Advocacy & Safety - Who likes bike lanes?

Mod note: Let's keep God out of bike lane discussions, please. P&R is the place to discuss deities and/or the lack thereof. Thank you.

Why not expand your Mod note to officially frown on the poster(s) who religiously quotes paragraphs about bicycling theory (especially bicycling in traffic) from the books of certain authors as if those self proclaimed experts were Gods?

ILTB, since we've got freedom of religion in this country, there are far too many whackjob cults for me to have time to do that. We're just going to stick with Big Religion here, so you can go ahead and hate on Cthulhu all you like so long as you can relate it to bicycling A&S. ;)

Actually, that's what I meant. If there was any sloppiness at all, I did not account for the very rare occurrences that may occur one or twice in some years where there really was nothing the cyclist could have done to avoid the crash. But I honestly believe in most years such crashes account for none of the 800..

That's some wishful thinking right there. I hope you do not need to believe this to continue your cycling, because it is certainly way off the mark. I'm afraid that, even if every cyclist rode perfectly for any given situation, there would still be a few hundred fatalities per year. These would almost all be of the hit-from-behind variety. You might be able to eliminate some of the hit-from-behind wrecks and nearly all of the rest through careful riding, but you'd never be able to eliminate all collisions. Think of it this way, however -- a few hundred tragic unavoidable fatalities per year is really very close to zero in the grand scheme of things. As it is, cyclist fatalities are rare. Fatalities involving careful cyclists are extremely rare, but there are always going to be some. Anybody who presents the reduction of cyclist fatalities as an urgent goal is demonstrating a disregard for available facts and is probably trying to sell us something like a helmet or some ideological bill of goods.

The danger of cycling such as it is manifests primarily in injuries, which can not, in my opinion, be considered rare. And cycling injuries result primarily from events unfolding in front of the rider, not behind. I urge cyclists in traffic to direct their attention forward. For the cyclists to whom 'traffic' means getting passed at high speed on country roads, it is natural to become preoccupied with what's going on behind and to construct personal superstitions and emotional mind-tricks to cope with that unavoidable lack of control over one's personal safety.


This is nothing revolutionary, as it is simply the application of the fundamental principle of defensive driving to cyclists: any crash could have been avoided had either person involved been acting defensively.

Not any crash.

Robert

That's some wishful thinking right there. I hope you do not need to believe this to continue your cycling, because it is certainly way off the mark. I'm afraid that, even if every cyclist rode perfectly for any given situation, there would still be a few hundred fatalities per year. These would almost all be of the hit-from-behind variety. You might be able to eliminate some of the hit-from-behind wrecks and nearly all of the rest through careful riding, but you'd never be able to eliminate all collisions. Think of it this way, however -- a few hundred tragic unavoidable fatalities per year is really very close to zero in the grand scheme of things. As it is, cyclist fatalities are rare. Fatalities involving careful cyclists are extremely rare, but there are always going to be some. Anybody who presents the reduction of cyclist fatalities as an urgent goal is demonstrating a disregard for available facts and is probably trying to sell us something like a helmet or some ideological bill of goods.

The danger of cycling such as it is manifests primarily in injuries, which can not, in my opinion, be considered rare. And cycling injuries result primarily from events unfolding in front of the rider, not behind. I urge cyclists in traffic to direct their attention forward. For the cyclists to whom 'traffic' means getting passed at high speed on country roads, it is natural to become preoccupied with what's going on behind and to construct personal superstitions and emotional mind-tricks to cope with that unavoidable lack of control over one's personal safety.
for the most part I agree; still, there is a fairly large discrepancy between the crash and injury rate in the US as compared to Europe, regardless of the presence of bike lanes. IMO, the average American motorist is less likely to approach a cyclist with caution than the average European motorist, and more likely to endanger a cyclist with either inadvertant or deliberate disregard for the cyclists safety than the average European motorist.

That bike lane sucks, but this thread is trollish, anyway. Some clueless gov't employee paints a stencil on a gutter pan, so that's a bike lane?

I'd never even give it a second glance. Even the worst bike lanes I've seen aren't anything like that nonsense.

I don't need a MUP. I just need some reasonable streets.

Well said. This is my impression. I guess, though, in urban areas it is complicated, because there are so many demands for curbside access: parking cars, buses stopping for passengers, and so on.

And cycling injuries result primarily from events unfolding in front of the rider, not behind. I urge cyclists in traffic to direct their attention forward.

Thank you for this nice clear post. Very good thinking here. I'm a newbie, and I see that you make a good point.

