Is either option really any safer?
 

I can't just pick and choose when I want to go to work, so on days like today I have to weigh the options of how to get to the office...

Today, we had freezing rain which made a 5 mile section of my commute into a skating rink. Having noticed the frozen state of my parking lot, I opted to take SuperJeep to work. The logic being: If vehicles are going to be sliding around, I'd at least like to up my armour class in case of a problem. This turned out to be a good idea, because a city bus ended up going sideways in front of me, along with 2 passenger vehicles. I managed to manouvre SuperJeep and avoid becoming part of the fray, but it involved some off-pavement excursion.
Regardless, it got me to thinking: Would I have been any safer had I chosen to ride my bike to work?
- I would have avoided that section of road, opting for a 7 mile stretch of the MUP instead.
- I could have stayed on sidewalks for all but 3 miles of my commute.
- There were still multiple spin-out accidents along the non-MUP sections I'd need to ride.
- At least 1 vehicle was over the curb and partially on the sidewalk (where I would likely have been riding).

The weather promises to be more of the same tomorrow, so I'm debating whether driving or riding is the better option.
Drive (vehicle = Jeep XJ, 4wd, a/t tires): Higher impact resistance, but higher exposure time to potential vehicular interaction
Bike (Surly X-Check, studded 35mm winter tires): Lower impact resistance, lower exposure time to vehicles.

Which option would you choose?

The only safety disadvantage I see for the bike is: what if your bike breaks down. Being outside, flatfooted in bike clothes in freezing rain could kill you. If you're in the middle of that MUP when it happens people might not find you for hours/days.

That said, it's a pretty close call.

I have found that riding in these conditions cars give cyclist 10 times as much clearance as they do in normal times, and thay dont seem to be in too much of a hurry. However I would have chosen the Jeep because I am now a fair weather rider.

The MUP is never more than a couple 100 yards from civilization. Most often, it's adjacent to the riverfront townhomes and condos.
Does knowing that breakdown salvation is never more than a 5 minute walk change things?

In that case, cycling would probably be the safer of the two. But I HATE to ride in the rain. :)

I don't know. I've seen cars slide much more than 10 times the distance of the clearance they usually give me. OTOH, they are going much slower than usual, so there's a possibility that a collision wouldn't kill you.

Overall, it seems like the potential property damage is much greater if you drive, but the potential loss of life or limb still seems higher if you're on the bike.

When I'm in that situation I take public transportation, but I'm assuming from its absence in your post that isn't an option for you.

Not that it isn't an option, but if you re-read my original post, a city bus ending up sideways on the ice in front of me was the cause for this morning's dismay. :eek:
If I'm going to go sideways, I'd like to know that A) It's my own damned fault, and B) I'm in control of trying to fix it. The video footage of a couple busses hanging over a 15' retaining wall above the highway last winter sort of soured my opinion of the public transit option around here.

A few years ago I was waiting at a stop for a bus and the roads were snowy/icy. The driver didn't see me immediately and so he hit the brakes a little harder than he would have otherwise in order to slow down for the stop. It was one of those articulating buses. The whole thing turned sideways and was hurtling toward me. I dove for the ditch. The driver managed to straighten out the bus as it slid by my stop.

I picked myself up, brushed off the snow and walked the half a block to where the bus was. The driver opens the door and as I walked up the stairs he says with a smile: "Bet you're awake now."

I always choose to bike if I can. More flex in route selection which I can adjust on the fly for either best speed or how to best avoid automotive projectiles or some combination of the two. If I drive, my route choice is limited, and I've got this car thing to lug around with me and plug into whatever other traffic disruptions are happening.

Clifton - I got to the bottom of my driveway this morning and (wisely) bailed on the commute and drove the car instead. Everything was covered in ice!

With that said, if I felt that I had a safe way to get myself to the Sammamish Trail (the MUP that Clifton and I both ride), I would take that over the car in a heartbeat.

If it's just as bad tomorrow, I may drive to the park-n-ride near the trail and bike it from there.

