Wednesday Afternoon Commute - Collisions

Good afternoon

• Lance Armstrong gets extension to respond to doping charges. More info "The agency said blood doping equipment was found at Armstrong's residence."
• The Atlantic makes the claim that "[collisions between walkers and cyclists are] certainly generating more attention lately, along with vitriol toward two-wheelers." I'm not sure if that's true, but I'll say the following things about the subject. 
  • The goal should be zero collisions and zero injuries and there is enough bad behavior by cyclists out there to make that impossible.
  • Nonetheless, on average cyclists behave pretty well and are likely safer than drivers (not just because of smaller size and less mass, but actually fewer crashes). 
  • Licenses won't do anything to improve safety (unless you think licensing has kept bad drivers off the road), but they will dissuade certain groups. They might actually push unlicensed drivers back into cars. 
  • More education and more enforcement will probably help. 
  • I love the idea of San Francisco's cycling school for 1st time violators. I've pushed for something similar here. 
  • "The worst thing for a cycling advocate is to see some other cyclist dangerously blow through a red light." Personally I think dangerous behavior on the trail is worse, but to each their own. 

Comments

[charlie]

How does the USADA have jurisdiction over Armstrong and his TdF titles?

He has a very serious case if the USADA was participating in the (failed) DOJ investigation. Unclear if the USADA is a state actor, but it was clearly benefitting from it.

[Eric Jay]

I'm a regular cyclist in the District, but yesterday I had a moment that made me understand anti-bike sentiment.

I was walking down the sidewalk with my girlfriend when a cyclist came up behind me and rode right into me. Got my leg with his front wheel then my back with his handlebar. Seemed like maybe he was trying to go around, but we were beside a tree-box and there just wasn't enough room for two pedestrians and a cyclist to share.

After nearly knocking me over, he told me: "I said 'excuse me,' turn up your f**king miracle ear and get the f**k out of my way next time!"

To say I was enraged would be a severe understatement.

[JeffB]

@Eric Jay

Agree. There is no excuse for a cyclist to ever hit a pedestrian on a sidewalk.

I hit a jogger this afternoon on the CCT. Riding southbound I was approaching the bridge by the water treatment plant.

There was a jogger ahead and knowing that this is a blind corner (currently made even worse by all the untrimmed brush) I slowed to the jogger's speed about 15 feet behind and waited until I could clearly see ahead before passing.

Just as we reached the foot of the bridge I saw it was now clear ahead, rang my bell, looked behind me and started to pull into the opposite lane.

At the precise moment I looked behind the jogger executed a crazy Ivan and U-turned right in front of me.

Fortunately I was going so slow that I had just enough time to hit my breaks hard. Indeed it was more of a matter of him running into me!

The jogger was able to fend me off with his arm. He offered a grunted "sorry" before immediately running off. Didn't even wait to see if I was ok.

Oh - and the jogger was fully "jacked" into his music so he was completely unaware of his environment.

[washcycle]

Eric Jay, everyone is anti-jackwad. But the important thing is not to assume that all people on bikes are jackwads, just cause this one was. You could just as easily say that you know why people are anti-man or anti-white people. This guy was irresponsible and selfish. Most cyclists aren't.

[darren]

Improving safety for everyone requires addressing 'safety in numbers' first in cycling safety discussion (which the article doesn't do, of course). Besides the hypothesized effect of drivers seeing/knowing more cyclists, and the assumption that it's sheltered (safer) facilities drawing more cyclists out, a crowd of cyclists in a bike-rich city exerts peer pressure of compliance (just my anecdotal observation).

Focusing on cyclist behavior is great for assigning blame in individual crashes (and if you blow a red light and get walloped, or you mow down a pedestrian, no sympathy from me). But to raise it as some sort of systemic issue is absolute BS. If cyclist behavior was a significant systemic cause of crashes, we wouldn't see the safety-in-numbers effect playing out (X more a-hole cyclists would equal X/Y more crashes). When our infrastructure and societal perceptions of bicycling are "saturated", that's when a more linear cyclist to crash relationship will take over. That's when the blame game should begin.

[Jim Titus]

On the other hand, we do have laws.

For the hyper-responsible individual, there is no need to obey speed limits, stop at all stop signs, wait at red lights, or avoid riding on the sidewalk. She will avoid the collisions.

Yet the less skilled will collide with a pedestrian on a sidewalk, or run a stop sign and thereby fail to yield right of way, etc. There is no good way to enforce a law only on those who need it.

So it's reasonable to enforce that no sidewalk rule just for the sake of the few people who need it, and it is reasonable to not enforce it because so few people need it. Without a quantification of risks, costs, and benefits, we really can not know whether these laws need to be enforced.

The safety-in-numbers phenomenon does not necessarily mean that cyclist behavior is not a cause of accidents. As far as I know, no one has really isolated that effect from the infrastructure improvements it brings. And more cyclists can also induce greater skill as more cyclists learn from what they see other people doing. Using full lane, in particular, is common in DC even with relatively unskilled cyclists, while NJ shore cyclists ride at 20 mph along blind 3-ft shoulders next to 10-ft lanes.

[darren]

I have no problem with the laws, and reasonable enforcement of them. I follow them, sometimes sacrificing actual safety for strict compliance. And noncompliance surely results in some crashes. But one of washcycle's points was there's no evidence that there are more noncompliant bicyclists than other travelers. And my point is regardless of cause, the safety in numbers correlation shows actual impacts on safety outcomes with the critical consideration of exposure.

Following the law and traveling responsibly should be a given, for everyone via all modes. But focusing in on our mode's peculiar manifestations of humanity's innate selfishness, and expecting education/enforcement/guilt to result in large-scale change, isn't good policy for improving safety outcomes. Until reliable large scale bike crash typology data shows that our noncompliance is causing most of our own crashes, this safety behavior debate is primarily for appearances, not about trying to make bicycling safer.

[TurbineBlade]

Almost every time one of these kind of stories pops up you get a lot of people (including a lot of cyclists) who relate stories of bad-cyclist behavior like Eric's story above. All I would say is wait until you've been doing this for a few more years. I used to think kind of like that when I was more new to commuting, but after years of seeing all kinds of stuff on the roads I've become pretty numb to it. Most crazy stuff I see I pretty much forget instantly now, and I suspect most commuters get this way over time.

I agree with Wash - the guy was obviously missing a few chromosomes, but this kind of stuff happens and it's no reason to throw-in with the legions of people who hate cyclists.

[Brendan]

Three Rules:

Hurt no one.

Don't get hurt.

Laws of physics trump laws of man.

[scott]

amen brendan

[BlueEyedDevil]

◦"The worst thing for a cycling advocate is to see some other cyclist dangerously blow through a red light."

The operative word here is "dangerously."

[washcycle]

BlueEyedDevil, agreed.