As a motorcyclist and defensive driver I find these kind of articles worrying, because they imply that riders are rolling around trusting other people not to hit them.
The first rule of motorcycling, that you accept when you swing your leg over a bike, is that no matter whose fault any collision might be, it is your responsibility and yours alone to anticipate and avoid all such incidents.
"But he pulled out in front of me" is never a valid excuse for hitting a car. You should have seen them. You should have slowed to a speed where you could evade or stop in time. You should have anticipated their dumbassery and accounted for it.
If you're not willing to accept responsibility for your own wellbeing you should not be on a bike, full stop.
I’m a motorcyclist, and I don’t get how this works for you in real life.
If I’m riding down the road and there’s a car stopped at a stop sign or intersection, and we make eye contact, yes I assume they see me. I do not come to a full stop in the middle of the road to let them turn just in case they forget we looked at each other. There’s no way to ride that defensively and not get hit by car drivers behind me, or make weird illogical trade offs that otherwise increase my risk of being hit. Yes, we can all ride defensively, but at some point we’re trusting other drivers to behave logically.
Cyclist rather than motorcyclist here, and that's correct. You read the body language of cars. If you pay attention - full attention with your head up on the situation, and not on your music or phone conversation - you can read what cars don't notice you, which ones do and will yield, and which ones do but will aggressively move first. You adjust your speed and path to accommodate for that as best as you can, case by case.
Holding to your line every time you know you have the right of way is stupid, because some drivers will violate it either intentionally or inadvertently. It should be the [motor]cyclist's right, but realistically it isn't because we're the ones not shielded by two tons of crumple zone. But defensively yielding every time is also stupid, because some drivers will indeed respect your right of way, and that impedes other users on your same right of way.
The right approach is to judge it case by case with your full attention on how best to react, which changes with every situation.
I think that personal responsibility goes both ways. I love cycling. I used to drive my daughter to school every day.
Whatever vehicle I am operating (or even if I am walking), I should be paying attention as much as I can. Yes, the stakes are much higher for pedestrians and cyclists. Yes, it is much easier to zone out when driving. Adding in texting while driving, and we get more of those short-term memory effects.
In the early days, the automobile makers made a concerted effort to change the culture around "who is responsible". Yes, they standardized the rules of the road to make it safer ... but they also injected into the culture to shift the responsibility to people who are not driving on the road.
In the end, I think for most people, they don't really want to get hurt, or see other people get hurt.
Agreed that everyone wants to do the right thing, I see car drivers doing it everyday on the streets of San Francisco. I also see idiots texting and speeding. But I digress.
Even the ones who are trying to drive cautiously fundamentally accelerate much faster and move faster and have 3000 lbs on me.
We need highly separated infrastructure in cities or an extremely low speed limit (15mph) in cities on non car only roads.
No amount of good will and mutual responsibility is going to solve this problem.
Yeah, architecture can influence choices people make. It is something at the heart of Christopher Alexander’s work on architecture, although he generalizes this to human interactions.
When we look at that, we look at the whole. Safety is only one concern out of many. Fostering a sense of personal responsibility is another. There are others: artistic beauty and grace; personal initiative and prevailing over challenges; kindness and universal kinship towards all of mankind. Just to name a few.
An excessive focus on safety will prevent people from developing that sense of personal responsibility.
So this isn’t something to “solve” like that. We have not even figured out just what it is we want to do as a society. We have not even been able to recognize as a society that people have a diversity of views, and that individuals are at different stages of maturity and growth.
Even so: I generally agree that dedicated infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, and public transportation is way better than this excessive focus on cars and SUVs. Investing into is costly, but we have to look at it as investing towards our children and grandchildren’s futures.
>If you pay attention - full attention with your head up on the situation, and not on your music or phone conversation - you can read what cars don't notice you, which ones do and will yield, and which ones do but will aggressively move first. You adjust your speed and path to accommodate for that as best as you can, case by case.
Cannot agree more. I would go so far as to say the ability to anticipate what another party will do is a prerequisite to being a good driver/cyclist/pedestrian.
Then to throw a monkey-wrench into the mix: people, such as those on the ASD spectrum, who have difficulty decoding or intuiting body language, adapting to it, and giving out the signals about their intentions.