There is a narrowish shoulder (2.5' pavement, 1' gutter pan) on Rio Salado in Tempe (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=W+Rio+Salado+Pkwy,+Tempe,+Maricopa,+Arizona,+United+States&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&cd=2&geocode=0,33.430470,-111.954920&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.450489,58.535156&ll=33.431278,-111.945815&spn=0.001108,0.001786&t=k&z=19&om=1). I just noticed someone painted a bike lane stencil in it at regular intervals, fresh white paint contrasts the dull fog line. How did that happen? Its sub AASHTO guidlines which every other BL in Tempe I've seen meets.

Al

That's some wishful thinking right there. I hope you do not need to believe this to continue your cycling, because it is certainly way off the mark. I'm afraid that, even if every cyclist rode perfectly for any given situation, there would still be a few hundred fatalities per year. These would almost all be of the hit-from-behind variety.
Are there a few hundred hit-from-behind types of fatal crashes per year? What if we eliminate the ones where the cyclist is blatantly at fault, like the ones which occur at night in which the cyclist has no (or poor) lights/reflectors at night? Or where the cyclist moves laterally, without yielding, into the path of adjacent overtaking traffic? The inability of many cyclists to look back effectively without swerving is all too prevalent. What if we also eliminate right hooks in which through cyclists are riding too far right and passing slowing motorists on the right? What if we also eliminate those that are really "sideswipes" in narrow lane situations where the cyclist is riding in a squeeze-inviting too-far-right lane position? Hundreds of from-behind crashes per year? I find that hard to believe, because I almost never hear of a fatal crash that would qualify, especially if we eliminate the main cyclist-controllable situations above.

You might be able to eliminate some of the hit-from-behind wrecks and nearly all of the rest through careful riding, but you'd never be able to eliminate all collisions.
No doubt about that. I just don't believe that you'd still have hundreds, assuming it was possible to get all cyclists to understand and abide by the basic best practices.

Think of it this way, however -- a few hundred tragic unavoidable fatalities per year is really very close to zero in the grand scheme of things. As it is, cyclist fatalities are rare. Fatalities involving careful cyclists are extremely rare, but there are always going to be some. Anybody who presents the reduction of cyclist fatalities as an urgent goal is demonstrating a disregard for available facts and is probably trying to sell us something like a helmet or some ideological bill of goods.
The focus on crash causes in cyclist education is not about presenting the reduction of cyclist fatalities as an urgent goal, but to study and understand the most likely causes in order to explain and teach the best practices that the cyclist can follow to avoid such crashes himself.

The danger of cycling such as it is manifests primarily in injuries, which can not, in my opinion, be considered rare. And cycling injuries result primarily from events unfolding in front of the rider, not behind. I urge cyclists in traffic to direct their attention forward. For the cyclists to whom 'traffic' means getting passed at high speed on country roads, it is natural to become preoccupied with what's going on behind and to construct personal superstitions and emotional mind-tricks to cope with that unavoidable lack of control over one's personal safety.
Agreed. At the time, given a student who is preoccupied with what's going on behind him, and thus curb hugging and not paying enough attention to turning movements in front of him, I think one way to get him to move left and pay more attention forward is to get him to understand how this helps make him less vulnerable to the threats from behind that he irrationally fears so much as well (by being more likely to be noticed sooner by those behind him).

Not any crash.
Fair enough. Almost any crash. But considering something like a quarter of all cyclist death fatalities are primarily due to cyclists riding at night without proper lighting/reflectors, that half involve kids despite their relatively low mileage, that such a large percentage involves the cyclist riding on the wrong side, makes it seem easy to make huge, huge gains simply by reducing the most blatant of cyclist errors. It only seems logical that further significant gains could be made through cyclist behavior changes alone. I would find it hard to believe that more than 90% of all bike fatalities could not be prevented by cyclist behavior changes alone, and would not be surprised if more than 99% could be so prevented.

This is why I'm such a huge proponent of change in bicyclist behavior, in terms of making bicycling safer and encouraging cyclists to take up "best practices bicycling", and not very excited about trying to address motorist behavior, which I find to be almost impossible to accomplish, and would probably only make a small imperceptible difference even if we make the huge assumption that we could make such a change.

In the end, what matters is each individual cyclist's own probability of collision between now and the final bike ride of his life. For any such cyclist to look to changing the attitudes and behavior of the tens if not hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of drivers he will encounter between now and the last ride of his life, in order to reduce that probability by any significant degree, rather than focusing on his own attitude and behavior, is ludicrous.

Even if you consider yourself an average cyclist, with the same odds of ending up being one of those 800 or so per year who are killed as any other cyclist, per your argument above, bicycling is still quite safe. But what I'm saying is that if you regularly follow the best practices, your personal odds are probably 1/10th of those of those of the average cyclist, if not less than 1/100th. It is with these kinds of very low probabilities in mind, speaking in practical terms, that I wrote, "any crash could have been avoided had either person involved been acting defensively."

