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It's Never a Bicycle Accident

133 points by pharmakom 6y ago

adrianN 6y ago
Victimblaming is par for the course whenever a cyclist gets injured. It's really infuriating. I don't think that blaming the driver is good either, as the article says, most of the time it's a failure of the infrastructure that even made the situation possible. Very few drivers try to actively kill cyclists.
- bogle 6y ago
  You should try cycling in my town. Okay, that's hyperbole but the way the drivers of many vehicles show massive aggression towards cyclists on the roads is narrowing the margin between an accident and a murder.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    It's not very nice to cycle in my town either, but I don't think that they actually intend to cause a crash.
    - masklinn 6y ago
      They may not actually intend to cause a crash but they certainly don’t care if one happens as consequence if their actions.
    - nieve 6y ago
      Having had an SUV drive literally drive up over the curb yelling because I was bicycling on the sidewalk I'm not willing to assume they don't ever intend to hit me. I've also had people swerve at me when I was on the gravel beside the road with a full lane-width shoulder between me and the white lane edge - they had to swerve entirely out of their lane and off the area it was legal for them to drive on to get near me. I think there's a certain sort of road rage that some people see a safe victim for and just cut lose.
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    If you build roads only for cars, drivers will be pissed off when cyclists intrude on “their” space. Just like a cyclist would be pissed off if there were people walking in the bike lane. The structure of the world influences how you feel about people in it. Also definitely a bunch of assholes, but assholes tend to be fairly evenly distributed throughout the world
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > Victimblaming is par for the course whenever a cyclist gets injured. To be fair, the injured party in an accident has no particular relevance to who is at fault.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    At least in my city the statistics pretty clearly show that the drivers are "at fault" most of the time, but as I said, I believe the people responsible for the infrastructure are actually at fault. We could make our roads much safer by building them differently, but for some reason we don't.
    - atoav 6y ago
      Because to spend money on bicycle infrastructure will have to mean breaking the dominance of the car. And although rationally this would be the best thing one could do these days (at least in cities), people absolutely hate to share the road with cyclists. For this to become more acceptable you have to have more motorists that ride the bicycle. And for that to happen you have to have better bicycle infrastructure.
- anoncake 6y ago
  No, not actively. But they took the decision to pilot tons of metal through a populated area. If you could have avoided that at all, e.g. by taking public transport or cycling yourself, and hit someone, you fully deserve the blame.
- Tabular-Iceberg 6y ago
  I dislike cyclists too, but this one is entirely on the drivers. Looking what vehicles are ahead of you and not running into them is not a difficult task. I think VR simulators with eye tracking could be used in the future to screen drivers who lack the required spatial abilities and keep them off the road. There is one class of accidents where I think there is some culpability both on the part of the cyclists and infrastructure makers, though. Where the dedicated bike paths and roads intersect, there is often not enough visibility due to signs, hedges, pylons, etc. to spot some of the faster Lycra types in time. I suppose the well-meaning infrastructure makers assumed everyone is a casual cyclist going slow enough to be spotted in time.
- Laarlf 6y ago
  That is the thing that annoys me the most. You don't walk on train tracks, you don't drive on the sidewalk. Excessive speed differences like these are dangerous. Either accept that cycling on the road is dangerous and work with that mindset or choose a fitting medium to travel for the ground given. On a bike, you are weaker and slower than the cars you share the road with. Being hit by a car won't fix infrastructure.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    Bicycles are vehicles. Vehicles belong on the road. Where else?
    - Laarlf 6y ago
      On the bike lane. There is none? Either well behaved and aware of the circumstances on the road or under the car.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        Every cyclist is inherently more well-behaved than anyone driving a dangerous, noisy and polluting machine driving through a populated area.
        Laarlf 6y ago
        If your oh-so-superior lifestyle is so much better, just move to a country where cars don't exist. Cars and bikes do not belong on the same road without seperation. Mixing different speeds of transportation on the same road is inherently a stupid idea. And if you hold up everyone, don't expect people to like or respect you. Maybe i should start to park in bike lanes. Same issue really.
        anoncake 6y ago
        Why, yes. I pollute less and I'm drastically less likely to kill someone. I don't drive people mad with noise. My lifestyle is superior. Deal with it. > Cars and bikes do not belong on the same road without seperation That is not true. Even inside towns, cars can be driven safely at reasonable speeds of 10-20 km/h.
m_mueller 6y ago
I wish journalism was concerned less with words and more with pointing out how to solve problems. This one in particular seems to be mostly a failure at city planning and lack of drivers education. It seems to me that car companies should be way less powerful in the US than they were 50 years ago (in terms of % of GDP), thus there should be a way out of this. Compare good and bad cities, shame the bad ones. Get insurance firms on board. Have websites compiling these kinds of things into liveability indices. Give good cities trophies or whatever. Once home prices are affected by it, incentives should be clear.
- Jochim 6y ago
  The usage of words affects people's perception of the problem though. The current wording minimises the problem to a degree that most people won't buy in to your solutions.
  - m_mueller 6y ago
    Trying to change words together with trying to push through solutions is IMO totally OK. But only working on the wording is to me a typical symptom of an IMO particularly useless kind of politics. I give you a particularly egregious example coming out of Swiss German: Somewhere after WW2, handicapped people became a big topic. At the same time, the German word for "handicap" apparently started to become a bit of a swear word for some reason ("behindert"). So, politics changed the word to... "invalid". So now, people aren't just being labelled handicaped but actually worthless - thanks, I hate it. And then the word got calcified by introducing the state "invalidity insurance" (Invalidenversicherung) in 1960. Politicians really have a knack for butchering the language.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  Just because a solution isn’t provided doesn’t make criticism any less valid. That’s just a way to silence people. Only plumbers may complain about broken toilets