As a cyclist I think you are on point. Like people, cars have body language. It is so telling that I can even tell which cars are at a stop sign in the middle of the night and are waving me through the intersection even though they have the right of way and there's no way I can see into their vehicle (seriously guys, just go if you have the right of way. I don't trust you) as opposed to someone who is just stopped and not paying attention.
Well,it's not an absolute rule to follow in every situation but they key is adjust your speed to enable preventive action. In your scenario I don't stop, but maybe I slow down instead of sailing through the intersection. I can come to a stop faster if the other guy does do something stupid, so at least I have a chance.
As the article suggests(and from my own experience), making eye contact is no guarantee.
> and we make eye contact, yes I assume they see me.
Oh, that doesn't work reliably enough. Far from uncommon for cars that are stopped at a side junction, have a driver that looks, appears to see and make eye contact, then pulls out anyway...
You do seem to develop some sort of sixth sense for the ones that will. Then you can try to get them to see by over-using your carriageway - swerve to gutter then to centre line, etc, expecting and setting up to swerve behind the pulling out vehicle.
While I mostly agree you, I think “never valid” is a bit extreme. My uncle was hit by a drunk driver that turned left into his lane at the last minute on a straight road.
These type of incidents, which are rare and can’t be avoided, is why I took my bike off the road and only take it to the track.
Maybe the first rule of riding is “it’s not the safest form of transportation and you must accept the risk”?
Definitely, the common theme is you're on the outside of the vehicle and any impact is gonna be really personal.
I actually feel far safer on a motorcycle than a push bike, because I have much bigger contact patches, far better brakes, stickier tyres and the ability to out-accelerate almost any kind of trouble. I'm also wearing at least half leathers and a proper full face helmet.
As a rider myself, I don't understand that philosophy, and I've never seen another rider follow it, even when they claim to. Certainly, if you believed that, you would never be within a mile of any other vehicle on the road.
"The Matrix Reloaded" featured a 30 minute action sequence showing what it's like when a tiny fraction of other drivers are actually trying to kill you. Spoiler: without Neo swooping in to "do his Superman thing" and save you, you're dead, even if you've got automatic weapons and kung fu training.
That's really not that helpful as a point of view. If it were really the case you'd avoid using nights at light because they'd just draw attention from all these bloodthirsty motorists and you'd be better off in a ninja suit.
I see your point and there are some things that as a rider you could never be expected to anticipate, like your example where the drunk driver swerved at the last minute. (Even more defensible cases include things like "the control arm broke and the car instantly swerved across 3 lanes of traffic" which actually happened a few years ago in my city, if that happens you just gotta accept that $deity is out to get you).
I'd amend it to "anything that you could reasonably have anticipated is your fault, including people pulling out in front of you, cars changing lanes as if you weren't there, etc."
It’s interesting to me: As a fellow motorcyclist, I agree with your philosophy wholeheartedly. But most bicyclists (who are arguably at more risk from a car/truck than a motorcyclist) disagree with this just as wholeheartedly.
I seriously wonder why this dichotomy exists, especially as bicycles are gaining electric motors capable of propelling them at higher and higher speeds.
As a cyclist, I believe that the driver should be held to the higher standard, but also that I can never trust them to live up to their responsibility, so I gotta be ready to stop and/or dodge any reckless maneuver they make.
We tend to conflate the moral judgement of responsibility/fault with the actual reality of responsibility. If you're driving a deadly vehicle, the moral burden is on you not to kill me, but I still carries the practical burden of not getting killed.
Obviously, if I'm super reckless on my bicycle, I could still be killed by a responsible, blameless driver, but if we're equally careless, I would say I was behaving in a practically irresponsible manner and the driver a morally irresponsible manner. I was stupid, they were negligent.
(I rode a motorcycle occasioanlly for a while, but not enough to get to where I felt other cars were a bigger threat to me than my own inexperience was. "I could die taking this corner.")
This I disagree with. For better or worse, we are typically the ones who are riding on roads designed and built for them. We need to be held to the same standards, if not higher standards as motorcyclists and bicyclists, as we're intentionally playing in their turf, without their safety equipment.
If a bicyclist is careless, they are both stupid and negligent. If a car driver is careless, they are both stupid and negligent. The difference is that being careless on a bike of any type is more dangerous to you than being careless in a car, meaning that a biker can't afford to be careless if they want to go home at night.