This is not an example of the problem with 'bike lanes' themselves, but with the systems and guidelines in place to design, implement and maintain them.
This is a problem with the idea to get cyclists out of the vehicular lanes and away from other traffic and the desire to appeal to cyclists and cycling advocacy organizations by striping bike lanes just to add to the statistic of miles of bike lanes, with zero consideration as to practicality or safety. The fault lies not just with those who paint them, but with those who only advocate for the stripe and are not closely involved with the entire process.

Here is an old thread with many other examples of poorly implemented or maintained bike lanes.
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=179714

Al


"The city is installing 400 to 500 bike racks a year and plans to have more than 400 miles of bike lanes and paths by 2009. There will then be 1 mile of bike lane for every 10 miles of road; the ratio is now 1 to 15. In San Francisco, it's 1 to 7."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071007/D8S4HGNO1.html

I submit this article as evidence to buttress Al's point. Many folks who advocate bike lanes are more enamored with quantity rather than demanding quality. Horribly designed and executed BLs are lumped together with helpful BLs with no distinction. Poor BLs have no value to cyclists or motorists or safety. They simply provide boasting rights to politicians and advocacy groups.

One of the unintended consequences of BLs brought up in this thread is the furthering of the notion that cyclists ought to be separated from motor vehicles on public streets. Poor BLs do this to the same degree as good BLs! All the downsides with none of the benefits! Do you still wonder why some cyclists are anti-bike lane? Perhaps one of the consequences of BL advocates settling for sub-standard BLs is an increased resistance to BLs from cyclists!

If it were hard to find examples of poorly executed BLs, they would be easy to support! My experience is that generally BLs cause more hazards than they solve, which explains my resistance to them. But I could be won over to advocacy for a well designed and executed BL. Advocates may do better in the long run by focusing in the short term on fixing existing BL into something safe and useful, rather than agitating for more statistical boasting rights. It is possible that they could reach their ultimate goals sooner through the increased support that would be generated by such a change in focus.

As it stands now, I prefer narrow right lanes to BLs. Taking the lane has served me better than BLs or MUPs.

.."what you hear" regarding bike accidents is not indicative of what actually happens?
Evidence?

Are there a few hundred hit-from-behind types of fatal crashes per year? What if we eliminate the ones where the cyclist is blatantly at fault, like the ones which occur at night in which the cyclist has no (or poor) lights/reflectors at night? Or where the cyclist moves laterally, without yielding, into the path of adjacent overtaking traffic? The inability of many cyclists to look back effectively without swerving is all too prevalent. What if we also eliminate right hooks in which through cyclists are riding too far right and passing slowing motorists on the right? What if we also eliminate those that are really "sideswipes" in narrow lane situations where the cyclist is riding in a squeeze-inviting too-far-right lane position? Hundreds of from-behind crashes per year? I find that hard to believe, because I almost never hear of a fatal crash that would qualify, especially if we eliminate the main cyclist-controllable situations above.


First we need to understand that going back to fatalities again and again is questionable at best when you consider how rare those fatalities are. And if we spend much time talking about fatalities, at the expense of more important things, it should not give any onlookers confidence that we have a minimum grasp of the salient issues of cycling safety. But anyway ...

Of approx. 800 cyclist traffic fatalities per year, approx. 400 involve some blatant infraction on the part of the cyclist. That leaves 400 fatalities, primarily adults, mowed down in some way while riding in a lawful fashion. (Percentage of all cyclist fatalities involving kids has fallen drastically over the past decade -- from about 30% to 20%.) Of these remaining 400 or so, a substantial percentage, something like half I'd guess, will be hit-from-behind wrecks. Injuries and fatalities are very different things that result from different sorts of crashes. With fatalities we're talking about motorist-turns-left-into-cyclist, motorist-runs-signal or sign and the hit-from-behind variety, because generally you need some speed and a very violent impact to make a fatal collision. A failure to yield on restart from stop sign, one of the most common causes of cyclist injury, is probably not going to cause a death, for instance. The hit-from-behind tends to be just the wrong sort of wreck from a cyclist's standpoint, causing damage far out of proportion with the number of collisions -- disproportionately deadly. We know that hit-from-behind wrecks are pretty rare but are far more likely to be deadly than any other sort of car-bike collision. Consider that well over half of cyclist fatalities do not involve an intersection (I have seen 75%, grain of salt of course); in contrast, something like 90% of all bike-car accidents involve turning or crossing.