timmy-turner 6y ago
Another quite common headline technique is "Car hits pedestrian/bicycle/other-car". As if the car was driving itself. It somehow shifts the blame away from the driver to the object, the car. Similar to accepting that software has bugs and thus anything can happen an no one is to blame. It sucks to read this, but its completely sound and logical for those who only drive cars. As more people start using bicycles these days, its slowing shifting though.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  I’m not sure I agree with you about where to place blame. Sure, every driver has a duty to pay attention, and drive with caution - however, the sheer number of people injured by cars suggests there is a systemic problem. Blaming the driver in many incidents is like saying a lottery winner was skilled. The system is broken and has these injuries and deaths baked into it. Dealing with bad driving can only improve things to the limits of the systemic problems.
- atoav 6y ago
  To realize how skewed this really is you just have to imagine a world where "a bicycle hit a pedestrian". You will never read that, it will always be "cyclist" with the implication of "your fault for even using a bike"
ehnto 6y ago
I always tell people I am not a cyclist, I am a bloke who rides a bike. The vilification of a group is how you make harming them palatable to people, and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". I am far sooner a friend, a son, a partner and someone you know, than a cyclist. I don't even qear lycra, and I spend my whole ride trying to be courteous so at least extend me the same courtesy. Also, get off your fucking phone. Yes, you. Are you so basic and selfish you can't spend a second from your skinner box? Yes, at lights too. Driving your car is the most important thing you will do today, at least be present for the occasion. I promise the memes will be there when you get to your destination.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > get off your fucking phone I generally look not so much at the car, but the driver, to see if he sees me. If he doesn't, I get off the road. Also if he's on the phone. If I'm behind the car, I watch for his brake lights and backup lights.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    Likewise, I look for where their head is pointed. More often than it should be, they are enamored by their crotch while barelling along. It amazes me how quickly people shift attention too, some people are back on their phone before they even finish turning at a junction. You could almost be impressed, but then you realise it's just stupity meeting luck on a daily basis.
- wozniacki 6y ago
  and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". Are you saying that not even a smidgen of truth belies such rhetoric? Cyclists roll through signals, intersections & stop signs as if they were mere suggestions and nothing more. I know how entrenched each sides are in this argument - drivers and cyclists. Neither will give an inch. The best way to get cyclists some kind of safety is to INSIST on a full bore licensing, registering, insuring framework for cyclists just as the ones that exist for motor vehicles. Yes some form of license plates, registration, driving licenses, point deductions for bad riding etc. And taxes and fees just like for motor vehicles, whether ICE vehicles or electric vehicles. You cant just hop on a bicycle use infrastructure others are paying for and expect to be treated like equals without paying into the system your fair share. Governments, underwriters, law enforcement & other stake holders just dont have any incentives to respond to your concerns, any other way. This is how the world works. It is in the interest of bicyclists to make it work for them through those ways.
WalterBright 6y ago
Never? Some accidents involving bicycles and cars are the bicycle's fault, some are the car's fault. Some are both, some are neither's.
- adrianN 6y ago
  For none of them it's useful to think of "an accident" because that doesn't lead to actions that prevent future crashes.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    An accident is an unintentional crash, which is not the same thing as not somebody's fault or not preventable.
    - fuzxi 6y ago
      IMO, the word 'accident' implies a lack of negligence.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Google says: "an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury." I'll stick by my remark on it :-)
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    Absolutely. Motorcyclists are actually pretty good at adopting this philosophy, or at least the ones I know. Of course motorcycles (for the most part) have the advantage of being able to out accelerate most cars on the road so they have some extra options.
- brnt 6y ago
  Dutch law has a nice solution: liability correlates with weight. The more weight you put on the street, the more explaining you have to do, because you chose to potentially cause more damage. In a collision, the weightiest vehicle therefore is by default liable, unless they can prove otherwise. This means that in bicycle-car accidents, drivers almost always pay, and in bicycles pedestrian accident the cyclist.
11235813213455 6y ago
Totally agreed, above all as a full-time cyclist I've also been struck by behind, on my left arm, by a car driving fast. Couldn't use my arm for 1 month Small nitpicking: I just don't like the final sentence comparison with > "That’s not a bike accident more than getting bit by a shark is a swimming accident" Sharks do it intentionally, even if that's probably often out of confusion with other preys (they don't like human flesh), it's a natural thing as much as a rhino could charge you, a croco or a mosquito could also bit you. Cars however, is one of the many artificial things in this over-consumption society. I'd have more compared it like: > That’s not a bike accident more than getting shot by a bullet while walking in the street is an accident
albertgoeswoof 6y ago
One of the linked accidents in the article looks terrible, a man is cycling along the road, a bus overtakes him and clips his handlebars, knocking him to the ground and then running over his torso with the rear wheels of the bus. What a lot of people don’t realise is that you can’t overtake bicycles in a single lane. If there’s no cycle path/markings a bicycle takes up the full lane for exactly this reason. Bicycles can’t cycle close to parked cars due to passenger doors opening up randomly, and the sides of the road by the curb is generally not maintained enough to cycle in. Cars/buses/trucks have to wait until they can safely overtake.
- sneak 6y ago
  For this reason I always try to drive in the center of the lane or even in the left tire-track of a lane when cycling in places without a shoulder or dedicated bike lane; that is, make it clear they can't just scoot past me on the left by taking as much of the lane as possible. That's also super dangerous because car drivers are aggressive dicks who seem to hate anyone on a bike, so I generally won't cycle in places without bike lanes or shoulders unless it's like 4am and the roads are totally abandoned, but I'd rather risk getting deliberately rammed by a car than accidentally squished between lanes.
  - AYBABTME 6y ago
