squirtdad

this is IMHO an totally misleading to newbies and in accurate view.

if that were true ever person who ever rode a bike on the road would have been hit.

I have riding on the road for 50+ years, narrow Montana highways (US 2) on my 3 speed columbia getting my cycling merit badge and later on my first road bike, Newfoundland, Bermuda, Bahamas, Nova scotia, and New england with the bike I kept on the Coast Guard ship I was stationed on, NYC when I lived there and all over california.

By your stated standards I should have been hit many times, but I have never been hit by a car. I fell once and got a cheek scrape when a car pulled into a gas station in front of me. My biggest injury was caused by a dog chasing cat and running in front of me.....and that was really huge bruising.

JoeyBike

The question every individual must ask themselves every day. Is the risk worth the enjoyment? "Risk" is that which is PERCEIVED by the individual.

I have not owned a car since 1989. I've commuted up to 36 miles a day for 18 months. Mostly my commutes are 5-8 miles in a city grid. I have also biked across the USA five times self contained - mostly solo camping. I am no cycling wimp. But I no longer ride a bike for fun. Just the utilitarian trips that are absolutely necessary. Work, grocery, dentist, etc. What finally did me in is complicated and a combination of factors.

1. Rampant Cellphone usage by motor vehicle operators.

2. So many oversized vehicles on the roads - like all of the giant pickup trucks out there.

3. National drug emergency with so many addicted to pain killers AND DRIVING.

4. Plus all the usual motorist azzhattery.

So I no longer need to ask the question. I'm done. Been done for about three years now and no regrets, only relief.

Hope this helps. Cheers.

LanghamP

Survivor bias; in another universe, in another world, you have been struck and killed many times over by autos, and struck even more times. The reason why you have not is the same reason we have never detected a 600 mile wide crater in the earth despite us knowing many such craters exists on other planets.

Take 100 kids, have them ride bicycles around cars for an hour each day for 70 years. Then ask the survivors how dangerous bicycling is. The answer is, "not very" despite being struck and killed by an auto (in a car, bicycle, motorcycle, or pedestrian) is the number 1 way of dying accidentely in the USA. The other <dead> kids aren't around to say otherwise.

JoeyBike

^^Yup.

Basically I used to believe the odds were stacked SLIGHTLY in my favor. I am an expert city cyclist, use a mirror, and pay 100% attention to what is going on 360* around me. Ten years ago, when motorists were behaving MOSTLY predictably and holding a pretty straight line while underway, I believed my skills were enough to survive day in and day out JUST BARELY. Now however I feel like the odds are stacked SLIGHTLY out of my favor. Phone users are running red lights, stopping at green lights, driving well below the speed limit imitating someone who is looking to turn or park, or way over the limit and drifting across fog lines to the right and dashed lines to their left. Or just bumping into the vehicle in front of them stopped at a red light. I have witnessed too much BS mostly caused by phone use AND vehicles that are too wide for people not paying strict attention.

MoAlpha

Anyone care to put a number on the likelihood of being hit by a motor vehicle per 1000 mi. ridden by them on their customary routes? I'll give it a big .013. Not terrifying, but more dangerous than tiddlywinks.

Edit: Thinking about it, perhaps I'll come down to .0086.

JoeyBike

Just ask people who got hit and see what happens to the numbers.

MoAlpha

Their estimates are likely to be high. Incidentally, I have been hit at least four times that I can remember, but I've been on the roads for over five decades and many thousands of miles.

JoeyBike

What if you add in the times you were ALMOST hit? Then add in the times that a few more inches out of your favor would have killed you but didn't leave a scratch. It's the margin for error, every car, car after car after car, that stacks up. Flipping a coin gives you a 50/50 chance of coming up heads. If you come up tails 100 flips in a row, the odds of coming up tails on the next flip is STILL 50/50. So car, after car, after car you have to figure "what are the odds of THAT car hitting me?" for every single car - not the entire day or year. EVERY CAR is a risk.

MoAlpha

Every car in your lane? In Mumbai? Does it have to be moving? C'mon smart guy, put a number on it.

JoeyBike

Well, every car in a position to fail and hit me with a small margin for error, which I thought would just be understood. So yes, cars in my lane and cars crossing my lane mostly. Cars leaving parallel parking spaces to my right. Sometimes oncoming cars who decide to pass another car using my lane head-on. Most often, cars negotiating intersections near me. NEAR ME in all cases. I would say within five feet.

