I recall an all-year cyclist telling me, “I don’t use lights at night because if the cars can see me, it gives them more time to aim.”
I wear bright jerseys when riding. If riding at night, I have two head lights one of which puts out 600 lumens. That’s nearly as bright as the low beam on a car. I also have 2 bright blinkly lights on the back. I have one bike set up for night riding that has all the dorky reflectors and even a few extra. It also has a strand of lights wrapped around the frame so cars coming from the sides can see me better. When the tires wear out, I’m putting tires with reflective sidewalls on it.
Still that doesn’t always help. In 1993 I was riding down the road and there was a car waiting a the stop sign to make a left turn. I was wearing a bright red jersey and could of sworn that I’d made eye contact with the driver. He pulled out at the last second and I slammed into the side of the car. He swore he never saw me. I got a new bike out of the deal, but I’d rather had not.
When I ride on the roads now, I assume every damned fool is out to kill me. I’ve saved myself many times from people who pass then make an immediate right turn. With the advent of cell phones, things are getting worse. I spend more time on our nice trail system or way out in the country on sparsely used roads.
And it isn’t just cars! I almost was hit by a bike rider who was riding on the wrong side of the road as I crossed an intersection.
…& you were doing pretty good until the end.
Not only do you admit to not knowing the details, but you’re assessing her blame because she may have been riding “just under the speed limit”. Really?
So you’re saying the speed limit set on the road, probably by some professional engineer is too high, or that cars &/or motorcycles never speed? :rolleyes:
Way to blame the victim.
I’ll draw some ire for this but today I really don’t give a crap.
Do bicyclists not realize there will be cars on the road? Do they not realize the drivers are either a) out to kill them (as the more vocal & avid cyclists seems to think), or b) likely to fail to see them despite all good intentions of sharing the road?
Listen, paved roads are not occupied by kittens and butterflies, they are engineered for and dominated by fast-moving hunks of steel driven by people with varying degrees of attention and concern for cyclists and even other drivers. EVERYBODY knows this. You can be well within your rights to be on the road, but you’re stupid as milk if you expect to be able to safely ride on a street with a vigilance level of anything less than “they’re trying to kill me.” You KNOW there are drivers who might miss seeing you or, far less likely will try and actually run you off the road. Why in the hell don’t you just own the real danger and ride accordingly? FFS I drive a car and I don’t even assume I’m safe on the road. On the rare occasions when I get my bicycle out on the road, I NEVER assume I’m good to pass through a green light And you know what else? I never put my F-ing head down and pedal while staring at the line on the street (as I’ve seen so many bikershorts-wearing knuckleheads do) because I’m not retarded.
The thing is, cycling isn’t really a dangerous activity. Cycling deaths in the US tend to run a bit over 600 per year – compare that to the number killed in cars. Per mile traveled, it appears a person is twice as likely to die or be seriously injured in a car than on a bicycle in the US. Bicycling is about as dangerous as walking.
It simply isn’t possible to eliminate all risk, no matter how hard the nanny state and the control freaks try. People die falling out of bed – more often than you probably think. It happened to my brother in law’s father.
The health benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks.
Link to some interesting reading. I bought a bike a couple months ago after researching a lot the claims and following a lot of the links on this site:
Of course, that’s why cars kill over 32,000 people a year just in the US. But of that, less than 700 are cyclists.
So why is it that when a cyclist gets hit by a car and get killed, people criticize the cyclist’s decision for being there, but when a car driver is hit by another car and killed, nobody says “he should have known better than to drive on that dangerous road”?
Also, most bicycle-car accidents involve cyclists who weren’t riding responsibly. As I recall, the last cyclist who got killed in my city was a teenager who “was traveling down the hill when he rode into oncoming traffic”. One before that was someone crossing a major road at night, and not at an intersection.
There needs to be a law that all bicycles on the road are to be equipped with brakes.
I’d say 90 percent of the bikes being rode by teenagers in traffic do not have brakes.
They use fixed gear bicycles which require the rider to push back on the pedals to stop. This results in hilarious scenes of teenage kids hopping up and down on their bikes trying to stop at red lights with their rear wheel skidding all over the place.
There is no way these kids could make an emergency stop on their bikes to save their life.
All five of them?
I think you’re seeing an older crowd than teens who are in the singlespeed/fixie camp.
I’m pretty sure that law is already on the books in most places.
Oh, right, I forgot that “anecdote” is the singular of “data”. Granted, getting involved in a collision means one is not being as careful as one could have been, but I seriously doubt that “most” incidents are a matter of the cyclist being “irresponsible”.
Yeah sure, your “doubt” is much more reliable than my anecdotes.