    Not sure why you're downvoted, I do similar exactly because otherwise cars pass me by a mere few centimetres. If I'm in the middle of the lane, they can't unless they're really set on pushing me off, and then at least I have a buffer of space to my right that I can verve into. If you stick to the side of the road, you make it the default decision for people (many of which I'm sure might not if they knew better) to pass too close to you, plus you've got no buffer or escape route. The thing is most people don't understand that putting yourself in the middle of the lane, as a bike, is the safest thing to do for everyone. Motorcycles are taught to do exactly that: position themselves so that they positively take their lane.
    - prower 6y ago
anovikov 6y ago
Absolutely untrue. I am not a cyclist but i have about once in 3 months or so, a near accident where i just barely avoid crushing or rolling over some crazy cyclist that falls on his damn bike right under my car or drives from round the corner at full speed without damn looking anywhere. However careful i am trying to be it's just a matter of luck that i didn't kill anyone (and i once scratched my car and the other guy's a bit avoiding that in the last split second, once). And i totally can't see how it is my fault. At the very best, they are a hinderance because cautious people have to completely avoid a lane where one cyclist is driving on the edge of, thus slowing down the entire car traffic. Bicycles are dangerous and those cyclists don't know what they are doing, they are a danger to themselves and others - because i am sure quite a few innocent people went to jail accidentally killing them.
- crygin 6y ago
  > Bicycles are dangerous... It's an interesting statement, given that every example you gave is about a driver of a car about to kill a cyclist. It seems that it's the cars, or rather, the drivers, that are dangerous.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I'm both a cyclist and a driver. I regularly see middle-aged cyclists riding without the sense of a 6 year old. I don't get it. I also avoid driving in residential streets if I can avoid it because of kids on bikes, and I know they're crazy. I did crazy stuff on a bike as a kid, and barely survived.
- railton 6y ago
  In the UK the majority of drivers who kill cyclists do not go to prison https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-28345522 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-28345522 It's a common bit of dark humour in the cycling community that if you want to get away with murder, make sure the victim is riding a bike at the time.
- spikeheap 6y ago
  Reminds me of the saying: “If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day long, you’re the asshole”
folex 6y ago
It's so strange to have this "areas of death" in our towns. You turn the wrong way - you're dead. You saw the wrong color - dead. I understand that it takes some evolution to solve that, but it's SO. STRANGE. Imagine people who never saw that concept - high speed (>30mph) roads near pedestrians. And then someone comes and says "Let's build these danger zones with custom rules, they will allow people to leave public transport for personal vehicles. And if you step it wrong, you might get killed!". Would these people agree? Would they take it as a natural idea? Insane.
- joeyjojo 6y ago
  Looked at a billboard designed to grab your attention - dead.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    Put that billboard up – promoted, probably.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure you could frame anything as it's negative externalities and make it sound crazy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_crisis_of_1894 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_crisis_of...
- sfjailbird 6y ago
  Agreed, and I believe people of the future will be astounded that we used to accept that public streets were killing fields for small kids, animals and the inattentive. (Not to mention having a significant portion of the area taken up by idle vehicles, but I digress.) I believe the solution will be autonomous cars, which are not only (overly) cautious, but can pick you up or drop you off, and then scuttle off to underground parking or to pick up the next person.
conradludgate 6y ago
To take some wisdom from HotFuzz https://youtu.be/puK5CwThaq4 https://youtu.be/puK5CwThaq4 I'm a cyclist and I've had a few incidents in the past. Some of them my fault, some of them not. But calling them accidents is very damaging
sjaak 6y ago
To all the outlawed cyclists I'd like to say: show your fellow countrymen how it's done in the salvation state of the Netherlands. Cyclists own the roads here, see for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8
- Moru 6y ago
  Watched it and still see a car swerving around on the wrong side of the street against trafic crossing in between bikes. I'm so happy living in northern Sweden with much less trafic. People are getting more agressive though, I have had drivers of cars honk their horns when I cross roads where I had right of way, or driving fast to get over crossings before pedestrians. The snow piles at the side of roads and crossings have been higher than people this winter and drivers don't care, they still drive fast around corners on streets that are missing the curb and some of the road because of the snowpiles. The side of the roads are also more dangerous because of the ice buildup of melting snow so can be very dangerous not to bike in the middle of the street. Thankfully we have bike roads almost everywhere.
jacquesm 6y ago
Just the other day here a guy in an SUV passed through a cloud of cyclists pedal to the metal during the morning rush hour when a lot of local kids cycle to school either with their parents or alone. I confronted him a little bit further on (when he had to slow down again, which is one reason why such hurrying makes no sense, it's just too busy). His motivation: none of the kids put out their hand. So that carries a potential death penalty these days, in case you weren't aware of it, and this is supposedly the most bike friendly country in the world. His own ~7 year old daughter was in the passenger seat, I wonder how he would feel if it was his kid on the road with a person like him zooming by in an 1800 Kg vehicle. People like him are the reason I still ride with my kids to school in the morning. I called the police and reported the asshole for reckless driving, they said they'd follow up on it which I trust they really will. Driving is a privilege, and I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.
- clairity 6y ago
  > “...I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.” that’s too punitive, but i’d be quite happy with a quickly escalating, income-/wealth-adjusted fine. so like 0.01% of yearly income on first offense, 0.1% on second offense, 1% on third offense, or something like that, on a rolling 12-month basis, where you can voluntarily give up you license for 3 months to reset the scale of you can’t/don’t want to pay. driving without a license could reinstate the scale and invoke the next level of fine on top.
  - caslon 6y ago
    How is it too punitive? They're operating a massive structure of (usually literally) flaming steel. If they can't consider the safety of people who very plausibly will be their victims without constant vigilance, they really shouldn't be driving. Doubly so for pickups, which are now so large that they offer a near-nonexistent risk on the driver's end for poor driving and nearly-certain serious-injury-and-or-death for anyone caught up against it.
