I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this uninformed statement. And yes, I am a truck driver.

What you fail to consider is the massive number of miles a truck travels in a year in comparison with a car. Average for most truckers is 100-130k miles per year. When you compare average mileage vs. accidents, trucks are MUCH safer than cars. Just when we crash..... it is very serious.

Licensing for driving a truck is much more stringent.

You MUST pass a physical examination a minimum of once every 2 years to ensure that you are physically capable of driving (with special emphasis on high blood pressure and diabetes). Injury or sick and have to take drugs that can impare you - you have to be cleared by a doctor to drive afterwards. Other than being able to see - what other physical does a car driver have to do? And then only once every 3-6 years when they renew their license.

You are limited by LAW how much you can drive/work. Get a part time job? That counts against your time too.

You are subject to random drug and alcohol testing just for driving. If you are involved in an accident and any vehicle has to be towed - you must take a drug/alcohol test. Have an accident or get a ticket in your car and it counts against your truck driving record.

Besides, the DOTs are always pulling trucks in and inspecting them and issuing tickets/fines if anything is wrong with the vehicle or driver or paperwork. DOT can and WILL shut down a truck or driver. Cars only get inspected once a year - or less depending on where you live.

I'd take issue on him saying you're risking your life for "no logical reason" - Enjoying your life and the world instead of hiding in a metal cage is a damn good reason. He will not see this because he's acclimated to living in a cage and thinks it's "normal."

Inspected? I live in Michigan. Anything that can still move and I can duct tape a license plate to can be taken on the road. Nobody official has EVER looked at any of my cars.

Personally, I wish they would inspect. There are some real crapboxes on the road here, spewing some vile crud. I'd LOVE to see them off the road.

Uninformed?

Inform me of this: What does the licensing requirements for tractor-trailers in Pennsylvania have to do with cube trucks in Toronto?

There is no special licensing required for cube trucks in Ontario. I used to drive one. Anyone can go rent one.

They are one of the worst-driven vehicles on the road... two years ago I had one brush past me, and when I told the driver not to get so close (without gestures or profanity) he chased me through a subdivision for five minutes in a fit of rage (with gestures and profanity).

Unsurprisingly, these trucks are heavily over-represented in cyclist fatalities in Toronto. I regard them accordingly.

You're probably more likely to die on the way to work on your bike than in your car, assuming all city roads (nothing greater than 40mph). But it's a small risk. Your odds of dying on a bike ride are still very low.

You'd probably be better off cutting much more dangerous activities like: bars, smoking, eating out, tennis, swimming. I mention "eating out" because it's very unlikely you'll eat healthy food when you do, and well heart disease is still the number one killer isn't it? Bars because they're a good place to get in a fight, and smoking for obvious reasons. Tennis, for some reason, a lot of people die playing tennis (I'm not sure why). And swimming is actually a somewhat dangerous form of exercise.

Drivers are very unlikely to be in a you or them situation. The speed of traffic on arterial roads doesn't often present a threat of death in a reasonably constructed car. Still, it's more likely most drivers would choose to endanger themselves over a cyclist. Not that they like us, but in that instant no thought will pass through their head. They'll be on pure instinct, and you'll be the most obvious thing on the road to not hit because you're the oddest thing on the road. Just like a driver swerving into a semi to miss a dog.

I ride arterial roads for part of my commute. I must admit I'm a lot braver in traffic than I used to be, but really it's not that horribly dangerous. Just don't get too reliant on being "lit up like a Christmas tree" because the driver who can't see you still won't see you. Don't feel hurt though, he wouldn't have seen a semi truck.

Professional truck drivers are among the best drivers on the road. But the design of a truck still makes it dangerous to cyclists. Obviously it is bigger and harder to avoid. It has more blind spots. You can't flop onto its hood. Worst of all, and this is how many cyclists have died, as it turns right, the rear wheels cut inside the front wheel tracks, sweeping any parallel cyclists under the side of the truck and under the rear wheels. The excellent driving skills of many truckers may prevent many accidents, but the design of the truck can cause them.

In Europe many large trucks have baffles between the front and rear wheels to stop cyclists or pedestrians being caught in the gap.

Ken Kifer's page on this is great. It's a ton of information, some of which he admits isn't very conclusive. But he basically just says: It's pretty much about as dangerous as everything else, but it won't give you clogged arteries or a bad mood.
http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/health/risks.htm

Unfortunately, Mr. Kifer was killed by a drunk driver 5 years ago while on his bike.

In China, all large and medium trucks are required to have sideguards. Makes me laugh when the industry here says it is "too expensive to implement".

Hardly uninformed. I do have the stats. And I wonder why the City of Toronto is paying such special attention to dealing with large vehicles on the road. :rolleyes: The greatest majority of Toronto cycling fatalities in recent years were due to collisions with trucks. That's a cold hard fact that's impossible to deny.

Umm... in central Toronto?.. Doubt it somehow. When I look on a busy Toronto road, cars far outnumber trucks. I don't care if those trucks dominate on a superhighway - that's not where cyclists ride.

Look, my statement was not criticizing the abilities of truck drivers per se, and I am not sure why you took it as such. It was a mere statement that a cyclist in Toronto is more likely to be killed by a truck than by something else. In part that's because trucks are just bigger, and some cyclists don't ride around them with enough respect (failing to consider blind spots, crunch spots etc.) It's also that when a collision with a truck does occur, regardless of who's at fault, the results tend to be more serious than colliding with a car. It's also that SOME truck drivers (and I am counting smaller trucks here like, say, UHaul trucks for which you don't need any addicional licensing) are driven by people who aren't used to driving that type of vehicle or people who drive particularly aggressively (which tends to be even more dangerous than aggressive car drivers, because of a truck's larger size).

yeah, the thing about trucks are that they can actually kill people and the driver sometimes has no idea what happened, despite the fact that he\she may be driving safely. this has happened many times in NYC both with cyclists and pedestrians.