banerjek

Looks like you've done a decent job of identifying the problems -- following to closely, not paying attention, and going too fast for conditions. If you ride like this very often, you'll get in lots of crashes and eventually seriously hurt yourself and/or someone else. But no need to beat yourself up about this since it worked out OK. I'll bet everyone here did plenty of dumb things when they were 15. Just learn from the experience and do better in the future.

Always treat peds like suicidal stray chickens because they will just randomly run in front of you. Assume drivers will turn or brake without warning because sometimes they do. And pay attention, because thousands of pounds of steel vs. 150 lbs of flesh and bone never works out well. If you ride like everyone is trying to kill you, you'll do just fine.

Trsnrtr

There's 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them...

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051297/

Bugstomper2000

Thank you banerjek for being so understanding.

And one of those stupid things was writing this thread the way I did. That was my only cycling crash (other than a tire sidewall blowing out on a kids bike and throwing me off a few years ago) , so I don't exactly have a lot of experience with crashes. The crash was mostly my fault, as I was going too fast and not paying enough attention.

Everybody, I'm sorry if I unconsciously trolled. I often start telling a story, and end up adding unnecessary details as I go. I am in fact 15, and if you don't believe me or think I'm too young, I don't really care, as I love cycling and I'm not gonna wait until I'm older to do something I love to do.

JonathanGennick 

Hah! No worries. None at all. Your post was fine.

And it's really great to hear from someone who loves to ride, so please stay active in the forums as well as on the bike.

JohnDThompson 

Hmm: "one lane road..." "oncoming traffic..." (were you riding against the traffic? ) "pedestrians..." "25mph on a bike without disk brakes..."

Everything points to you going too fast for the conditions and not paying attention.

Inpd

@Bugstomper2000

Don't worry about it.

What you did was not trolling at all. You merely told your story and others disagreed with you and were disparaging you with their comments.

I see your 15 and as you get older you'll learn that people often label you (as a troll in this case) as means to get traction to discredit an individual.

Just rid your bike and learn from your mistakes.

banerjek

If you hadn't told us you were 15, few people would have guessed.

That speaks to what we've grown to expect from much of the 40+ crowd here. Frankly, you write better than many of them...

cthenn

Trolling or not, this thread made me chuckle, so thanks everybody! My favorite is "fat mom lady".

Seattle Forrest

Nobody starts off having any experience crashing. It's the school of hard knocks. As long as you stop and think about what you could have done differently to have stayed upright on the bike, that's how you get experience and avoid crashing in the future. It sounds like you have many years of riding ahead of you, and this probably won't be your last crash, it happens, hopefully rarely. Sometimes you could have done something differently, sometimes you couldn't, a little introspection can help you figure out which is which. I crashed more when I was young, then I realized I was taking some risks that weren't really obvious at the time, but I wasn't leaving myself enough of an out if something went wrong ... when you ride enough miles, something is going to surprise you. You're figuring it out, you'lll be fine.

Keep riding.

snow_echo_NY

this.

and you forgot "always treat cyclists like suicidal stray chickens." many cyclists will not hold a line and swerve unpredictably (maybe b/c they think no one is there when you are coming up to pass them on their left.) they also look on their phones talk on their phones and glance off in the distance to see the view and not pay attention to the roads. the gear they're sporting means nothing. eye contact means nothing. flashing lights (during the day) and loud bells work at grabbing real attention.

giving all motorists, pedestrians AND cyclists plenty of berth will help you.

RPK79

Ugh, fat people! #amirite

I would have yelled at them to get off the sidewalk. Damned scofflaws.

Jeremy_S

Mine too, having lived in East Texas for a while, I can picture the entire scene in my head and I laugh.

dangerd

Slow down.
Pay attention.
Be more careful.

banerjek

Good point.

As a group, cyclists where I live (Portland) are worse than the drivers. We have really good cyclists too, but incredible percentage of people on bikes out here are completely oblivious to their surroundings and demonstrate abysmal judgment/skills. I don't like riding near other cyclists unless I have a sense of what they're like.

rebel1916

Did you get her number?

D1andonlyDman

I just barely missed hitting a Pedestrian yesterday, an older lady of around 70, on the Route 56 Multi-Use bike path near Del Mar, which I ride just about every day. I was coming around a blind turn and these three older ladies decided to cross the path on foot without looking before they crossed. I was maybe 30 feet from them going over 20 MPH, when I came around the turn and saw them, and started yelling at them at the top of my voice to look out. Two of the ladies kept going in the same direction across the path and I would easily have avoided them, riding toward the space they had just vacated. The third one inexplicably suddenly turned the other way directly into the path I was steering into to avoid the first two. I basically slammed on my brakes and skidded into the dirt on the side of the paved path, missing that lady by maybe a foot. At no point did she EVER look in the direction where I was riding from, until after I skidded past her.

As a general commentary, I am finding that Pedestrians that use this multi-use path are taking their lives in their hands (and endangering cyclists on the path as well) in the way that they walk it. First of all, it's a pretty heavily used bike path, and a lot of riders who ride it are hard core, and speeds above 20 MPH are pretty common. And there are numerous blind turns on this path, generally demarkated by a yellow line down the center of the turn, and lots of pedestrians think nothing of walking 3 across right on the sections where the blind turns are, and they seem to me to be completely oblivious to the risk that they are taking of getting hit.

CliffordK

The designs of these paths are often more for aestetic than practical safe use.

But, as a rider, you must use them in a safe manner.

As you discovered, yelling at a person, yelling Right or Left, or whatever... never makes a person's movement predictable.

