Ninety5rpm

DOES BICYCLE EDUCATION WORK?

Cycling Savvy in SoCal

by: Seth Davidson, attorney-at-law

Excerpts:


...
I sat down with Gary Cziko, bible-thumping evangelist for Cycling Savvy, but the testament wasn’t written by a bunch of goat herders out in the desert, it was written by people who have a lot of bicycling and traffic engineering experience when it comes to staying off the grills of Rage Rovers. Cycling Savvy uses various instructional paradigms to allow riders to ride anywhere. Streets, sidewalks (where it’s lega), you name it. Although lane control is the default technique, the idea behind bicycle education is that people ride bikes all kinds of places for all kinds of reasons, and there should be a way to address their riding with sensible, practical, safe techniques.


What are you thoughts on the article?

CliffordK

One of the issues, of course, is I'm not convinced that the "Cycling Savvy" way is the right way.

Certainly "food for thought", but I absolutely wouldn't send any of my young impressionable relatives to the course offerings.

I am a firm believer of the "as far right as possible"... most of the time. And, unfortunately, the Cycling Savvy course seems to have no statistics that their methods are any better.

Ninety5rpm

Sounds like you haven't taken the course.

dh024

As long as there are a significant number of injuries and deaths from doorings and right hooks, I think those are all the statistics you need to know that "as far right as POSSIBLE" might be a poor default position. But that's just my impression and my personal opinion.

CliffordK

I've also put on a lot of miles and a lot of years, and haven't been hit by a car.

Ninety5rpm

Also from the article:

Ninety5rpm

Consider this: if every typical experienced cyclist has 1 in 10 chance of getting hit by a car in their lifetime, but taking the course decreases that to 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000, do you think the fact that you haven't gotten hit by a car (yet) is a good reason to not take the class?

Most cyclists who get hit by cars got to that point in their lives without ever getting hit by car...

I-Like-To-Bike

Envisioning that typical experienced cyclists taking a Cycling Savvy class might produce a 900% or 10,000% reduction in their risk of getting hit by a car? Wow!

Even John Forester never made such extravagant claims or used such extreme hyperbole about the alleged risk reduction power to promote his favored educational program.

Ninety5rpm

The numbers in this hypothetical weren't meant to be realistic. My point is that getting hit by a car for a reasonably careful cyclist is so rare that merely never being hit by a car doesn't mean very much.

I think a more useful measure is frequency of experiencing close calls and encountering unsafe motorist behavior, which anyone can define and measure for themselves, before and after taking a course. That presumes there is a positive correlation between the frequency of such experiences, and the likelihood of being hit by a car. I think that's a reasonable assumption most would accept.

That said, when I changed my behavior to adopt Savvy methods such experiences went from a few per week to one every couple of years, so the 100x number might not be unrealistic. Maybe even 1000x (again assuming a high correlation with likelihood of getting hit).

AlmostTrick

Not much around here.

I took the LAB road course many years ago and felt I benefited from it. I'm sure I'd get something out of this course too, and enjoy it. Maybe I'm just an all things bike geek.

Kontact 

I think it really depends whether you believe that some other group of people are so incredibly intelligent in their approach to bicycling on the streets we already know how to ride and drive on that they have broken a code we could not.

I would bet that the kind of people that would even be interested in taking such a course are already so thoughtful in their approach to riding that the benefit to them is going to be very small, while the people that "need" the course would never agree to take such a thing.


I personally don't think driving OR biking in traffic is complex enough that I haven't cracked it by now. It is easy to willfully screw up by doing the wrong thing knowingly, but doing things as safely as possible is pretty darn straightforward. Similar to gun safety or using power tools.

Ninety5rpm

There is truth to this, I'm sure. I mean, just clicking on a forum like this with Safety in the name self-selects people to be from the more cautious end of the spectrum, I would expect.

Still, I've yet to meet anyone who has taken the course and hasn't said they learned useful stuff, no matter how experienced they were. And people with an interest in a forum like this should be able to get others to take the class. As the article notes, there is that ripple effect...

It's also helpful to all be on the same page in terms of concepts and related jargon. What exactly is meant by "lane control", and "control and release".

jon c. 

Bicycle education might work for many of those that take such a course, but few riders ever will. The vast majority of riders are probably unaware such courses even exist. And even among those who are aware and like the idea in concept, not many would get around to actually doing it.

Kontact 

And the fact that all riders will never all be on the same page is something of a vote against uniformity. If a large number of riders has "trained" drivers that they well do X, Y or Z in a particular situation, this is just making it more dangerous for the riders who don't know XYZ.

I think one of the better things riders can do for themselves when dealing with traffic flow is not appear too incredibly predictable to drivers. That way they will give us a wider birth.

1nterceptor

Is the course format/strategies different for rural, suburban & urban areas?
A rider in rural America might need a different riding style than me. :O

Daniel4

A more relevant question is Does driver education work?

As far as I'm aware, no cyclist has ever caused a motorist fatality. And if there were any, the statistics are too small to be significant.

CliffordK

My guess is there are at least a few cyclist caused motorist fatalities, and it is likely very much under-reported as the cyclists may well ride away unscathed, leaving car-nage in their wake.

Ok, not entirely a cyclists fault, but so many drivers over-drive their skills and abilities. And, many drivers have a belief that if they see a cyclist, they must immediately pass the cyclist, whether or not visibility warrants it, including passing around or near blind corners. For a few drivers, that must have ended in tragedy. Or perhaps the drivers did something else stupid around cyclists.

That is one of the reasons I'd advocate passing by slowing down, and then passing, say 6 feet from the cyclist, so that one can safely return to one's lane as quickly as possible. And, if the cyclist is riding to the right, then the motorist only has to move over, perhaps halfway across the center line.

CliffordK

I saw quite a few pedestrians pop between gridlocked cars, so some caution is required... do passengers also bail from cars and taxis in gridlock?

But, yes, my lane control or shoulder riding is much different than portrayed in that clip. Perhaps I'll get a GoPro sometime and post a boring video of 1 car passing every 15 minutes or so... that is if one counts cars coming in both directions. And, around here, the cows are generally behind fences, so not too much of a danger from them either.

avole

Knowledge of the highway code would be a good start for most cyclists. Many schools in Europe run bicycle safety courses in Europe, but, to be honest, unless cyclists are given some sort of test, courses like "cycling savvy" are of limited use.

See oed re hypothetical: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/de...n/hypothetical

Daniel4

I acknowledge that. But I doubt they come anywhere close to the 36,000 fatalities a year that motorists in the USA cause.

AlmostTrick

This makes sense to me.

One can take this, or any course and not be bound to follow all the advice rigidly. It's just more tools in the box to choose from. If taking a course, studying on the web, or reading a book on the subject prevents a wreck, it's more than worth it. I really don't see a down side here.

Maybe a bad comparison? Isn't gun training highly advised by the industry, and even the NRA? And plenty of people are injured by power tools, so training there certainly would be beneficial.

Which is why we have (need?) promoters like 95. Maybe he needs to find a different venue than BF though, where most seem to know it all, and are closed to any additional training.

Ninety5rpm

Hence the ripple effect part of the article. Did you read it?

Ninety5rpm

Wild guess: you haven't taken a CyclingSavvy course.

I-Like-To-Bike

Safe guess: Getting the answer "NO" 9,999 times in a 10,000, by asking any cyclist if they have ever taken a Cycling Savvy course; likely to be followed by a "never heard of it" comment.

Ninety5rpm

The challenge is everywhere, not just here. From the article: