. I know of no incident, not even a single one, in which the coroner ruled that cyclist visibility (or lack of) was a cause of the incident.

I was watching the news this lunch about the terrorist attacks in France and Tunisia... but the number dead is nothing, a rounding error, compared to the number killed on the road every day. This is way more terrifying and should appal everyone. A very large deal of it is avoidable, blaming other parties, getting defensive... it's not constructive. There are no easy answers, as a collective, as a society we need to take responsibility for road safety, re-design junctions, re-evaluate the vehicles we want on the roads, re-evaluate how our standards for training for all road users. Spray paint doesn't cut it.

Are all drivers culpable for pedestrian deaths because they do not have speed limiters even though such things exist and you chose not to use it?

Yes. In the case of cars the speed limiter is the legal speed limit for the road you're driving on, and if you choose not to use it then you are criminally culpable even if there isn't an accident. It doesn't have to be a technological solution if there's a good alternative.

Maybe we should do the same for cyclists - decide on a measurable value for visibility and make it a crime to be cycling below that limit.

Cannot tell if serious.

But if we're going for crazy suggestions, how about we call it murder and if a person causes another person's death on the road then they go to jail for murder for a long long time.

OK, that's silly (is it?!), how about changing insurance liability to something like the system that exists in Japan, which I understand makes the larger vehicle by default liable in all road traffic incidents.

That's not bad, how about we make it criminal to operate a vehicle in which you cannot prove that you have 340' visibility (20' being maxmimally permitted blind spots).

We could even consider changing HGV use in cities, to require a dual-licence.... this isn't actually a silly suggestion... whereby the vehicle itself is licensed for operation in a city and comes with additional safety requirements, and the driver has to have additional driving tests to prove that they can operate such a vehicle in such an environment.

Wouldn't you rather move towards solutions that attack the root cause rather than attempt to criminalise large swathes of the population for no proven benefit?

Lights and wheel reflectors are mandatory in Germany, even if you only ride during the day. While this provides many accidental accidents, it doesn't do anything about the main issues, attitude and inattentive drivers. I have daytime running lights [1], reflective tyres, as well as spoke reflectors. That doesn't prevent motorists from ignoring my right of way.

[1] http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/b&m-hl.asp - I have the Eyc T Senso plus model. It has signal LEDs that are directed at oncoming traffic as well as to the sides (to some extent) to provide maximum visibility during the day. See http://www.bumm.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Katalog/B_M__Catalo...

I disagree, mostly based on reality.

When I go out in a car I take my life and my families' lives in my hands. I live in Philadelphia in the U.S.. When I go driving, I constantly dodge other cars making a left hand turn from the right hand lane, city buses that consider red lights "suggestions," cars that slam on their brakes for a parking spot, cars driven by lost tourists paying attention to anything but the road in front of them...

The best thing my father ever taught me when I was learning to drive is "you don't drive for just yourself, you have to drive for everyone on the road, because they can't be trusted to do it themselves."

Philadelphia is notoriously hostile to bikers. It seems to me most people don't know that, at least here, bikes have to obey the same laws as cars - ride on the road (not the sidewalk), stop for red lights, etc. Even bikers seem confused about road laws (or flagrantly ignore them).

I'm all for bike lanes, new driver education, and whatever makes everyone safer. But self-driving cars aren't an indictment of our laziness, but rather our inability to drive safely all of the time. Making noise about how biker safety is everyone's responsibility is ideal, but the reality is a far different story. So if Volvo's contribution here to personal responsibility for safety helps a few people live longer, then bravo. It's available now, ubiquitous self-driving cars are not.

That's the reality of the situation. Stay safe.

re - saftey is "on the backs of ALL road users"

Indeed but I feel slight guilt as a bus using techie that one of us has not made an inexpensive camera and vision recognition system to fit to HGVs and set off a buzzer / the brakes when they are about to go over a cyclist. Something like that seems the most likely way to stop the death a month in London. Or maybe a skirt around the vehicle so they are more like busses saftey wise?

Construction vehicle design is very poor — the driver is high above the road, and can't see things near the cab.

The London Cycling Campaign proposed a new design [1], which has a cab similar to buses and bin lorries, with a much improved view for the driver.

[1] http://lcc.org.uk/articles/lcc-challenges-construction-indus...

They essentially designed the Econic [1] series by Mercedes. Those have been available for quite some time, before the 2013 date of the article and video.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Econic

Cyclists are one of the most (if not the most) vulnerable demographics of road users there is, and it should be the responsibility of other road users to help protect them.

