FINALLY someone said it. For those who dont know, or are ignorant, a Ford Econoline van creates a 6' x 6'x 12' rectangle of blind spot, that one cannot see around UNLESS they pull their vehicle out further. What happens when you pull out in a vehicle? the 5 or 6' of engine bay, front bumper etc has to nose out first BEFORE the drivers side window clears the blind spot. It is ONLY when the drivers side window is fully out of the blind spot that the Driver can see finally.......if you look at where the cyclists hit the SUV it is in the FRONT LEFT QUARTER PANEL - in FRONT of the driver.....are you seeing what i'm getting at here? the driver would have had a VERY difficult time of seeing THRU a solid metal object (Ford van)

What?

Do you recognize that very useful things can be learned from totally hypothetical situations? Of course, the more realistic the assumptions in the hypothetical situation, the more likely it will be useful, but the point is that nothing has to be based on actual facts in order to learn something.

We can for example talk about a situation in which a cyclist is riding in a door zone, when suddenly a child in the back seat of the car, totally out of the view of the cyclist, unexpectedly opens the rear driver's side door. Would whether this actually ever happened even matter relative to the learning value of it? More to the point, am I talking about an incident that I was actually involved with, or did I just make it up? Does it matter with respect to the lesson it brings? Of course not.

So then why in this case does knowing the cyclists' actual lane position necessary in order "for any lessons to be gained from this incident". What's so special about this incident that it cannot be leveraged to create a realistic hypothetical situation and analyzed and learned from?

Why must we know all the facts for anything we say based on what is 'likely' to be anything other than worthless?

After all, on this forum we're not the police or insurance investigators. We have no interest in determining what really truly actually happened. This is a safety and advocacy forum. If we can learn about safety from this, even if it's from a hypothetical loosely constructed based on what is likely to have happened here, where's the harm in that? How is that any less useful than using pure hypotheticals?

I'm genuinely baffled by the resistance to speculation and hypothesizing on this forum. It's quite common, too.

True enough. But, if you want to construct hypothetical situations, start another thread for it. If you want to comment on an actual collision that happened, it's better to stick with the facts at hand.

No argument there.

No, but being a gullible fool would help explain why anyone would take seriously another post of HH brand "logic and reason."

+1

This. It also appeared to be parked very close to the car in front of it, leaving little gap for a last minute warning to stop.

While the driver clearly violated the right of way, I think it's a bit unfair to go labeling him or her as a "clueless idiot", etc. Unless one would say the same thing about a cyclist pulling out blindly in front of a car at that same intersection, it shouldn't be said of the driver, because of the conditions present. Accidents happen and they're not always "clueless" behavior on one party's behalf. Hopefully these guys will recover quickly though. Multiple bike collisions always look incredibly brutal.

Nice picture. This is just "eyeballing", but even without cars in the bike lane, it looks like a driver might have to pull out far enough to block the bike lane to see to the left, with that hedge there.

When you're pulling into a street, and your vision is obstructed, the following may happen:
a) if you're a careful driver, you inch out very gradually until you can see what's going on. This gives people coming down the street time to react.
b) if you're a clueless idiot, you burst out into the middle of the lane, and hope that no one's there.

Look at the video. It was the back of his car that was all beat up, not just the front. That tells you something right there.

To take the jury analogy a bit further, it would never be appropriate for a jury to speculate, or to manufacture hypotheses, in deliberations.

The jury is presented with the evidence for a conviction, and with the defense against that evidence. That is all the jury is permitted to consider. A jury is permitted to decide which evidence and testimony it finds more convincing. But what HH does-- manufacture a hypothesis of what "might have happened," based on "logic and reason"-- would be grounds for a mistrial if he ever tried that in deliberations.

You forgot the following:

c) If you are from Miami, only "B" applies. True, I am generalizing, but for the most part, this is the case locally (I should know, I live here). Most people in this town will chance it and floor it in the case of a blind spot as opposed to inching out carefully.

-Kurt

LOL, I guess I'm glad I don't have to ride in Miami. When I was in L.A. last weekend, it looked like that there, too. Scary place to be a bike rider. I'd rather be on the bike lane on Carlsbad's La Costa Ave., with cars whizzing by me at 65 mph, than trying to deal with the streets I saw in L.A.

Eh, I'm used to it now. Trick is to:

#1: Expect pedestrians or other moving objects in front, aside, or to the back of you to do anything physically possible, and have an exit strategy for it.
#2: Expect motorists to make any physically possible moves with their vehicles, and try to get the 'feel' for what they might do next by watching their movements, even as small as a few degrees off from the centerline of the lane (it might be 20 degrees off - i.e.: in your face - two seconds later)
#3: Be aware of vehicle, ped., and potential moving objects within 200 feet.
#4: Have an exit strategy for EVERY situation that can be conjured up for that happening.
#5: I do not ride where there is no possible exit strategy in an emergency (rare, but there are examples - usually streets with bike lanes designed by a drunk)
#6: Trust your hunch. It usually is right. I expected someone to make a left turn into me on the wrong side of a wye street once, and was right. Had I not suspected him of possibly doing such a maniacal move, I would have been steamroller'ed.