Your contention is that almost all of those deaths can be prevented if riders position themselves in the lane to get the attention of approaching traffic. I strongly disagree. If you read enough accident reports you will realize that plenty of those unfortunate deceased riders were riding in the lane before they got hit. In most of the rest of the hit-from-behind incidents there is not nearly enough information to determine the rider's disposition prior to the collision and making assumptions to feed our beliefs based on no information is a sick insult to their restless souls. I believe that if everyone began to use your strategy at all times there would indeed be many collisions prevented, but an equal number would be caused by motorists completely failing to notice cyclists directly in their path.

The fact is that when a cyclist is passed by a car or truck on the road, that cyclist is NOT in control, insofar as he/she remains on the road in the possible path of that vehicle. You are at least somewhat dependent on the passing driver to notice your existence and make a safe pass, no matter how you slice it. For this reason there will always be an element of Russian Roulette to cycling in traffic -- to being in traffic period -- and there's not a damn thing any one of us can do about it except stay home (or ride so fast that we never get passed). Thankfully, that element that remains inexorably outside of our control is quite small, unless the vast majority of our riding is on narrow, high speed highways, and our only transaction with vehicles is being rocked mercilessly by their windblasts as they speed past. In the end there are going to be some fatalities every year in which the rider was riding in the absolute perfect most intelligent possible manner but got mowed down anyway.

How bad do we need our beliefs? Will you continue to ride if you find your beliefs are false?

I tell you HH, if you are truly out to advance cyclist safety, and increase your own safety on the bike, the best thing you can do is recognize reality, even when reality is ugly.

Robert

First we need to understand that going back to fatalities again and again is questionable at best when you consider how rare those fatalities are. And if we spend much time talking about fatalities, at the expense of more important things, it should not give any onlookers confidence that we have a minimum grasp of the salient issues of cycling safety. But anyway ...
Of course, the value in fatality stats is that they are complete. That is, all fatalities are reported. But yes, fatalities only make up a small percentage of total bike crashes, of course. But over half of all bike crashes are solo crashes too. The biggest concern, and rightfully so, are the types of crashes that are likely to cause serious injury or death, and bike-car collisions are pretty dominant in that area. If you focus on the portion of bike-car crashes that result in cyclist fatality, it's skewed. But, as you point out below, it's skewed in favor of making rear-end crashes seem more likely than they are. And like you said, anyway...


Of approx. 800 cyclist traffic fatalities per year, approx. 400 involve some blatant infraction on the part of the cyclist. That leaves 400 fatalities, primarily adults, mowed down in some way while riding in a lawful fashion. (Percentage of all cyclist fatalities involving kids has fallen drastically over the past decade -- from about 30% to 20%.) Of these remaining 400 or so, a substantial percentage, something like half I'd guess, will be hit-from-behind wrecks.
I don't have the stats in front of me, but I think "something like half" (of these remaining 400) is high for how many are of the from-behind type where the cyclist did nothing blatantly wrong. Regardless, the cyclist's behavior in these may be legal, but not necessarily following best practices. What I'm interested in is how many are left from this roughly 200 (again, I think that's high) hit-from-behinds after you filter out all of those that were preventable had the cyclist been following defensive cycling best practices, such as these:


Right hooks in which through cyclists are riding too far right and passing slowing motorists on the right. No blatant legal infraction there, but blatant disregard for following defensive cycling best practices. Given the relatively high prevalence of right hooks, this one has to take a big percentage, yet almost all (not all) right hooks are easily preventable through cyclist behavior alone.
Where the cyclist moves laterally, without yielding, into the path of adjacent overtaking traffic. Would these get counted as "blatant infraction" on the part of the cyclist? A few months ago there was a thread about a cyclist death in Oregon on a rural road where a motorist with a suspended license encroached in the oncoming lane over a solid yellow to pass a left-turning cyclist and hit him in the process. Because of the driver's blatant infractions, this was legally on her. But practically speaking, the guy almost certainly initiated a left merge into her illegal path. This one (and how many more like it?) goes down as motorist fault, yet it was almost certainly cyclist-preventable, if he had been following defensive cycling best practices.
"Sideswipes" in narrow lane situations where the cyclist is riding in a squeeze-inviting too-far-right lane position. Definitely no legal infraction there, but arguably inviting motorists too pass too closely, setting up situations with small margins for error.
Doorings, particularly those where the opening door causes the cyclist to swerve into the path of overtaking traffic. Example (http://www.bikexprt.com/massfacil/cambridge/doorzone/laird1.htm). Easily preventable by the cyclist, of course.
Last and perhaps least, but yes, inadvertent drift: Cyclists riding in bike lane or shoulder on quiet "ruralish" road, oblivious to the driver approaching from behind, who is oblivious to the cyclist ahead because the cyclist is outside of the driver's "zone of maximum surveillance" [* (http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/digest/vc99.html)], and pays attention to something that distracts him, and inadvertently drifts into the unnoticed cyclist. No way this goes down as the cyclist's fault, yet I read about enough of these to think they have to account for at least 20 per year, which is 10% of the from-behinds even if the 200 number is accepted.