I fall squarely in the camp that says they are just not suitable vehicles to share the road with other occupants. Frankly they make motorbikes look safe. Of course no government is willing to give up the money or the space to dedicated infrastructure.

So as you say, once a month or more a cyclist dies when a lorry turns left. I've watched a cyclist literally crawl from underneath a bus that knocked her off - and it's a contributory factor to my never cycling in London.

I don't know where you are from, but your assumption about all the world's governments is wrong.

> I fall squarely in the camp that says they are just not suitable vehicles to share the road with other occupants

Here's the converse:

* Bicycles the cause of essentially 0% of road deaths.

* Motorized vehicles are the cause of essentially 100% of road deaths.

It's not the bikes that are unsafe.

The bikes are extremely unsafe in the environment that they are being used in. That the risk is only to themselves is neither here nor there.

The choices in my mind are pretty much to either remove cyclists into dedicated highways or remove motorized vehicles. I just don't think one of those is even slightly viable.

It's close to the summer holidays, come and spend some time bicycling in the Netherlands, it is a great, safe, and relaxing experience. (Assuming you know how to cycle properly, that is; I've seen foreigners and tourists do very dangerous things on their bikes, such as swaying, riding on the right, looking back when signaled to move out the way, braking instead of overtaking when someone wants to pass, riding too slow, difficulty estimating other traffic and as a form of conflict behavior stopping halfway crossing a road, riding on ill-fitting bikes, and over-all they behave quite insecurely.)

Riding on the right? You have right-handed traffic.

Thanks for correcting me. Yes, they often tend not to keep right, but, I presume, cycle a "safe" distance from the right hand side of the road. Of course, in doing so, they hinder both cars and cyclists who want to pass.

The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about - because they get attacked for it- is that many of the cyclist deaths involving HGVs were the fault of the cyclist, e.g. http://road.cc/content/news/106227-coroner-dr-katharine-gile...

Obviously accidents taken in aggregate are not 100% the fault of any single side. I would challenge your "many" statement, especially when you link to an article about one accident. Do you have other citations or sources that indicate this?

But yes, everyone needs to be careful. However, the important distinction is that a careless cyclist is a danger primarily to themselves, while a careless motor vehicle operator is a danger to others on the road more than to themselves.

Yeah, I must admit that pretty much all cyclists and pedestrians alike have no idea about what's happening in their surrounding. But as a cyclist who's always aware (which is natural once you neared death enough times) I must say that oftentime there is absolutely no care about cyclist (or even pedestrians really) and you really have to freestyle it in the streets.

What do you do, cycle on a road where cars drive insanely fast and pay absolutely no attention to you, cycle on the busy sidewalk where you slalom between elders and kids that have absolutely no idea you're coming behind them, or cycle on the tramway tracks? The safest option for you and others is the most illegal one, and the most dangerous option is the one you're enforced to use.

Right... sure...

Eilidh Cairns death, the driver had incorrectly adjusted mirrors, failed an eye test, overtook the cyclist in a road not wide enough to do so [1]

Prominent artist death, the junction is badly designed and was on a blacklist but funds not allocated, the junction forced HGV drivers to watch the wrong side of their vehicle, leaving them blind to cyclists... in this case the truck drove over the cyclist without even seeing her [2]

Another junction in which 2 (two) cyclists died in a month due to the confusing design and narrow spaces [3]

Cyclist killed after driver is on the phone [4]

HGV Driver jailed for killing a cyclist after previously being banned from driving 5 times [5]

This was the first page of hits for "HGV cyclist death" that I found.

And there's an elephant somewhere? It's far more likely to be junction design, unenforced laws on driver behaviour, and a very very low standard applied by HGV contractors for their drivers.

[1] http://www.roadjustice.org.uk/case-study/driver-lorry-which-...

[2] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/woman-cyclist-dies-aft...

[3] http://road.cc/content/news/133336-second-serious-cyclist-cr...

[4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-32999770

[5] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3082792/Lawless-self...

Edit: I fell for the new troll account. I apologise to HN, but I bit before I realised it was a troll account and the overwhelming evidence is the opposite of what was claimed.

"It's true that some accidents are caused by cyclist's own poor judgement and more must be done to educate cyclists about the risks of pulling up into the blind spots of large vehicles. We are planning a campaign to raise awareness of these risks, and we are working closely with TFL to erect warning signs at accident blackspots to discourage cyclists from putting themselves at risk," said no cycling safety campaigner EVER.

Just because I don't agree with the line that all cyclists are angels and drivers should jump out of their way doesn't make me a troll and I set up a throw-away account because I don't much fancy getting targeted by an online lynch-mob.