    - clairity 6y ago
DocTomoe 6y ago
Is it, though? I would understand this like the "more guilty" party was being named - the one that caused the accident. Where I live, the newspapers print rather graphic photos of particularly bad car-on-car accidents when the happen locally. Part of that is sensationalism, sure - but part of it is making people aware that bad accidents actually do happen, even if you never individually were involved in one, and that you should think about when you made bad decisions that could have lead to accidents in the past - it makes you, subconsciously, show more attention the next few times you drive. While this may not have been the case in this particular accident, the number of times I see cyclists' complete disregard for traffic rules and thus in effect their own safety is too high. Generally painting cyclists as traffic victims absolves them from any wrongdoing, makes them pay less attention, and may thus lead to more accidents.
matsemann 6y ago
Yes! This one is also great: "How We Talk About Drivers Hitting Cyclists" https://www.outsideonline.com/2392955/lets-talk-about-drivers-hitting-cyclists https://www.outsideonline.com/2392955/lets-talk-about-driver... Media always portray it as a passive car just happened to hit a cyclist. But that shapes the discussion. It was an action by a driver. Not “he was struck from behind by an automobile while riding his bicycle a mere block from his home.”, as the article says. The cyclist wasn't struck. It wasn't by an automobile. It was a driver (actively) hitting him. When it's framed like that instead, one can actually start improving and understand why it happened and try to avoid it in the future. Instead of portraying it like a freak accident like a meteor just happened to strike and there is really nothing to be done.
jl6 6y ago
The vast majority of cyclists are also drivers, while the majority of drivers are not cyclists, so I think it’s quite reasonable to expect the cyclist to have the more rounded perspective on road safety. The only cyclists I see behaving recklessly on the road are groups of teenage boys, and that’s more to do with them being teenage boys than being cyclists.
nielsole 6y ago
Other phrases (at least in german media): "cyclist injures _himself_ badly" "The cyclist wore no helmet" (as if that changes fault in an accident) The car "couldn't stop in time" (e.g. for a red light before hitting a cyclist/pedestrian in the intersection) When the cyclist is struck at night the car driver sometimes is quoted with the claim the bike had no lights. While sometimes that may be right, the car driver obviously didn't see the cyclist (otherwise they wouldn't have run them over) and the light is often damaged in the accident. The cyclist on a stretcher is not available to counter that claim leaving a biased report.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > the light is often damaged in the accident You can tell if the light was on when it was damaged, by examining the filament. They do this in airplane accident investigations to see which panel lamps were on when it crashed. This doesn't work for LED lights, though. Just incandescent.
  - aembleton 6y ago
    Do any cyclists still use incandescent bulbs?
yyy888sss 6y ago
Bikes are similar to pedestrians not cars. In bike friendly places such as the Netherlands or Cambridge UK cyclists and those on foot share the same part of the city. It helps in these places that almost car drivers also use a bike to get around so they are more aware, but the main thing is designing the cities so that high speed 2-40 ton vehicles are totally separated from low speed 50-100kg cyclists and pedestrians.
patrickdavey 6y ago
Willy May, He died maintaining his right of way, He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong. Never argue with a bus, and never trust a driver that hasn't looked you in the eye, and even then be wary.
diebeforei485 6y ago
If there is no dedicated bike lane (or if it is blocked by a taxi or FedEx truck), I usually take the entire car lane. Cars tend to pass way too close, and taking the lane (which is completely legal where I live) means I have some space to move a little bit away from a car while it's passing too close.
kumaranv 6y ago
It's the same story everywhere. Cyclists are blamed not only for their mistakes but for others' mistakes as well. When an accident happened, a cyclist is blamed irrespective of whoever is at mistake. I have seen it first-hand multiple times. Also, people casually say that why are these cyclists ride on busy roads?
globular-toast 6y ago
I firmly believe that nobody should be using the road in a car until they have learnt to use the road on a bicycle. Pilots don't learn to fly in airliners. Captains don't learn to sail in ocean liners. Why on earth do we let people operate machinery weighing multiple tons and capable of high speeds on the public highway without having anywhere near the same level of experience? 99% of car operators on the road have zero experience of the road outside of a car. A person on a bike is still a person, but a person in a car is a car. They can't feel the road. They hate travelling under the speed limit because there's a tank of fossil fuel and they only need to squeeze a pedal to effortlessly ascend hills or battle the wind. This is why they will never treat cyclists as people and with respect.
numlock86 6y ago
A lot of comments point out situations with car drivers not being considerate of cyclists. Not to defend car drivers, but you could interchange car drivers with cyclists and cyclists with pedestrians and you would end up with people giving the same anecdotes. You see cyclists speeding through "walk only" areas just as you see cars ignoring bike lanes or giving space to cyclists in general. You'll see just as much people on the phone or even texting while riding a bike, too. Et cetera. You might argue a bike hitting a pedestrian probably won't be as lethal as two tonnes of SUV hitting a cyclist, but that's a lame justification curled in the deepest realms of double standards. There's plenty of examples when cyclists didn't care enough about cars because the car is supposed to act as the cyclist is apparently clearly in a disadvantage. Same with pedestrians and cyclists, again. Again, not to defend or blame anyone. I am driving my car maybe two times per month and I am mostly on bike, foot or public transport. But from my experience you just have assholes with egocentric justifications and reasoning on all sides.
- matsemann 6y ago
  But what is your point? Your whole post is meaningless, it's just useless centrism with fluffy words about "both sides" in order to exonerate drivers.
  - numlock86 6y ago
    The point is that comments (in regard to the article) are littered with anecdotes about cyclists getting in danger because of cars. It's a one-sided view. There's problems on both sides equally. Conflicts of this kind are waved off as "the driver was an asshole", which might be correct in single cases, but misses the whole point of the actual problem completely.
    - matsemann 6y ago
