Originally Posted by Little Darwin
This isn't to dismiss the responsibility of the drivers, but...
Since the legal way to ride a bike is on the right side of the road, I am mildly surprised that only 8 out of 10 fatalities are from the car striking from behind.
Most interactions between a car and a bike involve a car overtaking a bicycle on the same side of the road. To me this intuitively means that most accidents, fatal and otherwise would be related to the most common scenario... fast car... slower bike... car from behind... Am I missing something?
It reminds me of the Dilbert comic strip where the boss got mad because 40% of sick days were on Monday or Friday...
The reason that most car/bike collisions do not happen from behind is because a cyclist in front of a motorist is very easy to see and because most people are decent and not looking to get sued, people will do anything they can do to avoid hitting the cyclist. Most of the time, it just means slowing a bit and driving around them. When cyclists do get hit is when they ride in such a way that they are not easily visible to motorists, such as riding into the street from the sidewalk (motorists aren't expecting fast moving traffic from the sidewalk) or passing slow moving traffic on the right through an intersection (the right turning motorist is not expecting to be passed on the right).