So you want a number. If I rode my bike like most people I see riding bikes in the city on my route, I would have to interact with about 100 vehicles per 5 miles. But because I cycle about 18-20 mph during peak hours, and selectively run red lights to utilize the empty road spaces caused by those red lights, normally I only have to interact with about 5 to 10 cars per 5 miles.

Why would you bring up cars in Mumbai? Just to get a reaction. That harms your credibility in an argument although it is all the rage in current American politics these days. The proper response to "You are a crook" is NOT "Well...what about Hillary?" This kind of statement just reflects poorly on you.

work4bike

My first two hits were least avoidable, mostly because of my lack of experience, but to my credit I have yet to be hit by a car in which I did NOT see it coming. My second two accidents were probably more avoidable, but I probably assert my right to the road with a little too much gusto.


First accident in 1993: Right Hook. I feel that guy deliberately ran into me, because I swear I heard him gun the engine as I was coming up on the intersection where he turned right into me; I did make some evasive maneuvers as he turned into me, but it still knocked me down pretty hard. The car never slowed down and kept going.


Second accident circa 2002: Left Hook. I saw the pickup headed towards me in a parking lot and figured he saw me until all of a sudden he took a left and I sped up as much as I could and all I remember seeing is the driver on his cell phone He was very apologetic and my panniers saved my bike.


Third accident circa: 2012: I T-boned a small pick up. I had the right of way and had even take the lane, but a pickup driver, not realizing how fast I was going pulled out in front of me (he was stopped at a stop sign) and I put a good size dent in his side panel. I had to replace a few spoke and re-true my wheel, luckily I was close to home. He was also very apologetic.


Fourth accident about three months ago: I got T-boned by a small car. Driver was a cute little girl that was very quick to blame her kids. She actually said that her kids were screaming for ice cream -- I thought that was funny, reminded me of the childhood song, "We all scream for ice cream...".
If I didn't do any last minute evasive maneuvers it could have been a pretty bad accident. In the end I just got a bruise on the side of my leg, near left shin, but luckily no damage to the bike.

MoAlpha

JoeyBike

Probability does not work in situations with many variables. We can discuss probabilities with playing cards, dice, roulette wheels, and any number of things that exist basically in a vacuum. EVERY motorist/car combination is a variable. Let's say 50% of the drivers who pass me are sober, paying attention, and have a vehicle in good repair. I would say the probability of them hitting me is very near zero.

Then there is the drunk guy looking at his phone driving a box van with loose steering and still under slight influence of some sleeping pills he took the night before. Will he zone out right on my position? A mile before (probability is then ZERO of hitting me because he won't ever get to me) or will he tag a parked car a mile up the road (probability of hitting me is still ZERO because he already successfully passed me). Had I left the house minutes earlier perhaps I would have been between him and the parked car a quarter-mile further up the road.

You can't figure probability on ^^THIS because there are too many variables.

Therefore: If I choose to stay home or take the bus, the probability of me being crushed on my bike is ZERO. If I ride my bike, the probability is MORE THAN ZERO. Perhaps still a "statistical zero" no doubt but tell that to the ghost bikes. If I don't cycle on open roads I will not get hit by a car. Maybe a meteor, but not a car. ACTUAL ZERO chances.

You are trying to trick me into guessing a number when nobody can do this. The SOBER driver has less of a chance of hozing me, the DRUNK/TEXTING driver has a better chance of hozing me. How am I supposed to know who is driving that next car? So I have to ASSUME the worst if I want to be ready for the drunk guy. This is a lot of stress. So, I choose to easily avoid the stress by not doing something stressful that is potentially life and limb threatening. "You can't put a price on love" and you can't put a number on highly variable occurrences.

But you already knew this.

You are happy to keep me responding and I am happy to get some typing practice.

Dyskolos

MoAlpha

JoeyBike

A lottery ticket is one of those things operating in a vacuum where probability has a meaning, assuming every one of those little ping-pong balls are exactly alike. If every ball is a little different, then the probability of any number coming up will be skewed and the NUMBER will be off. If every little ball was different enough, some smaller, some larger, some heavier, some not so round, then probability formulas will not work. I understand probability very well. Which is why i DON'T buy lottery tickets. Although purchasing ONE ticket does substantially raise the odds of winning.