Well the law and society disagree with you. The type of reasoning is very ubiquitous too. The more dangerous thing you are operating the more responsibility you have. We generally have morals that align to it being worse to take someone else's life than your own, though we don't encourage either. A car can do much more damage to others than a motorcycle can. A motorcycle can do more damage than a bicyclist can. A bicyclist can do more damage than a pedestrian. It isn't surprising that the right of way follows the inverse of this; those that are most vulnerable have a higher right of way.
I think you are also conflating two different things. Legally and socially we consider the car to be held to a higher standard because it is more dangerous. Practically when I'm on a bike I have to be more vigilant because I'm more vulnerable and I value my life. But when we say that someone should be held to a higher standard we can take an inverse to check our understanding. Disagreeing that cars should be held to a higher standard is equivalent to saying "cars should be held to less (or equal) standards as bicyclists", which I think sounds kinda absurd.
> The difference is that being careless on a bike of any type is more dangerous to you than being careless in a car
And I think this demonstrates that confusion. The bike is not more dangerous, the car is. There is more danger involved when riding a bike, but the car is definitely more dangerous. There is no way you can argue that a bike can do more damage than a car can. The car is more dangerous, therefore it has more responsibility. But that doesn't mean you should trust them to be responsible. Different things.
First, I'm in no way advocating for taking responsibility away from car drivers. I'm saying that it doesn't matter when there is an incident between a bike and a car.
At the end of the day, the only person you can depend upon to keep yourself safe is you. You can hope everyone else is doing what they can to avoid injuring you, but the most you can do is hope. The responsibility for remaining safe ultimately falls to you (regardless of your mode of transportation - there's always a bigger vehicle).
We can argue legal and moral responsibility until we're blue in the face, but at the end of the day it won't make a dead cyclist any less dead.
The motorcyclist idiom "The car always has the right of weight." is spread about for a reason.
I am not saying this applies to you and GP, but there are those of us who absolutely hate cyclists on the road at all (bike lanes are fine) because many of them have an entitled mentality and indeed, don't seem to care about their own safety, let alone the rules of the road.
Just this morning I had two cyclists cut horizontally across at 40 MPH street in front of me and other drivers. Many of them weave between cars or treat traffic signals as suggestions. Basically they want to be treated like normal traffic when it suits them and ignore laws when they want to. The ones who signal, wear helmets and reflectors and bright clothing, and drive on the road correctly are merely annoying because they hold up traffic and disrupt speeds, which is dangerous in itself because it causes a lot of lane swapping, but I can tolerate them.
I guess what I am trying to say is, thank you and GP for not being among those cyclists who are stupid, reckless, and entitled. I just know that someday I am going to be cleaning what passes for the brains of some idiot cyclist off of my windshield and am not looking forward to it.
I have however driven a motorcycle and while it is very dangerous, it is less so than a bicycle because you have the acceleration and maneuverability to get out of many situations. And motorcycles can drive the same speeds as the rest of traffic. People underestimate how many collisions are caused by traffic disruptions and abrupt changes of speed.
> Many of them weave between cars or treat traffic signals as suggestions. Basically they want to be treated like normal traffic when it suits them and ignore laws when they want to.
I don't want to defend this but rather explain this. Legally we are neither pedestrians nor normal traffic. But there is no explicit law for cyclists. You have to be both and it depends which situations it you are in, which typically falls under when it is most advantageous (or safest).
Specifically to the traffic signals, I'll illustrate first. The only time I have been struck by a vehicle while on my bike was while I was in a shared space (marked with sharrows) and waiting at a stop sign (I've also had cars come into the bike lane and hit/almost hit me, but that's another story that every cyclist has). Statistically this is actually the most likely place to be hit (motorcyclists know this too!). So why do cyclists not stop at stop signs? Because sitting at a stop sign is dangerous. Because to cross the intersection with momentum takes 2 seconds instead of the 5 that it takes when stopped. You are reducing your chance of being struck. This is why you won't see cops pull them over either (unless they are pulling into traffic, which is a different issue). Having momentum also SIGNIFICANTLY increases your ability to dodge things. You are absolutely the most vulnerable when you are not moving. To be safe on a bike you want to keep moving. We can't accelerate away from dangerous situations like motorcycles or cars. Humans don't have that kind of torque. It isn't just laziness or wanting to get to places faster (I'll give you that this is part). If you aren't moving then you are more vulnerable.
