Thread: Helmet - Impact
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Old 11-21-19, 04:37 PM
  #13  
bpcyclist
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Well, I agree with a lot of that. The problem is, some things are either out of the cyclist's control, or, they are just infinitesimally, barely, not out of his or her control. Example. Coming home this morning in the dark from my early ride. My apartment building is at the end of the street I am on, so all I have to do is just ride straight on to its driveway and dismount, then, I am home. Apartment buildings on either side of me. Half a block to go. I'm the only person on the street. Quarter of a block to go. Almost there. Nice ride. Great start to the day.

Then, suddenly, out of the ether, a silver midsize sedan pulls out onto the street from a driveway on my right. Not only does the driver not see me, but he is actually looking the complete other way. While not looking, he continues to pull out fully into the street, turning my direction. I am doing maybe 15-16 mph. As he appears, he is maybe eighteen feet ahead of me. Something like that. No time to think. Just a survival reaction. I immediately jerk the bars to the left. It's way too sharp and too quick and I immediately go to the pavement. The driver finally turns and sees what has happened and stops his car. I did not make contact with his vehicle. I have some scrapes and no doubt bruises. Did not lose consciousness, though I most definitely did strike the pavement with my right parietal scalp. Pretty hard. My helmet saved me from a trip to the Neuro ICU, I have no doubt.

The point of telling this is that we as cyclists are actually not in control of everything that may happen to us on the road. This guys just wasn't thinking and pulled right out into me. Had I been going any faster, I would not have been able to react at all. Totally his fault. His decision. I have great gear and lights and a terrific bike that is well-maintained and I am extremely experienced. And I did a good job of trying to save myself as best I could in the 2 seconds I had to act. No matter how well prepared we are, sometimes stuff just happens. It's life. We can try to stack the odds in our favor, but at the end of the day, we aren't responsible for other people's stupidity. And no amount of science is ever going to change that.

And since the Boeing situation was brought up, I would recommend anyone interested to find the story in the NYTimes Sunday edition from the weekend of Sept. 20ish. There is in the magazine section a superb analysis of those crashes by a very experienced 737 Max pilot. By far, the best reporting I have seen on this story. Anyhoo, on the cycling topic of being prepared for anything at any time, this pilot's argument is that the Lion and Ethiopian crashes would never happen in the U.S. because the quality of the preparation and training our pilots receive prepares them for essentially anything. They would have handled it with the same professionalism they manage everything else. Including an MCAS system that is causing headaches and acting weird. There was a simple, basic solution to that MCAS problem for the Lion and Ethiopian crews. Any competent 737 Max pilot knows this. But they didn't use it. They completely screwed it up, God rest their souls. They had no clue what they were doing. Those crashes were pilot error. Yes, Boeing screwed up. But those crashes never, ever should have happened, even with the Boeing mess-up.

Life is Brownian motion and crazy things just happen all the time, sometimes, to cyclists. Prepare, practice, be paranoid, but ultimately, when that inattentive guy just pulls right out into you, it's just you and that car and a fraction of a second. And you, unfortunately, can't always control how that interaction is going to turn out.
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