Be careful out there if your weather is just now getting bike friendly
 

http://grayslake.patch.com/articles/...-in-lake-villa

this happened a few miles from home, weather just turned around here and cyclists are starting to come out of the woodwork. I know the area this happened, not a particularly bike friendly road, pavement pretty much stops at the white line and its a highly traveled high speed road. be careful folks!

I like how in the comments people are advising everyone to ride against traffic because its safer :(

scary how dumb some people are.

SWSS... I bet there will be no charges.

And should there be? From that story I have no idea. Apparently the car rear ended the cyclist, which would make one think charges may be in order, but we know nothing from that report as to what actually happened or what caused the collision.

Just as Motorists are quick to blame cyclists, reading accident reports, many on this forum are ready to instantly string up the Driver on little or no information.

In other news, 88 people died in Car accidents yesterday in the U.S.

All the posts of every cycling fatality around the Globe on BF, result in a greatly distorted perception of the actual risk of riding a bike.

The reason this gets exacerbated is that in areas where biking is very common, it's not unusual to have a cyclist who knows someone who was killed while riding, although they can't say the same thing about driving/riding in a car. I don't know anyone who's died in a car crash or even seriously injured in one, but I know several who have been seriously injured in bike collisions with cars and in the greater NYC area, several people each year die in collisions with cars. Riders are to blame in certain cases, certainly, but the most recent incident I know involved a rider who was injured as a result of being hit from behind by a car. He was exactly where he was supposed to be and the car tried to flee the scene and would have were it not for others around.

Yes, this ^^^

Hey, I wear an obnoxiously bright yellow shirt, have a blinkie red light, wear a helmet, and use a mirror. There's only so much I can do.

Normally I go to the A&S forum when I want to become obsessed on being killed while riding a bike.

Right, because becoming a bug on someone's windshield makes MUCH more sense. It's incredible how few drivers will give you 3 feet of space nowadays.:notamused:

thank you! Not just BF. I see it on Facebook and elsewhere in the media.

That's a shame. I used to live in Lake Villa a few years ago. The roads in Lake County were not built to handle the volume of traffic it has now. The population exploded and the infrastructure can't handle it. I used to work 18 miles from my home and it took 45 minutes minimum to get to or from work every day, no matter which way I went.

I currently live right up the road and my daily commute is 22mi, where did you work??

Really? I've had 2 semi-close acquaintances die just in the last 6 months. I would say you're more of an anomoly than the typical case.

One of the kids I went to high school with died at the ripe old age of 18 when he hit a tree. He was drunk and going 80 mph. His passenger lived, but was terribly injured.

The tree is ok, it lost a little bark.

The day I bought my Cervelo, I was riding home on Nickerson after visiting a girl I know and showing her my new ride. Ten minutes later, a driver lost control, hit a telephone pole, and died. She had called me about 50 times by the time I got home to see if he hit me, I leave the ringer off when I ride.

When I say I don't know anyone, I mean a close friend or family member. Almost everybody has some connection,even if distant, to someone in that situation.

I lived at Water's Edge apts, on Grand. I worked at Naval Station, Great Lakes, so my commute was South. I-94 was a no-go at rush hour, so I took the quickest zig-zag route down the State/County roads as appropriate.

The problem here is a simple psychology heuristic.

The Availability heuristic is used when humans estimate the probability based on how easily examples of a category come to mind.
Cafzali example really illustrates the heuristic in motion. We as cyclists see and hear about more cyclists deaths than the average person. I myself know one person who barely survived being hit by a car while riding. I also know a girl my age who was hospitalized for a month after an SUV t-boned here while riding. I can honestly say I know no one who has died in a car crash. My personal experiences supplemented with threads like this highlighting more death just make it easier for me to apply this heuristic. I believe my experiences are not far off from others. Unfortunately, in this instance that is not the most healthy application.

It's the same as driving vs. flying, both long distance. People afraid of flying may think of horrific wrecks, when in reality, driving long distances gives a person a much greater risk of injury or death than flying.

Somebody once called me heuristic. I slugged him.

you should try MN with the weather were having its like a violent race one day and a snail party the next day.

Rider is hit from behind in the middle of the afternoon. On her birthday.

I hope they are checking her cell phone records along with the impairment tests
two years ago woman on a motorcyle was killed at a stop light by another woman painting her finger nails
so many people doing everything except paying attention when driving