It is a common occurrence that, when you’re riding a bicycle and doing everything 100% correct, someone will yell at you and tell you that you don’t belong there and you should get out of the way. It’s not surprising that the bicyclists tend to get defensive. If people treated motorcyclists that way, I bet they’d get defensive too.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m fully aware that plenty of bicyclists actually do things that are stupid and/or illegal, like riding on the wrong side of the street, running red lights, etc. and I have no doubt that such behavior sometimes causes accidents. But even those of us bicyclists who follow all the rules still get yelled at, cursed at, have things thrown at us, even have cars TRY to hit us because they don’t like sharing the road.
Here in Oregon, you can get a ticket for failing to use the bike lane (if there is one). The classic “right hook” is when you’re riding your bike, in the bike lane, on the right hand side, and a car passes you on your left and then immediately makes a right turn, either into a driveway or onto a side street, and the car’s right front fender hits the bicycle’s front tire, and you go flying over the hood of the car.
Heck, on three occasions, I’ve had drivers yell at me because I was not running a red light. We were both stopped at the light, next to each other, and both going straight, so I wasn’t even in their way in any sense. I guess that they’ve just gotten so used to cyclists running lights that for one to not do so was unnatural and frightening.
People on foot have a lot more choices to dodge.
The motorcycle (or bicycle) isn’t IN the intersection, usually, it is approaching the intersection. And I think it is fairly rare for the car to t-bone the cycle in these crashes: far more common is the car pulls into the cycle’s path and the cycle cannot dodge enough to avoid it. Cycle hits the car and stops, cyclist becomes a projectile.
How does the driver not see the motorcycle? That is the big question. Inattention is likely to blame, but also another phenomenon.
Has it ever happened to you that you looked at your watch, then just a minute later had to check it again to find out what time it was? The first time you looked, you were finding out what time it wasn’t. That is, the question on your mind was “is it 1 yet”, you saw the time on your watch, but all you consciously registered was “Nope”.
Well. often the driver waiting to make a left turn is looking for any oncoming car (or truck). Seeing none his brain gives the all clear. He didn’t see the motorcycle because he simply wasn’t looking for one. It was right there in plain view, but his mind filed it under “not important, not what I was looking for”.
His point was that, if inattentive drivers will pull out when 40 tons of painful death is rolling towards them, it is hardly surprising that they pull out in front of something that is probably only going to scratch their paint.
And some of that is undoubtedly conscious.
I had a friend who had the same Ford Escort from the time he got his license until he was in his 20s. It died and got replaced by a 1974 Dodge full-sized sedan.
After about a week with the new car, he was really excited. “I love this car! People are afraid of this car. I had a lady in a Lincoln Town Car start to pull out of a shopping center in front of me; she saw me, and jammed it in reverse!”
At the time I had a 3-ton station wagon, so I was like “I know!”
Many decades ago, my brother asked my grandfather (a long-haul trucker) about how to get onto an interstate with a truck at one of those ramps with a stop sign at the end and no run-on lane. He said you wait for a brand new car, or a really old one, and you pull out in front of them. Because that person WILL stop.
So yeah, sometimes people intentionally violate the right-of-way of a motorcyclist or bicyclist because they know that guy doesn’t want a collision and will dodge. And sometimes they overestimate the cyclist’s ability to dodge.
It turns out that human beings are really terrible at judging the speed of oncoming objects that are tall and narrow. People who thought they had enough time to cross get hit by bikes and motorcycles and trains because of this.
I have two accidents I can share: one bicycle and one … motorcycleish.
I was riding my bicycle on a well-marked combination sidewalk/bikepath. The bikepath was only on one side of the road, accomodating 2-way traffic, so I was southbound right next to the northbound lanes of the road. I came up on a side street with a stoplight, and I came to a stop to allow the cars to proceed (because I trust nobody).
There was a car waiting to turn left, and another waiting to turn right, who I expected would right-turn on red. There was a car coming northbound, but it was far away. I waited and waited, but the right turn guy wasn’t moving. Even when the northbound car turned on his right turn signal, right-on-red guy didn’t move.
