Honestly as an upper middle class or rich American it looks like one of the more dangerous things you could do is probably go out cycling in a road shared by these monster machines. If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives.
When I lived in College Station Texas I had to use a bike (because I was broke) but I stuck to the sidewalks, rules be damned. And even in the sidewalk had to keep an eye for unruly drivers on the road alongside because the last person you want to trust not to mount the curb is a drunk Texan kid with a raised pickup after a football game.
And when time came to cross a road, even if the light was green, even if I made eye contact with the dude in the truck, I wouldn’t venture out until the road was fully empty. I decided a long time back id never put myself in a place where another American in a car has to brake to not hit me when I’m outside a car.
The odds are in your favor to be honest. I live in a city of 4 million people. 10-20 cyclist die a year. I'll roll those dice when the variance is that high. I figure I bike safer than the average biker I see on the road anyhow, so my odds of survival go up even higher. Probably not a small number of those accidents involved intoxicated bikers or mentally ill; I see a lot of people, clearly out of their mind through mental illness or addiction or both, biking the wrong way into traffic, or otherwise not being aware of anything at all and blithely riding (sometimes pedestrians just walking on the freeway too). Things I do to be safe while biking that I rarely see others do:
- taking the lane
- wearing a helmet
- using lights
- filtering to the front of the intersection
- opting for those 25mph residential roads that hardly have any traffic whenever possible
- "dutch left": instead of cutting over across traffic to turn left as a car would, I instead go straight almost all the way through the intersection on the right hand side, turn right in front of the stopped perpendicular cars, and then angle myself to go straight on that perpendicular road when the lights cycle to green.
Something else that improves your QALYs: cycling. Of course, it's about exercise more generally, but if you don't have time to exercise only, doing it while commuting is clever!
In most locations in the world -- my null hypothesis includes the US here too -- people who commute by bike (for all its risks) live longer and are sick less than those who do not.
I probably would have given this a full-throated endorsement just a couple years ago, but after years of improving safety standards that drove down the number of automobile fatalities, we've seen two years of massive increases (7% in 2020 and then 10% last year [0]). And that pairs nicely with my anecdotal experience, which is that people have lost their fucking minds on the roads. (And also, more controversially, coincides (with utter predictability, in my view) with a massive drop in traffic stops by law enforcement.)
10% increase in my city with the numbers it sees could mean just two additional cycling deaths a year. That's the thing with these statistics, the numbers are so small to begin with, that just a few more events are liable to lead to huge percent increases. These few more events could well be within the variance of this measure you observe year over year, and may not be a real trend.
And across the entire nation of 400 million people, there were 900 cycling deaths last year. Like I say, in my region, there are usually only a dozen or two.
> If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives
This seems like such a typical American view on cycling. The main aim of regular cycling isn't about physical activity, it's about getting from A to B.
> I had to use a bike (because I was broke)
And this too. Being able to afford to drive a car shouldn't be an aspiration and cycling isn't only for people who can't afford a car.
Cycling infra in the US is so terrible and horrid that it's no wonder that people assume you cycle if you're (a) too poor to afford a car, or (b) a fitness fanatic putting fitness ahead of your safety.
Sidewalks can be the most dangerous place for cycling when cars come out of hidden driveways quickly. Maybe not where you are (perhaps there's good vision with big verges and/or big yards with no front fences), but this approach cant be applied safely in many areas.
The real underlying issue of course is a disparity in street design between care for vehicle passenger safety (the primary job of extensive codes and standards and those who enforce them) and cycle safety (at best a side concern in codes, and often the codes are poorly researched and enforce impractical solutions that don't help the end users)
That's why I don't just zoom past openings, unless they are clearly visible that no car is coming out, such as an empty parking lot where nothing is blocking the view of the lot. I always treated those spots as a stop sign of sorts. Pull up to the edge of the drive, stop and check for cars turning in or out, then go on my way.
> If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives.
I suspect that attitude also have to do with obesity rates and with people being too sedentary for their own health no matter what their weight.
It should be good and accepted that people incorporate low key physical activity into their lives. It should be good and accepted that people choose mode of transport that have them move little bit. Whether someone craves physical activity or not does not matter.
Cheaper, healthier mode of transport is as much entitlement as car. Making physical activity something for those who "crave it" is wrong.
It's a different cycling experience to live in an area with 30+ continuous miles of a paved and forested riverside bike trail and 50+ miles of interlaced dirt trails. Cars can barely be a threat consideration most of the time.
That's fine if you're cycling as a hobby, but if you're cycling as a means of transportation you're going to need to take the roads most of the time. Most of the places you are going to are not going to be next to a forest trail.
It is kind of irritating for a commuter to dismiss competitive and fitness sports as hobbies, but that aside, the aforementioned trail parallels a major highway and it’s used by thousands of cyclists and commuters each day for the majority of their routes. Some toss their bikes onto the lightrail and bus racks at the end to avoid roads.
I'm a cyclist and I hate bicycles on sidewalk as much as I would hate cars driving there. They increase risks for pedestrians that have done nothing wrong by walking on a sidewalk. We cyclist must accept our risks and stop offloading them to other people.
Furthermore sidewalks have a worse pavement than roads, are full of obstacles (including pedestrians) and are a slower way to get to destination, but that's another story.
I guess you’ve never been to a Texan town then. Literally no one is on a sidewalk, and if there’s more than one person in the sidewalk per mile, I’d get off the sidewalk. I suppose you’ve also not seen southern drunk (or even sober but texting) kids in raised trucks driving either.
I confess I didn't. My remark is addressed particularly to cyclists of dense cities where we have more people on sidewalks than inside cars (but still a lot of cars.) Unfortunately there are plenty of bicycles on sidewalks.
One counterpoint: biking on sidewalks is illegal in many jurisdictions for a pretty good reason.
If you're a pedestrian walking alongside a busy street, it's almost impossible to hear a cyclist coming up behind you, so unless the cyclist tells you that they're about to pass you, it's easy to unintentionally move into the cyclist's path and risk getting hit.
I've almost gotten hit several times by bikers on the sidewalk, and while such a collision would be much less injurious than a car crash, I can't say I'm opposed to such laws.
Riding a motorcycle is even more dangerous, if that's what you're optimising for. You're just as vulnerable, but you're in traffic and you can go really fast.
When I lived in College Station Texas I had to use a bike (because I was broke) but I stuck to the sidewalks, rules be damned. And even in the sidewalk had to keep an eye for unruly drivers on the road alongside because the last person you want to trust not to mount the curb is a drunk Texan kid with a raised pickup after a football game.
And when time came to cross a road, even if the light was green, even if I made eye contact with the dude in the truck, I wouldn’t venture out until the road was fully empty. I decided a long time back id never put myself in a place where another American in a car has to brake to not hit me when I’m outside a car.