79pmooney

4o years ago, we would add "and hand grenades". I still do.

I see another side to the close passes. I lived near and raced out of Boston and saw, as FB does, many close passes. But, east coast big city drivers have, for the vast majority, a good idea of where the right hand outline of their car is. The slow learners get to replace a few mirrors. but eventually most get it. I have little confidence of that riding in traffic on the west coast.

Another consideration - road hazards. A close pass makes moving to avoid a road hazard at that moment less than safe. Hitting those hazards at that moment and crashing is also problematic. Yes, we should anticipate these things in advance, but people stepping out mid block into traffic from in front of vans can be hard to anticipate. Likewise dogs. other animals, balls and kids.

In my more militant moments, I often consider making a tool we used to talk about years ago. A lightweight 18" clearance indicator that would both be audible to the drive on close passes and mark his car. A sharpened spoke mounted behind the seat would do nicely. I would expect to someday be called into court for damage to a driver's paint and lose, but the records of that trial should be all the evidence I need to sue for damages from an unsafe pass.

Ben

mr_bill

After a particular drawing, it is not logical to say that their odds of success were improved when they in fact did not win. They simply spent more money to lose.

(Lotteries are in fact an idiot tax.)

-mr. bill

79pmooney

I've had two very intentional very close passes riding county roads well outside Portland. Both times I knew full well that there was 1st) a pickup and 2nd) a farm truck behind me. No other traffic at all. Great visibility. I knew I was seen. Both deliberately passed me very close. The first immediately swerved back to the center of the lane (where he was on my previous look). The second passed me towing a wider trailer that left me with 4" tro spare on my left with my tires 4" from real drop off the pavement. (I saw the trailer in the mirror as he was passing me and pulled over the the pavement edge.)

So I guess I fall into the second category you talked about. "...ride ... hugging ... road edge". I could have just skipped the fear part and gotten hit.

Ben

noisebeam

Sounds like you didn't leave enough room to move over if you used it all up for the first pass. You only need to move over about a foot to give that extra bit of clearance to what otherwise would be a close one.

MidSouthBiker

How dangerous are close passes really?

Potentially very dangerous.

I-Like-To-Bike

As are wide passes that go astray.

At least one poster seems to fear this possibility from distracted drivers far more than such drivers driving straight ahead and instead of passing wide.

MidSouthBiker

I agree.

Ninety5rpm

Or they have a mirror but are not using the mirror...

jefnvk

Close passes aren't dangerous, any more than tailgating a foot behind a car at highway speed isn't dangerous.

When the person doing either stops being close and starts being in contact, they become deadly. Personally, it is my opinion that 99% of folks doing either probably dont have the skills to do either, and just wind up lucky the majority of the time.

Happy Feet

In climbing we use to say the fall doesn't hurt.. just the sudden stop at the end.

Ninety5rpm

dan·ger·ous ˈdānj(ə)rəs
adjective
adjective dangerous
able or likely to cause harm or injury.

• likely to cause problems or to have adverse consequences.

That, or you don't realize that close passes and tailgating are able ... to cause harm or injury.

I-Like-To-Bike

Just riding along any how and in any way is able ... to cause harm or injury. Evaluating relative risk of various scenarios requires being capable and willing to make intelligent decisions and value judgements, not just crying like Henny Penny that everything is dangerous because of a fear that something/anything unpleasant could happen. After all, any moving object is able ... to cause harm or injury.

jefnvk

By that logic, nearly everything a motorist does is dangerous. Piloting a 5000# hunk of metal at 70MPH is able to cause harm or injury, after all. I did a quick backstep tonite standing on the sidewalk because one car turned in front of another and my mind told me if there was a wreck the ensuing carnage would head right for where I was standing. It was merely a "close pass" between them, thank god one was CBP and presumably sober.

There are a handful of folks from my racing days and a handful of folks from my current vehicle test days that I would fully trust to complete a "close pass" without harm. Google "gymkhana segway" onvideos if you don't believe me. Most people can complete a "close pass" without issue, but as others have mentioned, the issue becomes either when they screw up, or someone else screws up, and there is no maneuver room for them take evasive action without hitting the cyclist. Admittedly, most of those folks would have the intelligence to not do it in the first place, but if done intelligently it is not the top of my list of concerns.