I realized there was plenty of time for me to cross before northbound guy arrived, so I started to cross.
And stepped off my bike as it got crushed under right-on-red guy’s car.
Second story, I was riding my scooter, which is legally a moped and looks like a vespa. I was in the right lane of 2 lanes stopped at a stoplight. When the light turned green, the car to my left accelerated quickly, turned on his right-turn signal, changed to the right lane, and then made a right turn into a shopping center just beyond the gas station that was on the corner. This was fine, he had plenty of room to do that.
His friend who was following him had less room, and it was a little unsafe for him to follow.
The third friend had no room at all, and tried to make a right turn from the left lane despite the fact I was there.
We actually didn’t collide, because I hit the brakes hard and he did too, and that left him only taking up about 3/4 of my lane so I could go around him (because I couldn’t stop.
I was doing maybe 15mph, and I couldn’t stop in the distance between us when he started to cross my lane.
Another bad accident scenario for cyclists is if you’re passing stationary traffic up the inside and there’s a side-street up ahead - it’s common for cars on your side to leave a gap there, so traffic from the other side can turn into the side street if they want. Really poor visibility for the turning car, and a bad place to be on your bike if you happen to coincide with it.
Heavy goods vehicles do some damage in urban areas, turning over folk - the visibility in their mirrors is terrible for cyclists. Buses aren’t great, either, but the drivers seem more aware as they’re in that environment all day. Truck driver into the city on a job, maybe with time pressure and doesn’t know the route well - cyclists should give them a very wide berth.
I used to be a vehicular bicycling instructor (CAN-BIKE in Canada and Effective Cycling in the US). These course teach cyclists to drive as vehicles in traffic. That is also how I have ridden for the last 20 years. I’ve lived in Montreal for the last two years and, as far as I’m concerned, cycling here is just a giant fiasco exacerbated by an “I’m a cyclist and I can do whatever I damn well please” attitude and the city’s very badly designed (and dependency on) bi-directional bike lanes down-town. I’ve ridden in them a couple of times - never again.
And, not to blame the victims for they’ve never been taught anything, we’ve had a few bike-truck collisions in Montreal (one a fatality) resulting from cyclists passing a right-turning transport truck, on the right, approaching an intersection. If you consistently pass traffic on the right (encouraged by bike lanes btw) you will at best get cut off and at worst (depending on your POV) get severely injured or killed. I saw a cyclist doing this on Bord du Lac in Dorval and he was forced to turn right to avoid getting ground down by a right turning car. At intersections I always “take the lane”; I’m clearly visible and it makes it obvious that I’m obeying the traffic laws like any other vehicle.
I agree with you that passing on the right is a bad idea. But a bicycle “taking the lane” as you’ve described is illegal here in Oregon unless it’s turning left.
Passing on the right and taking the lane are not the only two options.
I was taught to let the cars pass me until I get to a car that’s going slower than me and then I stop next to their rear bumper, and then wait for the light to turn green. Then I follow them through the intersection (but I still keep to the right while I’m doing it). Because if a car passes you just before stopping at a red light and then you pass them at the red light then they end up passing you again and they grumble to themselves “Grr. I just passed this bicycle and now I gotta pass him again?”. So I don’t do that. Plus passing on the right is illegal unless the vehicle you’re passing is making a left turn. At least, that’s the law here in Oregon.
sbunny8, I think that where I’ve lived that it’s generally the law that you have to ride as far to the ride as practicable or something like that. At intersections I do essentially the same thing that you do and, in slow enough traffic (up to 20 km/hr) I will generally take the lane. Except for me, I never see that in Montreal - everybody just goes blasting by on the right and, over the last year, we’ve had a fatality as I had mentioned. Ottawa, however, (and this is gut feel after living there for several years) probably has about a 20 or 30% compliance level. It’s quite interesting to see different traffic patterns in different cities.