Cyclists that are breaking the law are generally doing it from learned behavior to increase their safety. Another common example is riding close to the middle of the road on shared roads. I cannot tell you how many times someone has opened a door on me. I've hit more than a few (most often when in I'm in a bike lane!). Both in day and night (when I have a fucking light that I directly aim into peoples' mirrors to try to make me more noticeable!). It's just easier to ride closer to the center and deal with the driver behind you that is upset and should be on the main roads anyways. Also, lots of dirt and crap accumulates in the bike lanes, so that's why we frequently move out of them. Frequently there's also gutters that would cause us to go over the handle bars.
Frankly, I value my safety over your convenience. That's what it comes down to.
> [the ones that] drive on the road correctly are merely annoying because they hold up traffic and disrupt speeds, which is dangerous
And we all agree. This is why you should argue for not just bike lanes, but protected bike lanes. But frankly most cars don't care about bike lanes and treat cyclists like second class citizens and disregard their spaces.[0]
There are plenty of cyclists that are idiots and doing dumb things that will make you question how much they value their life. But I want others to also realize that cyclists also develop other patterns that may not be straight forward to drivers. Understanding each other and the vulnerabilities we face is how we make everyone safer and how we inconvenience each other less.
I appreciate this explanation and will try to meet you halfway although I don't agree with all your conclusions.
> Frankly, I value my safety over your convenience. That's what it comes down to.
That is quite natural, although with respect I must say it does illustrate my comments about an entitlement mentality, particularly since it is the cyclist who has voluntarily chosen to put themselves in such a dangerous situation. What many cyclists don't understand is that I value your safety as well, very much so.
That is why things like this:
> So why do cyclists not stop at stop signs? Because sitting at a stop sign is dangerous.
> Another common example is riding close to the middle of the road on shared roads.
...are incredibly frustrating. The reason why we have road laws at all is primarily to make driving behavior predictable. If people drive unpredictably, it raises the risk for everyone. On top of the inherent risks of driving a vehicle which does not have the speed and acceleration to be on the road in the first place.
Do cyclists care that cars might have to swerve into a ditch or another car to avoid them if they are cycling erratically? As far as I can see, they don't. Do they care if their cycling might delay commutes for dozens or hundreds of people? I commend you for being open about the fact that you seemingly do not.
Fundamentally, all of the arguments cyclists make would apply to someone walking on the road or riding a skateboard down it. Yes, it is incredibly dangerous. Fundamentally and inalterably so. It is indefensible when motorists invade bike lanes. They should be fined for that. That is the space for bikes. Sidewalks are the space for pedestrians. The road is the space for cars. (I am speaking from what I see as the logical perspective, not the legal perspective.)
I have been to places like India where there are basically no rules followed about who can be on the road, riding what, or how they are driving. It is total chaos and utterly terrifying. I am incredibly glad it is not like that in the US.
I agree with the need for bike lanes where bikes are heavily used (or if there is good evidence of latent demand for them if bike lanes existed). It often does not make financial sense to build them where they would be used infrequently, as that money could be used for other forms of public transit. Purely from a safety perspective, in my view, where bike lanes are not built it would be better policy for cyclists to cycle on the sidewalk rather than the road, because at least if a bicycle hits a pedestrian there is a low risk of fatality.
I really do appreciate your explaining this so calmly and neutrally however, as I find the self-righteous fury of so many cyclists very annoying as, from my perspective, they are the problem. For some reason this is a really charged issue for many people. Road rage all around, I suppose.
Emphasis on "to you". I consider it worse to be careless with other people's lives than with my own. I could cause someone else's death with my bicycle, but it's less common than in a car.
Additionally, I'm not cycling on the highway. I'm cycling on mixed-use roads, the majority of which have bike lanes. None of these are car-only roads. Those do exist, but I don't bike on them.
Often there is no other alternative. If you ride a bike for transportation, you have to live with traffic. Trails and bike lanes are almost non-existent. If you ask, most cyclists would love to not ride in traffic. We are always advocating for dedicated trails and protected lanes so we don't have to ride with large vehicles.