When I was in Jr High or HS, someone organized a road race along one of the local MUPs... A bunch of young kids riding flat out on a curvy trail that was NOT CLOSED. Well... as you can imagine, there were a few wrecks... fortunately no serious injuries.

Anyway, it is not the pedestrians that are at fault. And unless the riders can get safe control of their bikes, they will be the ones removed from the path.

30 feet should be enough space for a well tuned bike to go from 20 MPH to 0 MPH on flat land.

D1andonlyDman

First of all, it wasn't flat, it was down hill at maybe 3% grade. 2nd of all, I think 30 feet is way too short, including normal reaction time. If one assumes 1 second reaction time, that alone is 29 feet. Even at 0.7 seconds, which is considered expert trained reflex reaction time, that's 20 feet before the brakes actually apply to the wheels. Police typically use a 1.5 second reaction time to accommodate older drivers to calculate typical expected stopping distances - but in any case, even a best case reaction time, if one is going 20 MPH, one goes 20 feet before the brakes even can get applied. And it certainly takes much more than 10 feet of applied brake force to stop a road bike moving at 20 MPH on narrow tires.

And certainly, pedestrians walking in the middle of a roadway on a blind turn WOULD be at fault. This bike path is basically a road for bicyclists.

banerjek

Any strategy based on a presumption that other people have some obligation to get out of your way is doomed to failure. MUPs (including ones dominated by cyclists) have a bit of everything on them -- cyclists, people on foot, dogs, etc.

Going around blind curves with the assumption that the path on the other side is clear is nuts regardless of what kind of transport you're in. There's no telling what awaits -- kids, animals, downed limbs, repairs, someone doing a dumb pass coming the other way. Most likely, it's clear. But even if the chance is less than 0.1% that it's not, the math eventually catches up with you. In general the speeds I see cyclists doing near others on MUPs are totally inappropriate. If you like speed, you need to stick to roads where the sight lines and conditions allow it.

Athens80

^racing / riding tempo on a MUP with pedestrians and limited line of sight is a recipe for injury. The faster moving person bears the greater responsibility for safety.

CliffordK

I just did a couple of simulated emergency stops.... and left some serious green stripes on the road... so much for those green tires I was hoping to squeeze another 1000 miles out of.

Going from about 30 to 0... it took me 24 paces... 60+ feet?
Going from 20 to 0 took me 8 paces, or about 24 feet, which looks quite short (1 to 2 car lengths). I'm surprised at the discrepancy between the two.

These were planned, so no additional reaction time in the equation.

I'm wondering if your 30 feet was really 30 feet... especially if you had time to yell at the pedestrians and they had time to somewhat logically react to your yelling.

Yet, I have troubles imagining barrelling downhill around a blind corner at 20 MPH. I'm not sure there are many 30 foot view blind corners that I could negotiate at 20 MPH... and stay in my "lane". Does your public maintenance department need to do some brush clearing?

SLOW DOWN

I don't care if you are "serious" or not. If you're not on a closed course, then pedestrians are not the problem.

D1andonlyDman

I'm nowhere near being one of the faster riders on this particular circuit. If I were actually going 8-10 MPH on this path, where I really could do an emergency stop in 30 feet, my odds of being rear-ended by another cyclist going flat out on one of these blind turns would be greater than the odds of hitting a pedestrian in front of me or a cyclist in the oncoming lane. And to be fair, I saw the ladies more than 30 feet in front of me, but they were not in the path yet. I was about 30 feet away when they actually started to cross into the bike path without ever looking in my direction. I probably was not exactly doing 20 MPH either, but I'm pretty sure I was doing something like in the vicinity of 18, for sure more than 15 as that's my average pace, and I was going faster than that, it being a downhill. It's one thing not to assume that people will get out of your way - but it's entirely another to assume that they won't suddenly and unexpectedly move IN your way without looking. Everyone makes that assumption every time we drive a car on a public road.

The truth is, I've been contemplating whether or not this particular portion of the bike trail is actually safe enough to be riding on a daily basis, given the preponderance of blind turns, very fast cyclists riding close to flat out, and pedestrians who are apparently oblivious to the above. The problem is, all of the alternatives in the area are roads with speeding and cell phone distracted drivers. And one stretch of road that connects directly to this path that I also ride, was the site of a bicyclist fatality exactly a month ago (see my thread on the regional board about the recent spate of cyclist fatalities in SoCal which this event precipitated). I would have bet that the specific stretch of road where that cyclist was killed was actually quite a bit safer than the aforementioned MUP, because it's flat, straight, with a wide and well-marked bike lane, - and a separate sidewalk for pedestrians - and plenty of sight line. But that didn't stop a motorist preoccupied with her cell phone from abruptly swerving into the bike lane and taking out that cyclist at close to 50 MPH.

tmh657 

It's good that your grandfather is not one of them amateur doctors. I played doctor as a child. Perhaps you did as well Bug. Before learning to ride a bike.

junkman71

I had that happen to me years ago...... girl stepped into my path looking the other way and I hit her......I had to pedal away fast when her boyfriend started coming after me.... said I was sorry, but I guess he wanted to fight

Doctor Morbius

Less than a month ago I came within 2 feet of hitting a jogger while I was riding between 15 - 18 MPH on a residential street. She was wearing headphones and jogging on the sidewalk and suddenly started to jog across the street WITHOUT LOOKING! I locked up my back brakes and skid a bit. Had I been in a car she would probably be dead or at least mangled up pretty badly as the speed limit was 30 MPH. I said a few choice words, but I doubt she heard me because of the headphones. Some people are just dumb that way.