Depends on how brave you feel tomorrow... but I suspect if we get more rain tonight, it will thaw out both the MUP and the roads. I don't commute by bike when it's icy, because my ride follows major arterials much of the way and drivers here on the Plateau aren't used to seeing cyclists as it is. Fortunately, I can walk 20 minutes to a bus stop in any weather and go from there, but it makes for a really prolonged commute. Sometimes I'll fire up the XJ, likewise, and drive to the park and ride lot.

Yeah, there is that. I'd be taking light rail, which while capable of even more dramatic and devastating failure, usually just leaving you freezing your tail off at the station or trapped in a stuffy metal box for an hour or more while they try to de-ice or otherwise repair the power lines.

There's no way I'd bike in that weather, I can't believe it's remotely safe.

You guys seem to do it, but I just don't see the attraction. It can't be fun, it has to be dangerous (biking on ice),

Is it the principle? I don't get it

Riding on ice with studded tires is fun as hell.

What type of weather? There are many days in winter when bike riding is very do-able, even pleasurable.

I'm sure you recall very similar arguments to your own raised by people who have never biked in rain, wind, heat, humidity, fog....

Riding studdlies on ice is hella fun, I agree. If you have an open lake, river, MUP, etc. to do it on.
Riding ice and hoping the city bus doesn't start sliding uncontrollably toward the curb while passing you is no fun.

I'm glad it's back into the upper 30s and raining all night. Cold and soggy I can cope with.

Hasn't been really addressed yet, but a Jeep is about as bad on ice as anything. Just saying. But anyway, you will be a target on the road, so I would take the MUP. It never freezes here, but when the streets get wet people get crazy and slide all over the place. I feel significantly safer on the MUP under these circumstances than I do in my car or my van.

I think driving my car on the kind of ice we're discussing would be even less fun and even more dangerous, since I don't like being responsible for 4000 pounds of semi-out-of-control steel. My winter commuter is much easier to control on glare ice than my car, no doubt about that.

As for the original question, it sounds like it was a dangerous day to be out there, period. If the goal is to avoid getting hurt, being inside a Jeep stacks the odds in one's favor. If the goal is to be less exposed to potential collisions, it sounds like the bike was the better bet since a large chunk of the route had no cars. Personally, I'd ride, and would probably ride the biggest, most heavily-travelled arterials practical, since they get the de-icer priority, and get melted down by the auto traffic as well.

I keep thinking the the studded tires on the bike would do better than the non studded tires on your jeep. However freezing rain does hurt your face.

One of my biggest reasons for cycling is to maintain my health through regular exercise. Getting run over by a car or crashing doesn't fit into that scheme. So when weather conditions make it unsafe to ride, I drive and have no qualms about it. Now, if you live where it snows/ices all winter long and can justify putting studded tires on your bike, that might make a difference. That's not the case where I live.

In situations like that, I stay home. So does everyone else at my workplace, because my company isn't run by a bunch of pigs who insist on workers commuting in dangerous conditions. We also have a setup where everyone can telecommute at need and does telecommute frequently, so it's not a big deal, but we have a standing rule of "If you think it's too dangerous to come in to work, stay at home." Frankly, it's a no-brainer to me, and I don't understand why any company would expect otherwise.

+1 :thumb: A little less psychotic American work ethic would do us all good. (I just love it when my "hard working" coworkers come to work with the flu. Thanks for sharing guys!)

If I HAD to go in, I'd ride in, carrying appropriate bailing-out gear as necessary.

That said, it's entirely possible that I'd just be doing it for helluvit anyway and might just phone my work in after I was done playing in the snow.

If the option were there to telecommute, I would. Unfortunately, the nature of my work is non-transportable. OK, I could bring my work home with me, but it's generally considered a bad idea to remove BSL-2 & 3 pathogens from the lab. That's the unfortunate reality with biologicals manufacturing; cells and viruses don't care if it's snowing, icing, etc. They just keep growing and someone has to come in and tend to them.

One great thing about working around biologicals; we get to send people home if they're sick. Can't risk infecting the cultures.

It was downright balmy this morning: 39F and light rain when I left the house. No sheets of ice on the road today which made for an easy decision to hop on the bike and pedal to work! :thumb: