Roody

My headache indicates that he does exist--after reading a few of his wisdom nuggets, it feels sorta like when an apple falls on my head.

2manybikes

I'm still OK. They have not been able to penetrate the aluminum foil hat that I wear to protect myself from the brain wave sucking machines.

How would you or I get statistics about the crashes in India or China where there are so many bikes? How is the information collected and reported?

The real answer to so many questions on the forums!

sudo bike

I've never actually SEEN a car accident happen, but I've seen people drive in a way that they could easily cause one.

Similarly, I've never actually SEEN a cyclist cause an accident, but I've seen people ride in a way that could easily cause one.

For example, on the way home today I saw a bicyclist riding on the sidewalk pull into the road and cut across 3 lanes, run a red light without stopping (he looked to see if someone would hit him, then blew it), hop the median and begin riding in the road against traffic on a one-way street. A real Darwin winner, and a good example of how he could have EASILY caused an accident. Luck was with him today.



I love these forums, but some people are so militant and apologetic it's just silly.

degnaw

Given that non-lethal car accidents rarely make the news, and the relative lack of deaths caused by low speed collisions, there's a pretty simple explanation to why we haven't seen many specific examples.

genec

It is not likely that such collisions occur regularly enough in China or India where cyclists, motorists and pedestrians tend to intermingle at a much higher rate than in the US, but at dramatically lower speeds... speeds of a very human scale, where human reaction times can prevent serious collisions.

Digital_Cowboy

Okay, thank you.

ItsJustMe

I've never seen a person on a bike get killed, so I guess it never happens.

This is the silliest thread ever.

I-Like-To-Bike

Just imagine the statistics; and declare your conclusion true until someone does the research and provides a credible answer.



Originally Posted by Roody Your belief that such wrecks do not happen is as valid as my belief that they do happen. Neither of us can support our beliefs with any hard evidence
Especially when that “answer” is also imagined. Skepticism about a claim founded on Roody’s imagination, is not a statement of belief in the opposite view, but the distinction is obviously lost on logic-impaired dullards.

genec

Of course it is a silly thread... this is the stuff of the minds of raging motorists...

"Those bikes can't ride in the street, imagine all the wrecks that will be caused by cars trying to avoid the bikes."
"Those bikers are going to force me to run into another car." -- typical motorist rants. (see comments in any web news column about cyclists)

Of course motorists should look ahead, see cyclists or others in/on the road and plan ahead accordingly... to the point of never having to make a sudden move in the presence of other legal road users... of course that means driving within your sight lines, and actually piloting your vehicle in a thoughtful manner.

2manybikes

I'm putting my aluminum foil hat back on.

Keith99

I think the cases of a cyclist causing an accident and riding away without a scratch are pretty rare. Not that cyclists are all safe, many are not, but the timing has to be pretty good. It ahs to be a clsoe call otherwise the car can just brake. I know I could have been a victim in a car one time. I likely would have been except for this board! I was driving to a bike ride start and was actually counting bikes, how many riding with vrs against traffic and how many on the sidewalk. That is the only reason I was aware of the guy riding the sidewalk against traffic who came out into the street at speed just as I would have been turning left.

Roody

This is very similar to the near wreck that I almost caused (described in a previous post). Hearing about a second near miss makes me a little more certain that this could happen, and probably has happened.

Bekologist

Has anyone actually seen a person on a bicycle get hit by lightning?

instead of perpetuating an onerous characterization of bicyclists causing wrecks, look at the common contributing factor to roadway wrecks and incidents:

motor vehicles piloted on the verge of recklessness by people hardly qualified to do so.

these things were declared dangerous by the supreme court back in the 1920s.

America has accepted the raging gorilla as kinfolk.

JohnBrooking

My 9-year-old son was riding home from school last year. Driver A behind him slowed, Driver B behind Driver A rear-ended Driver A. My son was not hit, and proceeded home unscathed (not knowing what else to do), but my wife passed the scene 5-10 minutes later and saw an ambulance. No deaths, but evidently someone was hurt enough to be taken to the hospital just to be sure.

genec

Driver A was paying attention to traffic, Driver B was not... Driver B caused collision, not cyclist.

spyro1123

I swerved to avoid a cyclist coming out of a blind alley and clipped my mirror on a lamp pole. I was mad because i came so close to hitting her more than the mirror... it wasn't much of an accident, but it was one.

I think it is funny that even with several people giving examples of accidents and near misses that people still refuse to admit that this can happen. I am not saying that it happens often, but to say that it doesn't is ridiculous.

cudak888 

Admit it - the OP is trying to collect data to make a pro-motorist argument that bicycles cause motor vehicle accidents.

-Kurt

RobertHurst

I don't think anybody claimed it can't happen. The point is that cyclist-caused car wrecks are exceedingly rare compared to, say, a driver ramming a bicyclist from behind, or a driver running a red light or stop sign and killing a bicyclist, or a driver killing a pedestrian on the sidewalk, or a driver smashing into a bicyclist and speeding off. Making a stink about something so relatively insignificant in the grand scheme, and making it out to be some kind of dangerous epidemic, I find that suspicious and weird. Strange priorities and distorted worldviews.

The fact is that really bad bicyclists, the worst among us, pose a danger to themselves and other bicyclists and pedestrians, but they very rarely pose any kind of threat to people inside cars and trucks. I'm not sure why this fact makes people uncomfortable, but it's interesting.

Let me tell you guys how these things tend to work, from someone who's been around the block a few times. It's important to understand this. A scofflaw bicyclist and a lawful driver smash together at an intersection: The bicyclist goes away in an ambulance or coroner's van, the driver drives off in his car. Or, a scofflaw driver and a lawful bicyclist smash together at an intersection: The bicyclist goes away in an ambulance or coroner's van, the driver gets a ticket and drives off in his car. There is not much difference between the two, in terms of results, and generally not much drama or glory to the proceedings in terms of screeching or secondary collisions and things like that, as some here seem to imagine. The driver may or may not feel a ba-bump as his 4,000-pound car smashes the bicyclist. And on top of that there is a fair chance (roughly 20% iirc) that he won't even stop. The number of bicyclist-caused car wrecks is probably around 1/1000 the number of car-bike hit-and-runs. In my opinion it's important to understand this stuff when riding on the street, and not harbor fantasies about drivers deflecting their vehicles wildly off this way and that to avoid hitting you.

sudo bike

Yeah, but how many motorists are there compared to cyclists? Not that I really disagree in essence with what you're saying (which seems to be that pound for pound (no pun intended) bikes are simply less dangerous than cars)... just that when we say they are so rare compared to the other it's useful to keep in mind how minute the number of cyclists are compared to drivers.

+1

Bekologist

substitute 'unlicensed driver' or 'uninsured motorist' for the subject in the OPs question and he'd REALLY find something to gripe about.

Has an unlicensed or uninsured driver ever caused an accident with another vehicle?

genec

Yup... I was hit by an uninsured driver... totaled the only car my wife and I had at the time. (we were "car lite" and I happened to be using the car that day.) Definitely the other driver's fault, and she had no other resources to seize... So I was out of pocket, with no way to recover. I had uninsured motorist insurance, which covered my medical, but for the truck, I was given low blue book, which wasn't anywhere close to covering the value of the vehicle.

genec

Pretty much agree... LA county even has a new campaign regarding these hit and run drivers... LA has determined that they make up about 23% of all car/bike collisions. https://la.metblogs.com/2010/02/05/23...s-are-hit-run/

The Human Car

FWIW running a query on the FARS database yields (IIRC) ~20% hit and run for all bicycle and pedestrian fatalities compared to something like 2% overall traffic fatalities.