      > There's problems on both sides equally. No, it's not. A driver is driving something lethal that kills thousands each year. Don't try to pretend a cyclist being remotely close to a driver when it comes to severity of the actions. It's not a "one-sided view", it's the truth that drivers are far more dangerous than cyclists. If 99 scientists says something and one quack says something else, the truth isn't somewhere in the middle, you know. > but misses the whole point of the actual problem completely True, that cyclists need better infrastructure and similar stuff. What also misses the point is to start devil's advocating that "cyclists are just as bad".
ic0n0cl4st 6y ago
Cycling is almost one of those politically charged conversations which should be banned from HN. As a bicycle commuter and enthusiast (since somehow cyclist is a dirty word) I’ve long since learned that any online discussion inevitably devolves into a sociopathic blame game. I will say, however, that cost is one of the primary issues which is rarely addressed. In the USA the dollar is king and it shows in all aspects of our lives. Compared to automobiles, Bicycles are too cheap for their own good. America would have good cycling infrastructure If bicycles cost $20k to purchase, $5k per year to fuel, $500 to register, $1,500 year to insure and if the bicycling lobby spent hundreds of millions of dollars bribing politicians yearly. Drivers (why isn’t driver a dirty word?), at least in the USA, have a clear sense of superiority and entitlement which drives (pun intended) their sociopathic behavior. “I spent $50,000 on my Tesla and thousands more on licensing and maintenance! That money gives me the right to get back to my bedroom community in San Mateo as quickly as possible, fuck you and your 2-wheels, i’ll run you over with zero legal consequences” is a common attitude. The USA will never get dutch-quality cycling infrastructure until bicycle riders spend driver-level money.
markvdb 6y ago
US culture and infrastructure seem to be super car focused and almost universally toxic to people riding bikes. That looks like a problem to me. Could some focus on the car side of the problem help solve this with less expenditure of political capital? Requiring proper driver education for example doesn't require people to show empathy to these weird creatures they've never met - cyclists. I'm certainly not a US culture expert, but that might be one feasible baby step in certain US states.
softgrow 6y ago
In transport academia "crash" vs "accident" is contested. I'm a "crash" person but I'm lampooned by "accident" people for it. It's the wrong word or maybe it doesn't matter. There are even people who argue for some are "crash" and some are "accident". The "accident" example quoted is a motorcyclist who was struck in the face (not wearing a full-face helmet) by a bird then rode onto the wrong side and struck another motorcyclist, at least one died. So was it the bird's fault, ie. an unpredictable and without human involvement, or should the first motorcyclist had a full face helmet? My view is that "accident" implies an act-of-god that couldn't be prevented, whereas a "crash" is an impact, there is no doubt that an impact occurred. If you write off a "crash" as an "accident" you are tempted to not investigate and try and learn from it. The more you dig deeper into "accidents" is you find they some are not. With a decreasing number of fatal crashes, in my Australian state but the same number of police investigating they are starting to find (and prove) that some crashes are deliberate. What has long been suspected of the possibility of suicide and murder by head-on crash is proving to be real. Words can be important.
- SauciestGNU 6y ago
  Two thoughts here. First, why do we need to choose between "crash" or "accident"? Why can't journalists be more descriptive, even in headlines, by saying something like "bird strike", "single vehicle collision", etc? Second, there's a saying with the motorcyclists I personally know, "full face or no face", meaning in the event of a mishap, helmets that provide less coverage are far less likely to protect the rider. I don't think we should mandate what type of helmet people wear, or wearing a helmet at all, but assigning some responsibility to the rider who got hit where a full face helmet would have protected might be appropriate.
- murphyslab 6y ago
  There's a similar idea that I've heard since about 2010 about subtly-influencing differences in how a human language appears to impact cognition. > Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn't remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: "The vase broke itself," rather than "John broke the vase." [0] Here's a figure from the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20210319233610/https://www.economist.com/img/b/640/480/90/sites/default/files/fausey-1.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20210319233610/https://www.econo... The difference between "crash" (there's likely a human agent) and "accident" (there is no human agent) seems to be the same. On the other hand, in my experience from editing the professional writing of colleagues, there's often subtle implications from the chose of words. We tend to have so many different options in English, but two words never really mean the same thing because each carries different connotations either from history or from usage. Yet many readers aren't quite aware of those implications. I'm not sure if the implication does not exist for them, or if they are simply not aware of how it might colour their perception. [0] "Lost in translation?", The Economist, 2010-07-29, https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/07/29/lost-in-translation https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/07/29/lost-in-transla...
deleted 6y ago
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EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago
My little daughter was hit by a bicycle riding on the sidewalk at high speed, leaving her with a permanent scar on her face. Is it a "bicycle accident"? There are millions of criminals on electric scooters and bicycles endangering the public in the cities.
- fho 6y ago
  > Is it a "bicycle accident"? Yes, but no. All of these accidents have basically nothing to do with the mode of transportation. It's a "being reckless accident". And you'll find recklessness in basically every mode of transportation ... from roller skates, over bikes, cars and even airplanes. And, without wanting to defend the reckless, it's kind of understandable ... tail-gaiting the car in front does not go wrong 99.9% of the time. Clipping traffic on a bike does not go wrong 99.9% of the time. Going down the hill on rollerskates does not go wrong 99.9% of the time. I understand why people are being reckless ... there is no consequence 99.9% of the time ... until ... that last time ... somebody gets hurt.
cbHXBY1D 6y ago
I crashed my bicycle just yesterday going 25mph. It started raining in the East Bay so I took the fast route home, down a winding hill with no room for cars to pass cyclists. The SUV behind me was honking and passed me, barely side swiping me. I reacted by jumping to the decaying road shoulder where there dead branches and a large crack which engulfed my front wheel. I went flying (according to my Garmin) at 24mph and probably got 15 feet of distance. No broken bones though - just bruises, rashes, and cuts.

