Originally Posted by
RobertHurst
Bad behavior by bicyclists may lead to bicyclist fatalities. Keep in mind the bigger picture however. When adult cyclists are involved in collisions with motor vehicles, they are most likely to be riding legally at the time of the wreck, the victim of a looked-but-failed-to-see error by the driver. I think this is probably the single most important lesson that we can learn from bike accident statistics.
I am aware of the report
out of London and the report
out of Toronto that place the lions share of blame for collisions on motorists.
I also know that many other reports split the blame evenly (even if many do a poor job of separating age groups when it comes to MV/bicycle collisions).
As shown by the descriptions in the Appendix, adult cyclists have one of the same problems drivers do - drinking. As many cyclists were drunk who dies as there were drunk drivers that hit them. It's been reported that about a quarter of cyclists who have died while riding were drunk at the time. Adult (?) behavior?
A
report on all the collisions between MV/bicycles in BC over a 3 year period showed an equal split on failure to yield right of way/Operating vehicle without due care in collisions.
Operating vehicle without due care - Cyclists: 23% Car drivers: 14%
Failure to yield right-of-way - Cyclists: 13% Car drivers: 27%
A big difference however, was turning in intersections. By far the biggest collision location, motorists will turn into cyclists far more often than the reverse (but I'll bet motorists make a lot more left turns in traffic than cyclists).
Almost four out of five cyclists were going straight ahead, while 42% of the drivers were turning either left or right.
I suppose no matter how you want to break down collisions between cyclists and motorist, what matters most is co-operation between the two sharing the same space. Attitude is important in co-operation and there are plenty on both sides that can improve theirs.