The act in and of itself isn't really that dangerous. The situation surrounding it, and the state of mind that enables it, is generally what causes the danger.

salcedo

Exactly, being on the road is dangerous, period. And close passes could also dangerous, because they could increase the probability of an accident.

The question is a question of magnitude. How dangerous are they? Do they increase the probability in a significant way? Or is the aded risk negligible?

I also want to distinguish between city traffic and rural roads. In city traffic cars are rarely moving more 10mph faster than me. In those scenarios close passes can be annoying, but I don't feel that threatened.

In rural roads however, cars are sometimes driving up to 40mph faster than me. When a car or truck drives closely at that speed you can feel a gush of wind pushing you away even if they don' touch you.

I remember a professional cyclist was in a bad accident close to where I grew up. She was going down a hill and a semi truck drove close to her at high speed. There was no actual contact, but the wind (or maybe the scare) made her lose control and she had a serious crash. So I have no doubt that close passes can result in serious injuries.

Again, the past that I am not sure of is whether the probability of this happening is big enough that we should care.

I-Like-To-Bike

Double down on that - everything a person does on a bicycle is "dangerous" whether on a road, path, street, or trail, and whether motor vehicles are present or not, after all, any activity that requires movement...could lead to or cause harm or injury.

Intelligent discussion, let alone intelligent answers about bicycling risk and relative risk of various scenarios (i.e. how dangerous) includes consideration of the probabilities that the considered activity/scenario is to produce a negative result such as an accident (or if a poster prefers "crash, collision or fall"). Also necessary is consideration of the likely outcome of such a negative event i.e. the likely severity of injuries that would be expected to be incurred.

Despite what some dogmatists and posters deficient in knowledge of risk evaluation methods may think, not all accidents should be considered equal when properly evaluating risk because not all accidents are likely to result in injuries of equal severity; nor are all bicycle-motor vehicle collisions likely to produce the same results. Rational evaluation of comparative risk of various bicycling activities or techniques requires more than counting (or fearing) so-called crashes and crying "Danger, Danger, Danger!"

Daniel4

Everything is safe until something happens.

Run all the red lights and stop signs you want. People in this forum state they know how to do it properly and have been for 19 years. Ride ninja and salmon because nothing has happened so far.

Forbes reports the average time of drivers between collisions is 17 years. So every bad driver is ok until something happens. Then changes are made except for all the other bad drivers who haven't had their collisions yet.

Nasa knew about the O-rings and they were perfectly safe on countless missions except that last one for Challenger. Columbia always had a tile adhesion problem that hadn't been a problem until that last mission. The same goes for the Apollo missions and the oxygen tanks.

Dave Cutter

Actually the odds never change. If you buy 50 tickets... you merely have 50... one in a million chances. Your chances are 50 times greater.... but the odds never change.

And... that may be part of the cycling risk/danger equation that bothers so many as well. A close pass.... can scare the beegeebees out of anyone. But few ever consider that it's the close pass by the big, loud, smelly truck that's scary.... while the clean, quite, cute little hybrid.... not so much. Yet... at highway speed (and collision often being dependent on random errors) both the odds and risks are exactly the same. And.... I believe... are also somewhat remote. But no matter how remote the odds of being struck are.... the death is both real and permanent.

gregf83 

You're correct that the odds or probability of a particular ticket don't change but the odds of winning or the probability of winning certainly do.

Odds of seeing heads on a coin flip are 50/50. What are the odds of seeing heads at least once if you flip the coin 10 times?

Applying it to biking, the odds of getting hit on a particular ride are fairly low, however, the odds of being hit at least once in your lifetime are much higher.

Dave Cutter

Apples to oranges. In a coin flip.... or the old fashion ticket drawing.... there is always a winner. But modern lotteries don't work that way. Increasing the chances.... does not effect the odds of the lottery. I could be the only LOTTERY ticket purchaser but still have the same odds of winning as if millions of other also bought a ticket.... your purchase of 50 tickets doesn't effect the odds.

That is the rule used with automobile accidents as well.