133 points by pharmakom 6y ago

Victimblaming is par for the course whenever a cyclist gets injured. It's really infuriating. I don't think that blaming the driver is good either, as the article says, most of the time it's a failure of the infrastructure that even made the situation possible. Very few drivers try to actively kill cyclists.

bogle 6y ago
You should try cycling in my town. Okay, that's hyperbole but the way the drivers of many vehicles show massive aggression towards cyclists on the roads is narrowing the margin between an accident and a murder.
- adrianN 6y ago
  It's not very nice to cycle in my town either, but I don't think that they actually intend to cause a crash.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    They may not actually intend to cause a crash but they certainly don’t care if one happens as consequence if their actions.
  - nieve 6y ago
    Having had an SUV drive literally drive up over the curb yelling because I was bicycling on the sidewalk I'm not willing to assume they don't ever intend to hit me. I've also had people swerve at me when I was on the gravel beside the road with a full lane-width shoulder between me and the white lane edge - they had to swerve entirely out of their lane and off the area it was legal for them to drive on to get near me. I think there's a certain sort of road rage that some people see a safe victim for and just cut lose.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  If you build roads only for cars, drivers will be pissed off when cyclists intrude on “their” space. Just like a cyclist would be pissed off if there were people walking in the bike lane. The structure of the world influences how you feel about people in it. Also definitely a bunch of assholes, but assholes tend to be fairly evenly distributed throughout the world
WalterBright 6y ago
> Victimblaming is par for the course whenever a cyclist gets injured. To be fair, the injured party in an accident has no particular relevance to who is at fault.
- adrianN 6y ago
  At least in my city the statistics pretty clearly show that the drivers are "at fault" most of the time, but as I said, I believe the people responsible for the infrastructure are actually at fault. We could make our roads much safer by building them differently, but for some reason we don't.
  - atoav 6y ago
    Because to spend money on bicycle infrastructure will have to mean breaking the dominance of the car. And although rationally this would be the best thing one could do these days (at least in cities), people absolutely hate to share the road with cyclists. For this to become more acceptable you have to have more motorists that ride the bicycle. And for that to happen you have to have better bicycle infrastructure.
anoncake 6y ago
No, not actively. But they took the decision to pilot tons of metal through a populated area. If you could have avoided that at all, e.g. by taking public transport or cycling yourself, and hit someone, you fully deserve the blame.
Tabular-Iceberg 6y ago
I dislike cyclists too, but this one is entirely on the drivers. Looking what vehicles are ahead of you and not running into them is not a difficult task. I think VR simulators with eye tracking could be used in the future to screen drivers who lack the required spatial abilities and keep them off the road. There is one class of accidents where I think there is some culpability both on the part of the cyclists and infrastructure makers, though. Where the dedicated bike paths and roads intersect, there is often not enough visibility due to signs, hedges, pylons, etc. to spot some of the faster Lycra types in time. I suppose the well-meaning infrastructure makers assumed everyone is a casual cyclist going slow enough to be spotted in time.
Laarlf 6y ago
That is the thing that annoys me the most. You don't walk on train tracks, you don't drive on the sidewalk. Excessive speed differences like these are dangerous. Either accept that cycling on the road is dangerous and work with that mindset or choose a fitting medium to travel for the ground given. On a bike, you are weaker and slower than the cars you share the road with. Being hit by a car won't fix infrastructure.
- anoncake 6y ago
  Bicycles are vehicles. Vehicles belong on the road. Where else?
  - Laarlf 6y ago
    On the bike lane. There is none? Either well behaved and aware of the circumstances on the road or under the car.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      Every cyclist is inherently more well-behaved than anyone driving a dangerous, noisy and polluting machine driving through a populated area.
      - Laarlf 6y ago
        If your oh-so-superior lifestyle is so much better, just move to a country where cars don't exist. Cars and bikes do not belong on the same road without seperation. Mixing different speeds of transportation on the same road is inherently a stupid idea. And if you hold up everyone, don't expect people to like or respect you. Maybe i should start to park in bike lanes. Same issue really.
        anoncake 6y ago
        Why, yes. I pollute less and I'm drastically less likely to kill someone. I don't drive people mad with noise. My lifestyle is superior. Deal with it. > Cars and bikes do not belong on the same road without seperation That is not true. Even inside towns, cars can be driven safely at reasonable speeds of 10-20 km/h.

