Kurt Erlenbach

It's hard to tell from this brief article, but it appears this 81-year old cyclist was killed when a large pickup turned left in front of him. If it was a left cross, the artilce is written in a typically biased way when it says the rider "rode into the path" of the turning truck.

Don't miss the reader comments. It seems we riders offend the sense of style enjoyed by fat-a**ed cagers. Who knew? Please feel free to add your own comments.

gcottay

The last graph of the article suggests there are some questions on exactly what happened, making reasonable commentary very difficult if not impossible.

bac

Right - there just isn't enough information to determine fault. However, circumstantial evidence (the truck was making a left turn in front of the cyclist) does point to fault being the driver's. Sadly, we'll most likely never know.


... Brad

Bicure

Not the first time I've said this, & not the last either: establish massive mandatory minimum fines and jail time, and we won't have to mourn such senseless death.

No consequences = no change in behavior.

ghettocruiser

How nice that there were plenty of insults to the deceased placed in the "comments" section for his friend to read over and respond to.

Classy stuff.

atbman

There is also the ignorant comment by triforcharity that bike helmets should be able to protect you at speeds of up to 40mph.

Just checked the CPSC regs and they call for an impact speed of 16ft/sec which equates to 10.9mph. IIRC, the Snell impact requirement is 14mph. No doubt our reseident technos will correct me if I'm wrong

Helmet Head

Looks like the intersection of two wide arterials where cyclists typically ride too far right and outside the zone of where drivers pay the most attention.

link

link2

joejack951

It's also possible that the cyclist was riding through the crosswalk after leaving the sidewalk/sidepath on the northern side of Wickham, perhaps going against the flow of traffic. That might help explain how he was overlooked by the motorist.

Helmet Head

good call. i did not notice that.

ralph12

Ah, that's very sad.

dobber

The linked article is total devoid of any facts.

But we have managed to assign blame.

bmclaughlin807

Looks like the intersection where I was hit while traveling IN the driving lane... in fact to the left edge of the driving lane.

Get over yourself.

What a jackass.

Allister

Even if a helmet could withstand a 40mph impact, the neck it's attached to wouldn't

Allister

That's because he just pulled it out of his arse.

At least the VC Caucus is in agreement once again - Cyclist probably should've been further left

joejack951

In agreement about what? That a sidewalk exists? Whoopdeedo.

10 Wheels

https://www.thecourier-online.com/sit...&PAG=461&rfi=9

AlmostTrick

"witnesses reported Jennings was riding on the shoulder, well off of the roadway, facing oncoming traffic, when he was struck."

Wrong way cyclist?

Keith99

That much seems clear. But the rest seems strange. Should it really read witnesses reported Jennings had been riding on the shoulder...

If they actually witnessed the impact then any witness had to see the car and would also be able to report how the car got onto the shoulder, and one would think that detail worth including in a news report.

cooker

You're talking about a completely different accident.

John C. Ratliff

No, you're right.

John

John C. Ratliff

You've hit part of it on the head. The other part is to do what some European countries do, and say that the auto driver is responsible, no matter the blame. These are things that can be observed if someone would only do so, and prevented by the auto driver.

The part you got right is the consequences part. In behavioral safety, consequences may be either sooner or later, positive or negative, and sure or unsure. The behavior is reinforced if the consequences are sure, sooner and positive rather than unsure, later and negative. There is a continuum between these two too. But we every day reinforce unsafe driving habits by providing positive, sure and soon consequences for not being totally observant in driving situations. The auto industry reinforces these bad driving habits daily with TV ads too. The fact that if a bicyclist is hit, the consequences to the driver are very unsure, usually negative, and happen later rather than sooner reinforces our current unsafe behavior that we see daily.

John

Helmet Head

John, what is the significance of consequences in terms of changing behavior if the perceived opportunity to engage in the behavior is extremely low?

For example, if the odds of opening a door is very unlikely to occur right as a cyclist is riding by, how much more likely are people to look first if the fine is raised from $50 or $250? I mean, if they're basically thinking it's not gonna happen, what do they care what are the consequences? And no matter what the penalty might be, wouldn't a desire to avoid having that happen to someone be more significant for most people than a fine anyway? If you open the door and suddenly there is a guy with a separated shoulder, unconscious and bleeding all over your door, isn't that consequences? What does it matter if you throw a $200 file on there? The key is to get these people to understand the consequences are serious (the crash, not the fine/penalty) and sufficiently likely to warrant looking first.

But trying to create "consequences" with fines/penalties for opening a door (or turning left in front of a cyclist you didn't see) is meaningless when someone doesn't realize the behavior you're trying to change is applicable to them.