-Kurt

All of which leads to a cyclist having to be so cautious as to take some of the fun out of cycling itself... where one can't just ride balls to the wall from light to light and pursue the much enjoyed speed that JF so fondly mentions in his ADC paper. You describe a situation wherein the cyclist is all but tiptoeing down the road like a mouse waiting for a cat to pounce.

popular thread I see

Well, truth be told, I've found that so long as I keep everything under watch in a calm manner, I can still enjoy it. In fact, I've had times where I've retained that bliss right through a semi-close call - mainly as I was expecting it. I avoided it with no problem - water under the bridge, just another day riding.

Take care,

-Kurt

I commute and train in Miami. I ride my arse off most of the time, even on the commute. They're are situations that arise when common sense tells you to be extra defensive, or take an alternate route. At the end of the day, I have a blast. But then again, I'm not a very timid person, either.

You just have to ride like everyone out there is trying to kill you.

Well that is exactly my point. I commute in what I call "casper mode." I assume I am invisible and any crossing motorist just doesn't see me, (and I have seen motorists "suddenly" see me) and I keep an eye on a mirror to check that those behind me have seen me. But between the stoplights and slowing at intersections and where motorists may pull out from the curb, I find I ride much slower than I can on an uninterrupted path. My commute is 11 miles and takes me 50 minutes. I can ride a local path (not on my commute... off in a different direction) for 20 miles in just over an hour. Now which is better exercise? Which do you think I enjoy more? And which do you think I go much faster upon? Of course, this is not your typical park type MUP, it is quite wide.

But my point is that we do spend a bit of time on the streets expending energy "dodging" cars. Oh and even if I get all green lights... I still don't blast through intersections... I have had too many close calls with red light runners and those that don't look before turning right on red. I used to do that... If I saw a good green, it was a reason to sprint right on through... but red light runners took that pleasure away.

This is one reason probably why those guys were training in a group... expecting that the size of the group would give them more visibility... and allow them to go flat out. Of course they also had group dynamics... pacing, going on.

The road system isn't exactly a playground. It's an incredibly dangerous place to be, statistically speaking, and everyone using it should be vigilant. I understand what you're getting at, but you're not really entitled to "fun" on the road.

Amazing, others use statistics to show how dangerous it isn't...

Not at all. I ride aggresively and forcefully, taking into consideration the factors Cudak describes and I get into close encounters all the time, but 99.9 % of them I am ready for what the driver is doing and just shrug it off.

having this thread degenerated into the VC forum by helemt head's pet theories about bicycling accidents is disturbing.

You missed my point. What a jury does is different from what we do here, of course. But ultimately it is just hypothesizing because even they don't know anything for sure. That's why the standard in even criminal trials is beyond any reasonable doubt, not beyond any doubt. Plus if the defense or even the jurors in deliberation can hypothesize a reasonably likely scenario that fits the facts and exonerates the accused, that establishes reasonable doubt. That what I mean by it getting as good as it gets for a jury.

We can and do go beyond that in this forum, of course. We have no obligation to limit our hypothesizing to fitting the facts. And why not? What is the purpose of discussing these actual events in a safety forum if not how to learn from them? What truly actually happened has little relevance to discussing a scenario from which we can learn. Actual events are useful in that they illustrate things that can happen, in case someone has a hard time believing that to be possible. In general we can talk hypothetically about what can happen to us while we're riding out there, and what we can and should do to protect ourselves accordingly, and actual true stories can feed our imaginations. That is their primary purpose here, is it not? If not, what is it?

The jury is not allowed to consider a scenario that fits the facts, but is different from the one the prosecution has presented? How does one determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt if not by trying to hypothesize an alternative scenario that fits the facts, but failing to do so?

and that .1%... what you are creamed?

Hey, I ride hard when I can, but I find that intersections are not the place for sprinting, and gauging traffic in other places also tempers my pace. For the "looong" unbroken stretches of maybe a quarter mile, I get to act like a dragster. And those unbroken stretches are few and far between.

So how exactly do you ready yourself for red light running motorists that come out blind from behind a line of SUVs/vans... or motorists that look right at you and pull out just as you are in front of them? Riding aggressively into those situations will get you flattened. Don't give me the move left noise... I do that, I also watch tires and all the rest... drivers don't aways make wise decisions when distracted, and that means you have to use caution, which is not riding flat out into harms' way.