m_mueller 6y ago

I wish journalism was concerned less with words and more with pointing out how to solve problems. This one in particular seems to be mostly a failure at city planning and lack of drivers education. It seems to me that car companies should be way less powerful in the US than they were 50 years ago (in terms of % of GDP), thus there should be a way out of this. Compare good and bad cities, shame the bad ones. Get insurance firms on board. Have websites compiling these kinds of things into liveability indices. Give good cities trophies or whatever. Once home prices are affected by it, incentives should be clear.

Jochim 6y ago
The usage of words affects people's perception of the problem though. The current wording minimises the problem to a degree that most people won't buy in to your solutions.
- m_mueller 6y ago
  Trying to change words together with trying to push through solutions is IMO totally OK. But only working on the wording is to me a typical symptom of an IMO particularly useless kind of politics. I give you a particularly egregious example coming out of Swiss German: Somewhere after WW2, handicapped people became a big topic. At the same time, the German word for "handicap" apparently started to become a bit of a swear word for some reason ("behindert"). So, politics changed the word to... "invalid". So now, people aren't just being labelled handicaped but actually worthless - thanks, I hate it. And then the word got calcified by introducing the state "invalidity insurance" (Invalidenversicherung) in 1960. Politicians really have a knack for butchering the language.
ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
Just because a solution isn’t provided doesn’t make criticism any less valid. That’s just a way to silence people. Only plumbers may complain about broken toilets

timmy-turner 6y ago

Another quite common headline technique is "Car hits pedestrian/bicycle/other-car". As if the car was driving itself. It somehow shifts the blame away from the driver to the object, the car. Similar to accepting that software has bugs and thus anything can happen an no one is to blame. It sucks to read this, but its completely sound and logical for those who only drive cars. As more people start using bicycles these days, its slowing shifting though.

kennywinker 6y ago
I’m not sure I agree with you about where to place blame. Sure, every driver has a duty to pay attention, and drive with caution - however, the sheer number of people injured by cars suggests there is a systemic problem. Blaming the driver in many incidents is like saying a lottery winner was skilled. The system is broken and has these injuries and deaths baked into it. Dealing with bad driving can only improve things to the limits of the systemic problems.
atoav 6y ago
To realize how skewed this really is you just have to imagine a world where "a bicycle hit a pedestrian". You will never read that, it will always be "cyclist" with the implication of "your fault for even using a bike"

ehnto 6y ago

I always tell people I am not a cyclist, I am a bloke who rides a bike. The vilification of a group is how you make harming them palatable to people, and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". I am far sooner a friend, a son, a partner and someone you know, than a cyclist. I don't even qear lycra, and I spend my whole ride trying to be courteous so at least extend me the same courtesy. Also, get off your fucking phone. Yes, you. Are you so basic and selfish you can't spend a second from your skinner box? Yes, at lights too. Driving your car is the most important thing you will do today, at least be present for the occasion. I promise the memes will be there when you get to your destination.