I would be fine restricting bikes to trails and dedicated bike lanes, if they existed. In the meantime we have to find a way to live together, like roommates in an apartment.
Couldn't say about your local laws, but in the US (where I ride) cycling is a right extended to all, but driving a car is a privilege which requires certification. My sense is that the spirit of those laws aligns with some of the discussion here, cars kill (other) people, where cyclists are likely to only get themselves killed.
I think this needs to be emphasized more. Saying that a bicycle is more dangerous than a car is equivalent to saying that being a bank teller is more dangerous than a gunman. Sure, that may be true, but are we really going to blame the bank teller here?
FWIW everywhere other than public roads the smallest traffic is held to the highest standard (i.e is expected to look out for and plan around other traffic). The rules are basically only go where you're allowed to go (don't walk on railroad tracks and don't be the wise ass who drives the mini-fork lift into the office to deliver the mail) and when you encounter a different type of traffic yield to everything bigger than you. For example: If you are on foot and get hit by a fork lift it's on you. If your forklift gets hit by a truck it's on you. If your truck gets hit by a mining dump truck it's on you. If your mining dump truck gets hit by a train then it's on you. (Obviously these examples don't hold in exceptional circumstances.)
The reasoning behind it is that the smaller the traffic the more situational awareness it has (no blind spots on a pedestrian) and the quicker and easier it is for it to adjust what its doing to account for other traffic.
Public roads have a much more complex set of rules and large swaths of them are usually ignored in specific situations and in general there's a lot more ambiguity over who should do what.
Bicyclists suffer political disability under [typical US] traffic laws. Bicyclists are not afforded a full traffic lane when traveling. Bicyclists are prohibited from the highest quality roads. Bicyclists are required to ride on the shoulder. Even the best laid bike lanes don't give cyclists the right of way. Many many bike routes are shared with pedestrians.
Motorcyclists on the other hand enjoy first class status under typical traffic laws.
I think the rules of the road everywhere I’ve lived in the US (New Orleans, Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle) has encouraged cyclists taking a lane rather than riding on the shoulder. I’ve seen more and more bike signs right in the middle of the right lane of traffic, too.
That said once night falls I usually adopt the attitude of “assume cars will try to kill me if they see me” and avoid them as much as possible by keeping to back roads and being extra paranoid when I have to cross major streets, despite having extra lights on my bike.
> Bicyclists suffer political disability under [typical US] traffic laws.
Yes, but,
> Bicyclists are not afforded a full traffic lane when traveling. Bicyclists are prohibited from the highest quality roads. Bicyclists are required to ride on the shoulder.
As a cyclicst and motorcycle rider, I think there are a few explanations.
1. Stopping and going on a bicycle is much more painful and leads to more risk taking behavior.
2. A cyclists own energy isn't nearly as scary as a motorcycle. I often find myself modeling accidents as "what if I ran into this stationary thing" which on a motorcycle you want to be preparing for as it is more likely and higher impact but on a bike. Less so. Unfortunately a moving car hitting you is the more likely scenario. Also on a motorcycle you're managing the traction of the wheels through turns, something I've rarely thought about on a bicycle. So you're just in a lower effort more vigilant headspace.
3. Cars don't feel a constant compulsion to pass motorocycles nor "go before the cyclist can slow them down". So I think the constant back and forth "getting fucked" has setup this bizarre altruistic punishment mindset in both cars and cyclists that leads to fuck bikes on the car side and fuck the laws on the bike side.
Why do you claim that most bicyclists espouse some extremely specific philosophical viewpoint? Have you surveyed a representative sample of cyclists or something? It's just extremely weird to me to make such a sweeping claim about a large group you don't count yourself in.
Right here on HN. In any of the dozens of pro-bicycle articles which appear every month.
For example, discussing almost hitting a bicyclist on a 70mph road at night with the cyclist wearing dark colors with no reflectors or tail light:
>This is absolutely your fault. You're driving too fast for the conditions. You're the one who can't see what's ahead; you're the one who has to drive slower.
And
> It is not their responsibility to ensure you drive at a pace such that you can stop before striking an obstacle that was hard to see. Should we require pedestrians using the road (like the one without shoulders) to dress in bright colors as well?