Sorry for not using the correct technical language, not my field, but I hope you get the idea. Is there any terminology for this concept?

genec

You have a point here, but consider that perhaps people never even envision the potential consequences of opening a door on a cyclist, or perhaps people are not aware of the fact that they are responsible for the consequences of opening a door into traffic... obviously the consequences of an open door being hit by a passing car are somewhat immediate and therefore understandable.

But consider the potential consequences of not wearing seatbelts, and the fact that the government went to a very public campaign to initiate the public about seatbelts, and finally went to law enforcement and a very public campaign to bring about behavior change to get people to wear seatbelts.

Sometimes the public needs a very very "loud" message to finally "get it."

As yet I am unaware of any campaign regarding the rights and safety of cyclists... other than the very successful helmet campaigns and laws (which ultimately may have painted a very negative picture of cycling to the public). In fact, the only campaigns regarding cycling safety I know of are either very old... such as the B&W movies from the late 50's/early 60's such as "One Got Fat," or the nearly "stealth" campaigns by SDCBC regarding education which even LBSs are not aware of.

My point, as I've said before... we gotta get the word out.

John C. Ratliff

HH,

I cannot spend a lot of time on this right now (getting ready for work), but the consequences are not the consequences to the bicyclist in the above illustration, but the consequences to the motorist. The positive, certain and soon consequence of simply opening the door without looking is that the motorist gets where (s)he wants to go more quickly. It is very uncertain that a cyclist will be there, and if there, that the door will actually impact the cyclist. There is on penalty of this either. So educational efforts are made to make these drivers aware that they are potentially springing tragic consequences upon a cyclist. But it is the consequences to the motorist that will change the motorist's behavior, not the consequences to the bicyclist.

John

Helmet Head

That's totally different. The opportunity to be caught in the state of "not wearing seatbelts" is nearly constant while driving. That's why the campaign was relatively effective. If the law required wearing of blue and yellow striped undergarments, there would be much less compliance, because the opportunity to be caught in the state of "not wearing blue and yellow striped undergarments" would be negligible.

In other words consequences are a combination of the severity of the consequence AND the probability of suffering those consequences. Even the consequences of a death penalty would not concern me if it applied to a behavior I could never engage in, like riding a bike 100MPH.

Yes, that's my point. And in a dooring situation, the consequences to the motorist are suddenly having a guy with a separated shoulder, unconscious and bleeding all over your door. Obviously I'd rather be the motorist than the cyclist, but it's still a highly unpleasant experience for the motorist, one that most would prefer to avoid. Would adding a fine really change anything in terms of consequences to the motorist that inhibit a certain behavior to any significant degree?

And what is the behavior that we're trying to inhibit? It is this: opening a door without first looking back to check for traffic in the door zone, including possibly a bicyclist.

The problem is that there is no way to enforce that, no way to create artificial consequences, except in the very rare case where someone neglects to look, opens his door, and actually doors someone. I mean, you won't have hidden cameras looking for motorists who park their cars and neglect to look back before they open their doors, and give them a ticket for engaging in that behavior. So look at this from the perspective of any one motorist. The odds of that EVER happening to him or her are arguably negligible. What is his motivation to change his behavior? Sure, by increasing the fine you've increased the severity of the potential consequences, and your campaign has made him aware of this, but you never addressed the root problem: that this is still just as unlikely to ever be a factor in his life.

Same thing with left cross crashes. You can't start fining motorists for not looking for cyclists before turning left. The only way you could tell that they didn't look is if there happened to be a cyclist there and they turn in front of him. How often does that happen to any given motorist? We as cyclists see it often enough, but that's has little to do with how often any given motorist is even in a potential left-cross situation with a bicyclist, much less where such a potential manifests itself in an actual left cross. So, again, you can increase the consequences, and have a campaign, but you're not addressing the fact that the odds of any given motorist who is the target of your campaign remains highly unlikely to ever be affected by any of this.

Do you see how that makes it much more difficult (perhaps impossible) to inhibit behavior that is impossible to notice unless there are actual natural consequences (which are highly unlikely) like "opening doors without looking" and "turning left without looking for a cyclist coming the other way" with additional artificial consequences (fines/penalties) and campaigns than it is to inhibit behavior that is much easier to notice and enforce, like "not wearing seatbelt" or even "driving under the influence"?

In other words, to give someone a seatbelt or DUI ticket, you don't have to wait until they crash and are shown to have been without the seatbelt on, or drunk. You can catch them without the seatbelt, or driving drunk, without there being any crash at all. Thus the artificial consequences are combined with a relatively high probability of getting caught, which makes such a campaign effective. But with "not looking" there is practically no way to catch them unless there is a crash. So any campaign to change behavior in this area is practically certain to fail.