Yes, I know your girlfriend was hit directly from behind (though you never confirmed it was not a drift), but I can't think of a single fatality case in recent years in San Diego that was such a case, though I know of several of the drift variety. And this despite the prevalence of narrow lanes on many roads on which cyclists are required to ride in the path of faster motorists. In fact, it was the dearth of flat-on from-behind crashes and the relatively high prevalence of drift-into-cyclist crashes that was a highly influential factor in my adopting Franklin's methodology to ride centerish by default (not to mention that it frees me from having to adjust laterally for every junction approach and crossing).


Injuries and fatalities are very different things that result from different sorts of crashes. With fatalities we're talking about motorist-turns-left-into-cyclist, motorist-runs-signal or sign and the hit-from-behind variety, because generally you need some speed and a very violent impact to make a fatal collision. A failure to yield on restart from stop sign, one of the most common causes of cyclist injury, is probably not going to cause a death, for instance. The hit-from-behind tends to be just the wrong sort of wreck from a cyclist's standpoint, causing damage far out of proportion with the number of collisions -- disproportionately deadly. We know that hit-from-behind wrecks are pretty rare but are far more likely to be deadly than any other sort of car-bike collision.
Right. That's why from-behind crashes are over-represented as a percentage in the fatalities as compared to the percentage of from-behind crashes in all types of car-bike collisions.


Consider that well over half of cyclist fatalities do not involve an intersection (I have seen 75%, grain of salt of course); in contrast, something like 90% of all bike-car accidents involve turning or crossing.
Well over half of cyclist fatalities do not involve an intersection? I would like to see the source for that assertion.


Your contention is that almost all of those deaths can be prevented if riders position themselves in the lane to get the attention of approaching traffic. I strongly disagree.
I strongly disagree too! That's not my contention!

I do believe almost all of those deaths can be prevented through changes in cyclist behavior alone (at least in theory - I say in theory because I don't think it's practically possible to get all or even most cyclists to change their behavior accordingly, though I believe much more significant progress can be made in that area, while practically none could be made in the area of changing motorist behavior such that cyclist crash and death rates would go down), but the necessary changes in behavior are not limited to lateral position alone! It requires a change in attitude and outlook, through which more conspicuous lane positioning with improved sight lines is but one result. Improved traffic situational awareness, and improved awareness of how the cyclist's behavior affects the behavior of other drivers is probably most important.


If you read enough accident reports you will realize that plenty of those unfortunate deceased riders were riding in the lane before they got hit.
I have no doubt that that would be the case. But I also know what a high percentage of these cyclists who were "in the lane" when they were hit were, and had been for some time, outside of the normal travel area of the lane (between the left and right tire tracks), and yet were hit anyway. Mostly because they were going straight from the "right turn area" of the wide lane, or they were drifted into. Remember, a right hook into a midblock driveway is going to get recorded as a from-behind crash, and one that did not occur at an intersection. That too skews the stats making from-behind flatons seem more prevalent than they are.


In most of the rest of the hit-from-behind incidents there is not nearly enough information to determine the rider's disposition prior to the collision and making assumptions to feed our beliefs based on no information is a sick insult to their restless souls. I believe that if everyone began to use your strategy at all times there would indeed be many collisions prevented, but an equal number would be caused by motorists completely failing to notice cyclists directly in their path.

In that case why are not more cyclists hit in narrow lanes who are directly in the path of motorists behind them?

Besides, in wide lanes my strategy is to usually be in the secondary position - same lateral position most cyclist ride in by default in wide lanes - whenever same direction traffic is present. So my actual exposure to from-behind traffic is only marginally higher than is the exposure of a cyclist who defaults to the secondary/sharing/margin position in wide lanes. I think my higher conspicuity as they are approaching more than compensates for that small margin, by a long shot. This is obvious in how much sooner, on average, they slow down or change lanes when I'm riding in this manner.


The fact is that when a cyclist is passed by a car or truck on the road, that cyclist is NOT in control, insofar as he/she remains on the road in the possible path of that vehicle. You are at least somewhat dependent on the passing driver to notice your existence and make a safe pass, no matter how you slice it. For this reason there will always be an element of Russian Roulette to cycling in traffic -- to being in traffic period -- and there's not a damn thing any one of us can do about it except stay home (or ride so fast that we never get passed).
I agree. However, the degree of control I'm talking about is influencing the number of chambers in the hypothetical revolver. The more the better, of course.