And from some other threads:
> >Her not wearing a helment not only derailed her life, but it caused major problems in the lives of everyone around her.
> Blame the victim? How about the driver, was it not his/her fault rather than your sisters?
Here's from someone else:
> While momentum argument is real, my personal philosophy as a daily commuting biker in France is "I'm the more exposed to risk and the more hated road user, so don't get in the way of cars and don't ever dare touch pedestrians"
> That being said, yes I do pass red light when I have good clearance and I don't "emergency brake by courtesy" for pedestrians that are not already engaged in crosswalks or clearly far from my course.
> Theses two paragraphs are perfectly compatible IMHO. It's just that in order to play with the rules you must know and accept them and be aware that you are doing something borderline. And by borderline I mean something specifically NOT dangerous to others and yourself. If it's dangerous it's just plain dumb and irresponsible.
And a justification for breaking the law:
> I was once hit by a taxi while stopped at a light. He he did a right hook turn straight into me. This is why I don't stop at lights if I don't have to, and why I always get towadd the middle lane when I'm biking past a potential right turn zone.
Yeah. A collection of personal anecdotes from an internet forum aren't data supporting your hypothesis for all kinds of reasons. Just off the bat, there is some bias in people who visit HN and choose to comment on threads; secondly, there is some bias in the comments you notice and remember.
Extrapolating from anecdotes to sweeping generalizations isn't intellectually sound.
Not the OP, but I’m pretty sure they are basing it on the same observations I have. The vast majority of motorcyclists I encounter are riding defensively, while the majority of cyclists I see in city traffic are aggressive and ignore most traffic laws.
This is likely selection bias though. The cyclists that you notice the most are bad actors. You don't notice good acting cyclists as often because they don't inconvenience you. This is basically the classic example of selection bias.
Do bicyclists have an organization like the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF)?
Most of what I understand about motorcycle safety was taught by various MSF courses. In many states, the MSF is the most direct way to get your motorcycle endorsement. This makes them fairly sticky in the community.
In my experience, bicyclists tend to go slower, stick to downtown roads or rural country roads and generally do not attempt the same sort of highway driving that motorcycles do. Eg. Freeway/interstate.
So while they may be in more danger, there is a different set of expectations.
One point of clarification - I as a motorcyclist love rural roads. They make for fantastic, low stress rides. As a bonus in my area, they tend to include a lot of curves, which are lots of fun on a motorcycle.
visibility. in my case I will ride with the high beams on during the day, if I am directly behind another car in stop and go I will turn them off. I also run small projector/fog lamps down low to form a light triangle which I believe further increases my being noticed. Yet as you imply, I don't trust that I am ever seen.
it isn't just short term memory but people just aren't paying attention to the drive. even in my car I see people on their phone or worse reading their phones display, all in a state that is hands free! the numbers are frightening if you think about it.
it was mentioned in another thread about speed and cars and that the manufacturers have had the ability for many years to keep our cars at legal speeds but none choose to do so and I doubt the public would permit it unless mandated by law. Well the same can be said about smart phones, passenger or not it may well be necessary for them to determine if they are in a vehicle and just not allow the display to be used.
Notice me, hell they have to put their phone down first. People miss light changes and on coming traffic far too often all because of their phones
Please quit doing that. It makes it extremely difficult to judge your distance. You think you're doing it to avoid having me pull out, and ironically I'm more likely to pull out because I haven't the faintest idea how far away that blazing ball of light is.
Seriously, do people that do things like this never look to see what it looks like from the other side? Or is it the power of the ol' cargo cult/urban legend/"common sense" (see also: "loud pipes save lives")?
I also run small projector/fog lamps down low to form a light triangle
That's what's going to save you, not being obnoxious with your high beam. It's a not-common pattern, and it establishes that you're not a car with a headlight out.
As a cyclist I usually had 4 lights on the front, one central main/steady light for illumination and then two bar end lights that showed the edges of my handlebars (visible front and rear) and then either another flashing light either down low at the bottom of my forms or on my helmet. And the similar at the back.
The amount of bus drivers and taxi drivers that chatted to me at the traffic lights and told me that the set up helped them judge my distance was great. I really think it helps people figure where you are and how your bike is moving. Plus if any one of my lights was hidden for a moment, there were 3 more to see. And at worst if one battery went I have more to get me home safely. I ride with lights on at all time.