Look at those ping-pong balls that are all substantially different as motorists, then try to calculate probability. Impossible

Daniel4

As soon as a motor vehicle goes on the road, the risk goes up for everyone, not only for the vulnerable road users but also for other motorists, himself and occupants in buildings. Curb jumpers smashing into department stores and bus stop shelters are more common than you think.

You don't know if that driver is civil, drunk or a road rager out to teach someone a lesson. Over 90% of drivers think they are good drivers but think lowly of other drivers.

There's a big difference between riding your bike on a road or riding your bike on the same road with a moving car on it. If you happen to slip on some road debris, you'll get some scratches but you'll be able to get up and continue - much like riding on a mountain bike trail or a MUP. But if you slip on road debris with a car going by, your risk of death or hospitalization is much higher.

Paul Barnard

Thanks for sharing those stories. I guess you made out pretty good, all things considered.

mcours2006

There is a theoretical probability for every outcome. Some are easy to calculate, e.g. rolling a die, flipping a coin. And some impossible, like the likelihood of getting killed on a bike. Then there is statistical probability or practical/experimental. When you repeat something enough times the probability of a given outcome will approach that of the theoretical one. You flip a coin ten times you might get 9 heads and 1 tail, which is an unlikely outcome, but flip it a million times and you'll likely get very close to half.

So, there is enough data out there to tell you the probability of getting killed while riding a bike. There are things that you can do to lower or raise your own probability of dying.

MoAlpha

Exactly and many of us are alive today because people know how to capture the behavior of complex systems with probabilistic models.

LanghamP

There's also mortality tables/actuaries that attempt to predict a person's demise by extrapolating how you will probably die by how people like you died in the past.

Pick up a life insurance questionaire; the questions are quite interesting. Bicycling presumably lowers your risk of heart disease while increasing the chances of a collision. That's why you always see life insurance companies offer differing payouts with the accidental death separated from illness death.

You'll also see weird questions like, "how often do you go to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned?" Surprisingly, just doing that adds 2-5 years to your life, because not having clean teeth results in a low-level whole body infection that damages your cardiovascular system.

salcedo

Simply nonsense.

If you want to be very pedantic, a truck could kill you while you are sitting down in a restaurant int eh middle of the afternoon (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...rant/11141793/ ), so there is no way to be safe.

Lets look at the data to get some perspective. If you look at number of serious injuries and deaths, cycling is only slightly more dangerous than driving. But if you look more closely, you will see that many of the serious accidents involve cyclists being reckless or breaking the law. IF you ride carefully and respecting the law you can be very safe by any reasonable standard of safety.

(I guess it depends on where you are talking about, I would not feel safe riding with cars in some parts of the world. But I would feel safe in most places in the US or Canada)

mcours2006

There are also many deaths involving children who may not be so skilled at bike-handling nor at navigating hazards on their route, whether it's riding on sidewalks or the road. Case in point: '11-year-old boy struck and killed by SUV while riding bike'

I'd also count people who ride at night without lights, salmons and ninjas, if you will, among the reckless.

Cycling probably feels more dangerous than it really is. I imagine it might be akin to something like sitting in a lawn chair on the side of a highway mere feet away from cars streaking past at 100+ kph; even if there was a concrete barrier between you and the cars it still might not feel very 'safe'.

Once you account for the fatalities involving children, and those who are 'reckless', for those take precautions to ride judiciously and with proper lighting, cycling is probably safer than driving. Probably.

Jim from Boston

Thinking of no longer riding on roads

I recognize @mcours as an active urban commuter in Toronto, as am I a decades-long, year-round commuter in Boston. I have previously posted to some threads IMO worthy as a reply to a couple of his salient points on this thread:

Rje58

https://www.healthiq.com/life-insura...search-cyclist

This is interesting....

I ride on public roads all the time, mostly out in the country where there is not a huge amount of traffic, but at least one car will whiz around me on two-lane roads at 40-60 mph almost every time I ride. I still believe the health and other benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks. I rode over 260 miles in June - but only because I ride out of my driveway and I'm rolling. If I had to put my bike on the rack and drive 30+ minutes to the MUP and then load it and come home every time I ride, I probably wouldn't get 100 miles in a month....