Thankfully, that element that remains inexorably outside of our control is quite small, unless the vast majority of our riding is on narrow, high speed highways, and our only transaction with vehicles is being rocked mercilessly by their windblasts as they speed past. In the end there are going to be some fatalities every year in which the rider was riding in the absolute perfect most intelligent possible manner but got mowed down anyway.
Agreed.


How bad do we need our beliefs? Will you continue to ride if you find your beliefs are false?

Absolutely. The overall odds are so good for cycling, independent of all this stuff, that I know it's reasonably safe no matter what.


I tell you HH, if you are truly out to advance cyclist safety, and increase your own safety on the bike, the best thing you can do is recognize reality, even when reality is ugly.

That's exactly what I'm doing.

By the way, reading Bekologist's recent near-left-hook account (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=350927) on a 4-lane one-way in Seattle gave me new insight on the type of cyclist your book is really ideal for: the overconfident highly skilled fearless experienced urban warrior. For a cyclist like that, it's good to remind him to ride "with fear". For a cyclist like Genec, not so much. Quite the opposite.

:roflmao:

hed thinks he knows best.


confident? check.
highly skilled? check.
experienced? check.

healthy respect for traffic, yet fearless? check.

I'd rather be me than an inexperienced, fearful, underconfident part time rider like helmet head.

thanks for the compliments, HH!

I find you preaching fear an interesting, and particularly loathsome, hypocritical contradiction.

:roflmao:

hed thinks he knows best.


confident? check.
highly skilled? check.
experienced? check.

healthy respect for traffic, yet fearless? check.

I'd rather be me than an inexperienced, fearful, underconfident part time rider like helmet head.

thanks for the compliments, HH!

I find you preaching fear an interesting, and particularly loathsome, hypocritical contradiction.
Hey, if it helps keep you alive, Beck, I'm probably willing to do it.

trust me, head, you haven't taught me anything about bicycling except what a worrywart, part time bicyclist and egotistical internet safety nanny you are....

But you want to help?

don't come on vacation up north here, I've read how you drive!

Believe me, Beck, it's abundantly obvious you haven't learned anything.

I don't have the stats in front of me, but I think "something like half" (of these remaining 400) is high for how many are of the from-behind type where the cyclist did nothing blatantly wrong. Regardless, the cyclist's behavior in these may be legal, but not necessarily following best practices. What I'm interested in is how many are left from this roughly 200 (again, I think that's high) hit-from-behinds after you filter out all of those that were preventable had the cyclist been following defensive cycling best practices, such as these:

[list]
Right hooks

Right hooks generally aren't fatal wrecks, unless it's a truck that literally runs over a cyclist. This seems to happen a lot in England (where it is of course known as a 'left hook'), but not in the US. Like I said, when you're talking about lawful cyclists being killed on the roadways the type of wreck involved is usually going to be one of three types. Hit-from-behind (straight on or drift but speedy and violent); motorist runs stoplight or stopsign at speed of 30 mph or more; motorist turns left into cyclist at speed (almost a head on collision).

Where the cyclist moves laterally, without yielding, into the path of adjacent overtaking traffic. Would these get counted as "blatant infraction" on the part of the cyclist? .

Those are included in the other 400 or so fatalities in which the cyclist is deemed legally at fault.

"Sideswipes" in narrow lane situations where the cyclist is riding in a squeeze-inviting too-far-right lane position. Definitely no legal infraction there, but arguably inviting motorists too pass too closely, setting up situations with small margins for error..

Close passes don't cause fatalities.

Doorings, particularly those where the opening door causes the cyclist to swerve into the path of overtaking traffic..

As Forester would say, a near-dooring that results in a cyclist being struck from behind is a 'vanishingly rare' event that does not even show up on the radar.

Last and perhaps least, but yes, inadvertent drift:.

Nobody really knows for sure is the answer to that one. I would guess about half of the 200 or so motorist at-fault hits-from-behind involve the motorist hitting a cyclist on the shoulder. Just a guess, though. I won't pretend to have conclusive information on that. I do know that it happens, and I know that straight-on hits from behind happen as well. And I know that either type is pretty durn rare in the grand scheme and in my opinion there's not much a cyclist could do to prevent either sort, and thinking too hard about avoiding these events is likely to cause more harm than good, in my professional opinion.

Yes, I know your girlfriend was hit directly from behind (though you never confirmed it was not a drift), .

In the lane, broad daylight, with a blinky. It happens, HH. Your belief that this is significantly less likely to happen than 'inadvertent drift' is based on nothing but wishful thinking, I'm afraid. Being so concerned with either variety as you seem to be indicates a gross mis-allocation of your available attention: you are backward-obsessed. My prescription for you is to throw away your mirror, just throw the thing away, and learn to ride while relying much more on your god-given ears. I wouldn't normally suggest such a thing, but for you it seems like it would be a useful exercise. Relearn to ride using only sound clues and quick glances back and that may correct your backward fetish. My girlfriend commutes daily with pieces of her broken spine still floating around but with far less rearward-obsession than you exhibit. Think about that.

but I can't think of a single fatality case in recent years in San Diego that was such a case, though I know of several of the drift variety. And this despite the prevalence of narrow lanes on many roads on which cyclists are required to ride in the path of faster motorists. .

First of all, you're not looking hard enough. As for what you've seen in San Diego, there aren't enough cycling fatalities in any one city (except maybe New York) to provide a useful statistical sample. Essentially you are saying that among the what? five or so bike fatalities in the San Diego area a few of them were inadvertent drift and none of them were straight on hit from behind (as far as you know) so therefore straight on hits from behind are incredibly rare compared to drifts. That's not how it works. Second, I have read some of your examples of so-called inadvertent drift and you generally don't have enough information to make a good determination as to where the victim was riding prior to the collision. Given your apparent belief in the visibility of small vehicles, you must believe also that motorcyclists almost never get hit from behind, correct?


Right. That's why from-behind crashes are over-represented as a percentage in the fatalities as compared to the percentage of from-behind crashes in all types of car-bike collisions..

That's also why hit-from-behind wrecks account for a large percentage of cyclist fatalities where the cyclist is not deemed to be 'at fault.'


Well over half of cyclist fatalities do not involve an intersection? I would like to see the source for that assertion..

There are several. One is the CPSC's "Bicycle Use and Hazard Patterns in the United States" (1994), which crunched the 1989 statistics: "About three-fourths of these deaths occurred at non-intersection locations."

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/344.pdf

As always, any bike-related stats and the purveyors of such should be smirked at and ridiculed. Especially if they only discuss fatalities and how to avoid them.


Absolutely. The overall odds are so good for cycling, independent of all this stuff, that I know it's reasonably safe no matter what.

Well ... The odds are good in terms of fatalities. But the chance of injury is fairly high.

Robert

...not to mention [/URL].

I like those clothes and a fine looking family too. Serge isn't all bad after all. Just his cookoo cycling theories.

"In most of the rest of the hit-from-behind incidents there is not nearly enough information to determine the rider's disposition prior to the collision and making assumptions to feed our beliefs based on no information is a sick insult to their restless souls." --Hurst

read, Serge. understand, Serge.

Believe me, Beck, it's abundantly obvious you haven't learned anything.


and believe me, head, you've got nothing to teach me about riding, part timer.

and believe me, head, you've got nothing to teach me about riding, part timer.

Helmet Head has nothing positive or relevant to teach about bicycling to anybody. Despite what he thinks of his own doofus theories.

For bicyclists, yes, (b) drift over collisions are more common than flat on hit the cyclist right in front of you hit-from behinds. The latter are virtually unheard of.

Unheard of by who? I've heard of plenty. Again, you talk like you have statistically significant evidence in front of you.



Rubber-necking - paying attention to something else while the driver in front of you slows or stops - is the main cause of rear-enders.

Is it? What is your source for this information? I agree not paying attention is a factor, what about speeding and tailgating?



a) drivers are less careless when a cageless human is in front of them
b) when traffic slows cyclists tend to filter in between lines of auto traffic
I agree with your reasoning to a point. However I question whether this is really enough to claim that a road user group is exempt from a very common type of road collision.


I think we've had more drift collisions from the Portland area alone discussed on this forum in the last couple of years than flat on from-behinds from the rest of the country combined.
Again, you are playing fast and loose with imaginary statistics.


Evidence? The dearth of newspaper articles describing such crashes, in contrast to the all-too-many drift types.

What if we start a thread entitled "flat on from-behind vs. drift from-behind crashes", in which any time anyone hears of a cyclist death of either type in the U.S., an article would be posted. Right hooks and sideswipes would not count.

I suggest this would be as meaningless as the existing threads, because in my opinion the majority of cyclists ride on the road margin, as the rules suggest they do. And why discard sideswipes? Do you think a truck mirror hitting you is not dangerous?


Look, I'm ready to change my mind, and I would, if someone could point to a few crashes describing flat on from-behind types.

I'm willing to change my mind too, if you could provide studies, not newspaper articles.


Because adjacent lane space is relatively relevant to most drivers, shoulders and bike lanes are relatively irrelevant. That's why a cyclist in an adjacent traffic lane, where threats are expected, is much more likely to be noticed than a cyclist in an adjacent shoulder or bike lane, where threats are not expected.

I see cars drifting from lane to lane all the time. Don't you?