As a fellow motorcyclist (middle aged, and still alive) I completely agree with you. NEVER rely on anyone seeing you. Nobody does see you, and nobody cares. It's your responsibility to see and anticipate what everyone else is doing.
In fact you should know if a car is about to change direction before its driver does. It gets easier with experience; a human driver gives many hints.
In the future, AI-powered cars may not give any hint, or different ones. Just like we advertise new drivers we should absolutely signal self-driving cars.
> In fact you should know if a car is about to change direction before its driver does.
I just feel this deserves repeating. I've had times where drivers who didn't know where they were going cut me off repeatedly. Nothing resulted besides some burned rubber and a few very angry hand signals because I was paying far more attention to them and their trajectory than they themselves were.
While I strongly agree with the spirit of this, I feel there are enough exceptions to this principle for it to be more pragmatically put.
For example:
Take a two lane road with no median barrier. Whether cycling, motorcycling or driving I have no choice but to trust that road users coming towards me stay on their opposite side of the road. I have to hope that they are not subject to a moment's distraction, or mechanical failure, or drunk. It's almost impossible to anticipate and avoid incidents like this. If I was a victim of such an incident does that automatically mean I didn't take enough responsibility for my wellbeing? Or does it mean I judged the risks of using a public road and was unlucky, whether due to someone else's dumbassery or otherwise?
My point is that there are many incidents that a diligent, innocent road user simply cannot avoid, and we shouldn't be so quick to apportion responsibility.
That's an interesting example, as if I trusted oncoming cars to stay on their side of the road I'd be dead many times over. It's very common for cars to pull a few feet over the center line to go around an obstacle (such as a bike going their direction...) without adequately checking if the space they're pulling into is unoccupied. This is one of the reasons you want to stay toward the center of your lane rather than drifting towards the middle of the road, even when a bend in the road would make that the natural thing to do.
I don't mean blind trust of course, and you state everyday occurrences of which we should all be ready for.
What I mean is a more drastic change, completely leaving their lane and entering yours with no warning. In the case of a serious and immediate mechanical fault with wheels, steering or brakes on a bend, neither party can predict or prepare for this.
Riding a motorcycle has made me a better driver in general. On a bike my full concentration is on making sure I don't die. Constantly running through scenarios. What do I do if the car in front of me slams on their brakes? What if the car I'm passing doesn't see me and tries to merge into me? What if there's something on the road and I have to avoid it? These are all things that have happened to me while riding. You have to be fully aware of everything around you when you ride a motorcycle, and for me that has carried over into car driving as well.
The list of potential actions another road user can do includes malicious punishment passing, failing to stop behind you, and intentional collisions. There is nothing the rider can do to stop these without stopping riding altogether. You also can't brake to avoid a car that goes into the side of you.
At some point, you have to trust others to obey the rules of the road. An article like this is not zero-sum, it doesn't have to make your riding any less defensive.
> You also can't brake to avoid a car that goes into the side of you.
I wear a biker tailbone protector and a back protector + an helmet when I go snowboarding and I'm an amateur snowboarder at best that rarely goes in the park and rides at mediocre speed.
Why I usually don't see cyclists wear some of them protections?
1. Helmets are pretty common for road cyclist in places where the roads aren't super safe. Tailbone & back protection aren't super useful do to the kinds of accidents you get.
2. A big difference is downhill versus (mostly) flat. I only wear my helmet about 10-20% of the time when I'm ski touring. Downhill bikers wear all sorts of padding & protectors.
Why don't drivers? Driving is the biggest killer of young people.
Any vehicle you use for commuting is for convenience. Strapping into armour makes it harder so we don't expect it of drivers while we do expect it of extreme sports.
Supposedly the health benefits of cycling outweigh the dangers of the road but I've never looked into it.
>It is not driving, it's road traffic injuries, which includes biking.
It's not from being hit by cyclists.
>This is the list of the mandatory safety measures in Europe for motor vehicles, it's 24 pages long
Quite a lot of it isn't, read articles 6 and 7 and the lists of implementation dates.
>Why are cyclist so afraid of protecting themselves?