I often advocate that cyclists should restrain themselves from cycling (at least in traffic).... if they can't first accept the idea of a serious accident and/or injury. For me.... at my age and with my (lack of) responsibilities.... the health benefits and enjoyment received from cycling greatly outweigh the risk of injury (and death). But MY situation isn't everyone's situation. Cycling isn't for everyone.

Clyde1820

Depending on the vehicle, a good amount of wind can be flung to the side with a passing vehicle. Such as, with larger, flatter front ends that exist on big pickup trucks and semis, more air can be shoved across into a cyclist as compared to a smaller car, at the same speed.

Depending on how ugly the side of the road is (whether a ditch, rocks, sand, mud/crud, a barrier, or whatever), and how much or little of it exists at the moment that cyclist gets passed, it can increase the risk of slight directional changes getting a bad result.

I'd say those risks are very real.

How likely, though, any such risk is to turn out badly ... well, that's something else. Depends on how much margin for error there is between the cyclist and the edge, based on conditions, what contribution that particular vehicle makes on the sideways force applied to the cyclist, whether there's slick conditions on the road surface at that exact spot, etc.

Myself, I've been passed within a foot of my bars before. In a few instances, on a nice paved stretch with no sand or crud on the road, and no ditch or drop-off to the right side. And so, it was largely a threat inside my own head, not in actuality given the conditions. Whereas, on a handful of other occasions a similar pass on crummy road surfaces or with nearly no margin of safety along the edge of the roadway, it's resulted in essentially running off the main pavement into the danger zone. Thankfully, I haven't been actually dumped from my bike because of a passing car in such circumstances, but in slightly different conditions those off-road jaunts could easily have resulted in exactly that.

Very real. Just not all that likely, for most folks.

wphamilton

Greg is right on this one, but you're not exactly wrong either. To a mathematician "odds" and probability represent exactly the same thing, expressed differently. For gamblers, "odds" include or reference a bet. I would express your concept of "odds" as a function of mathematical expectation.

Your family is also correct, mathematically, that their odds of winning are higher with 50 tickets. 50 times higher in fact. Their risk is also 50 times higher. Their play makes sense if the mathematical expectation on a single ticket is positive, and is a losing strategy if the expectation of one ticket is negative.

This does relate to the topical question. Say the chances of getting hit by a close pass is 1 over some high number, and the negative outcome is some high amount. You multiply them together to get the "danger"; that's how dangerous it is. We automatically gain something from the ride, whatever it is that we like about riding. The danger is the bet payoff, and our gain is the fixed cost (bet) - the only difference is that those are both negative from your lottery scenario. If that comes out positive for us for one ride, it's also in our favor for 50 rides. I think that's ultimately what you were getting at, right?

gregf83 

You're still misunderstanding. It's simply a question of what you are measuring the probability of. If it's of winning the lottery then buying 50 tickets gives you a higher probability of winning. If you buy 10 million tickets your odds of winning the lottery are pretty good.

The coin flip is a good thought experiment and is analogous. If I agree to give you a million dollars if the coin turns up heads what are your odds of winning if I let you flip the coin 10 times vs just once?

I-Like-To-Bike

Assuming there are only so many finite numbers possible to select in the lottery contest, the odds of any single ticket and its associated number coming up in a random lottery winning doesn't change no matter how many tickets the player is holding. However the odds of winning do improve, ever so slightly for every ticket held by a player that has a different number printed on it. If a player bought a ticket for every possible combination his probability of winning is 100%.

Whether that is a profitable play or not depends on how big the carryover jackpot has become, and how many winning combinations are sold. If the carryover jackpot from previously lotteries without a winner is not large, buying a ticket on every number is a guaranteed big money loser if the only winning ticket is held since the lottery organization takes a cut of about 50 or 60% out of the proceeds from each week's lottery pool.

1989Pre 

Of course, a better answer is to just slow one's pace and increase one's vigilance when evasion to the left is impossible. (Rather than throw a hand grenade, just be observantly patient, and wait for the enemy to leave).

Ninety5rpm

Here's an example of a dangerous close call. Cyclist in bike lane was hit by bus passing too closely.




Source:
www.facebook.com/BicycleInfrastructureIndustrialComplex/posts/1313176512120821