Helmet Head has nothing positive or relevant to teach about bicycling to anybody. Despite what he thinks of his own doofus theories.
Man, ILTB, was your mom mean to you? So much antagonism. I bet you could use a hug.

Right hooks generally aren't fatal wrecks, unless it's a truck that literally runs over a cyclist.
Yeah, well, it's seems to happen in Portland about as often as it does in England.
See this thread (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=352590).

No, I'm not cherry picking. This tragedy occurred the day after you made this statement attempting to diminish the significance of right hook fatalities.

It is accepted in the cycling culture that cyclists should keep right, even when they're going straight at an intersection where right turns can be made. This needs to change, and the only way it's going to change if we cyclists change it ourselves. And that's only going to happen if we make it a priority and stop diminishing how important it is.

Additionally 'The City of Copenhagen' is trying to address the problem of right hook fatalities:
http://www.cphpost.dk/get/103710.html

"According to the Danish Road Directorate, 30 people are seriously injured every year by vehicles that fail to yield for the two-wheel riders when making a right turn. One-third of those people die."

What is not known is how many minor right hook accidents occur.

The article does note that the fatalities mainly involve trucks.

Al

Of approx. 800 cyclist traffic fatalities per year, approx. 400 involve some blatant infraction on the part of the cyclist. That leaves 400 fatalities, primarily adults, mowed down in some way while riding in a lawful fashion...

...If you read enough accident reports you will realize that plenty of those unfortunate deceased riders were riding in the lane before they got hit....

Robert
There is no evidence in your post that indicates the lane position of the cyclist either invited or prevented a fatality. So you have neither proven nor disproven the notion that lateral lane positioning either invites, or prevents, hit-from-behind cyclist fatalities. In your own words,

In most of the rest of the hit-from-behind incidents there is not nearly enough information to determine the rider's disposition prior to the collision...

Yet, from the tone of your post, I might infer that riding in the lane is like playing "Russian Roulette." Is this the meaning you intended? If so, I would strongly disagree with your post.

Conspicuity is an often-used strategy of cyclists to combat motorist inattention. That's why many of us wear bright clothing, use lights/reflective material at night, avoid disappearing into the sun, avoid motorist blind-spots, and generally ride as if people don't see us.

Whether lane positioning promotes cyclist conspicuity or not, I will not debate. That's HH's responsibility (I use that strategy for entirely different reasons.)

But being conspicuous is a well-known strategy for very many commuting cyclists (and we ride during both rush hours.)

More evidence that seperated bike facilities lead to the attitude that bikes ought not be on the roads at all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnqo7ARiDN4

Yeah, well, it's seems to happen in Portland about as often as it does in England.
See this thread (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=352590).

No, I'm not cherry picking. This tragedy occurred the day after you made this statement attempting to diminish the significance of right hook fatalities.

It is accepted in the cycling culture that cyclists should keep right, even when they're going straight at an intersection where right turns can be made. This needs to change, and the only way it's going to change if we cyclists change it ourselves. And that's only going to happen if we make it a priority and stop diminishing how important it is.

So when we take the right lane and still get right hooked by a motor vehicle from the lane next to us, what is the cause? According to what you posted, if we do away with the right lane and just make it one giant lane going each direction that will reduce the chances of a right hook to almost nil?

So when we take the right lane and still get right hooked by a motor vehicle from the lane next to us, what is the cause? According to what you posted, if we do away with the right lane and just make it one giant lane going each direction that will reduce the chances of a right hook to almost nil?

This is why you object to taking a lane? Yes, it is possible that one could be right hooked from the next lane over when controlling the right lane. :rolleyes:

What is your point? The cause of ALL right hooks is poor decisions made by motorists. Making right turns from the middle of the street is so foreign to them that they usually won't do such a thing.

+1 on the there is no fast lane. It driives me nuts when folks round here talk about the fast lane on urban arterials where there are possible left turns and entering traffic every 1/4mi or more and the so called 'slow lane' is already moving along above the 45mph SL.

A. A person shall not drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law.


Al

That is what the cop pulled me over for you missed the whole thing AL!
=7
A. A person shall not drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic [b]except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law.


I drive a vehicle, and a slow one at that.

This is why you object to taking a lane? Yes, it is possible that one could be right hooked from the next lane over when controlling the right lane. :rolleyes:

What is your point? The cause of ALL right hooks is poor decisions made by motorists. Making right turns from the middle of the street is so foreign to them that they usually won't do such a thing.

I don't object to taking the right lane, I'm pointing out that there's no difference from being right hooked there and right hooked while in the bike lane. Both have happened to me. I don't believe the claims that bike lanes increase the incidents of right hooks.