After having people maliciously aim their car at you for being in front of them, it's quite patronising to have them assume you're riding unsafely. People in other countries manage much better safety records through infrastructure and education. On the contrary, I don't think there's any safety clothing I can wear that will save me if a car crashes into me. This thread assumes that exists, yet assumes the same doesn't exist for anyone who dies in a car crash. Why don't you wear a helmet when in a car?
Infrastructure doesn't improve where I am because the nasty, tribalist rhetoric swipes any safety issues under the rug by assuming cyclist fault. You've accused cyclists of being afraid of protecting themselves, thus categorising them in a tribe separate from your own. But I'm not separate from you: I'm a driver, too. Yet when I'm in a car with someone and they see a driver do something foolish, I never hear them call 'drivers' idiots, it's always about the singular person. The tribalism makes you think of the other party as less important.
(And the foolish things happen multiple times a day - I can guarantee I'll see someone speed when I drive home tonight)
Accusing me of being afraid of protecting just gives me the impression that you feel I have to earn the right for you to tolerate me in the road. An impression I get every time someone punish-passes me, or manoeuvres assuming a cyclist won't be in their path. And it's so tiring to be told it's my fault when I know how often I see people fail to obey the laws of the road at my expense.
> After having people maliciously aim their car at you for being in front of them, it's quite patronising to hav
On my motorbike I wear helmet and protections anyway, before having people maliciously aim at me (because you know, accidents can happen even without malice...).
> Single sided bicycle accidents are pretty common
Putting yourself at risk because there are supposed health benefit is stupid.
It's like being anti vax because you read somewhere that one time someone had a fever after a vaccine.
You can have health benefits AND protect yourself from dangers, one does not exclude the other (I would argue that protecting yourself from dangers will benefit your health more than cycling).
motorcylists here ignore all noise ordinances and try to be as loud as possible to ppl notice them. One motercyclist told me that his loud noise saved his life more than once.
I personally think they should be ticketed for noise.
it's funny because as kids the first thing they teach us is to look around before crossing the streets and make sure that vehicles on the streets saw us and stopped.
Adults are so pendatic about it that we develop muscle memory for it.
The reason is simple: don't assume other people won't make mistakes just because they were supposed to be careful and protect the weakest.
The safer option is to actually be proactive about safety, at the point that we would never think about crossing streets without looking first.
It is considered a severe distraction.
I noticed that bikers (not only them, but especially them) reasoning is kinda reversed.
I'm not a biker myself, I used to ride when I was younger, but I prefer to walk now.
As a walker I've had arguments with biker friends about the unsafety that their behaviour sometimes poses on pedestrians like going at high speed where there are other people around, arriving from behind when in a noisy city it's almost impossible to hear them and making simply suddenly dodging a puddle a life threatening hazard, riding on sidewalks, disobeying traffic laws etc. etc.
There is of course a majority of responsible bikers who are very careful, but what really baffles me is that talking about their own safety is a kind of taboo for a majority of them. Most of our arguments end up with them justifying with "cars are more dangerous, they should be more careful" and when I take them seriously and reply "so if cars are dangerous, why you never wear an helmet or other kind of protections except maybe a flashing light when on the streets?", the answer I get is usually "because it's their responsibility to not kill us".
It's really nonsense to me. I really don't understand the position.
More appropriately (since armor won't protect you from a two ton SUV), do you wear bright colors, reflective tape, and night-time illumination when walking?
The answer from any smart pedestrian certainly should be yes, but it's surprisingly hard to buy neon yellow jackets or hats. They're rare for bclists and almost nonexistent for mcyclists, of which I'm both.
Apparently most mcyclists would rather be cool than visible.
If I walked at 30km/h on the streets I would definitely wear one
The poster in another comment says he wears helmet and body protections when skying, I think it's just common sense and not wanting to suffer sever consequences for no real reason.
I used to wear an helmet when skating.
Why bikers think they are the only immortal beings on this planet?
The first rule of motorcycling, that you accept when you swing your leg over a bike, is that no matter whose fault any collision might be, it is your responsibility and yours alone to anticipate and avoid all such incidents.
"But he pulled out in front of me" is never a valid excuse for hitting a car. You should have seen them. You should have slowed to a speed where you could evade or stop in time. You should have anticipated their dumbassery and accounted for it.
If you're not willing to accept responsibility for your own wellbeing you should not be on a bike, full stop.