WalterBright 6y ago
> get off your fucking phone I generally look not so much at the car, but the driver, to see if he sees me. If he doesn't, I get off the road. Also if he's on the phone. If I'm behind the car, I watch for his brake lights and backup lights.
- ehnto 6y ago
  Likewise, I look for where their head is pointed. More often than it should be, they are enamored by their crotch while barelling along. It amazes me how quickly people shift attention too, some people are back on their phone before they even finish turning at a junction. You could almost be impressed, but then you realise it's just stupity meeting luck on a daily basis.
wozniacki 6y ago
and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". Are you saying that not even a smidgen of truth belies such rhetoric? Cyclists roll through signals, intersections & stop signs as if they were mere suggestions and nothing more. I know how entrenched each sides are in this argument - drivers and cyclists. Neither will give an inch. The best way to get cyclists some kind of safety is to INSIST on a full bore licensing, registering, insuring framework for cyclists just as the ones that exist for motor vehicles. Yes some form of license plates, registration, driving licenses, point deductions for bad riding etc. And taxes and fees just like for motor vehicles, whether ICE vehicles or electric vehicles. You cant just hop on a bicycle use infrastructure others are paying for and expect to be treated like equals without paying into the system your fair share. Governments, underwriters, law enforcement & other stake holders just dont have any incentives to respond to your concerns, any other way. This is how the world works. It is in the interest of bicyclists to make it work for them through those ways.

WalterBright 6y ago

Never? Some accidents involving bicycles and cars are the bicycle's fault, some are the car's fault. Some are both, some are neither's.

adrianN 6y ago
For none of them it's useful to think of "an accident" because that doesn't lead to actions that prevent future crashes.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  An accident is an unintentional crash, which is not the same thing as not somebody's fault or not preventable.
  - fuzxi 6y ago
    IMO, the word 'accident' implies a lack of negligence.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Google says: "an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury." I'll stick by my remark on it :-)
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Absolutely. Motorcyclists are actually pretty good at adopting this philosophy, or at least the ones I know. Of course motorcycles (for the most part) have the advantage of being able to out accelerate most cars on the road so they have some extra options.
brnt 6y ago
Dutch law has a nice solution: liability correlates with weight. The more weight you put on the street, the more explaining you have to do, because you chose to potentially cause more damage. In a collision, the weightiest vehicle therefore is by default liable, unless they can prove otherwise. This means that in bicycle-car accidents, drivers almost always pay, and in bicycles pedestrian accident the cyclist.

11235813213455 6y ago

Totally agreed, above all as a full-time cyclist I've also been struck by behind, on my left arm, by a car driving fast. Couldn't use my arm for 1 month Small nitpicking: I just don't like the final sentence comparison with > "That’s not a bike accident more than getting bit by a shark is a swimming accident" Sharks do it intentionally, even if that's probably often out of confusion with other preys (they don't like human flesh), it's a natural thing as much as a rhino could charge you, a croco or a mosquito could also bit you. Cars however, is one of the many artificial things in this over-consumption society. I'd have more compared it like: > That’s not a bike accident more than getting shot by a bullet while walking in the street is an accident

albertgoeswoof 6y ago

One of the linked accidents in the article looks terrible, a man is cycling along the road, a bus overtakes him and clips his handlebars, knocking him to the ground and then running over his torso with the rear wheels of the bus. What a lot of people don’t realise is that you can’t overtake bicycles in a single lane. If there’s no cycle path/markings a bicycle takes up the full lane for exactly this reason. Bicycles can’t cycle close to parked cars due to passenger doors opening up randomly, and the sides of the road by the curb is generally not maintained enough to cycle in. Cars/buses/trucks have to wait until they can safely overtake.

sneak 6y ago
For this reason I always try to drive in the center of the lane or even in the left tire-track of a lane when cycling in places without a shoulder or dedicated bike lane; that is, make it clear they can't just scoot past me on the left by taking as much of the lane as possible. That's also super dangerous because car drivers are aggressive dicks who seem to hate anyone on a bike, so I generally won't cycle in places without bike lanes or shoulders unless it's like 4am and the roads are totally abandoned, but I'd rather risk getting deliberately rammed by a car than accidentally squished between lanes.
- AYBABTME 6y ago
  Not sure why you're downvoted, I do similar exactly because otherwise cars pass me by a mere few centimetres. If I'm in the middle of the lane, they can't unless they're really set on pushing me off, and then at least I have a buffer of space to my right that I can verve into. If you stick to the side of the road, you make it the default decision for people (many of which I'm sure might not if they knew better) to pass too close to you, plus you've got no buffer or escape route. The thing is most people don't understand that putting yourself in the middle of the lane, as a bike, is the safest thing to do for everyone. Motorcycles are taught to do exactly that: position themselves so that they positively take their lane.
  - prower 6y ago

anovikov 6y ago

Absolutely untrue. I am not a cyclist but i have about once in 3 months or so, a near accident where i just barely avoid crushing or rolling over some crazy cyclist that falls on his damn bike right under my car or drives from round the corner at full speed without damn looking anywhere. However careful i am trying to be it's just a matter of luck that i didn't kill anyone (and i once scratched my car and the other guy's a bit avoiding that in the last split second, once). And i totally can't see how it is my fault. At the very best, they are a hinderance because cautious people have to completely avoid a lane where one cyclist is driving on the edge of, thus slowing down the entire car traffic. Bicycles are dangerous and those cyclists don't know what they are doing, they are a danger to themselves and others - because i am sure quite a few innocent people went to jail accidentally killing them.

crygin 6y ago
> Bicycles are dangerous... It's an interesting statement, given that every example you gave is about a driver of a car about to kill a cyclist. It seems that it's the cars, or rather, the drivers, that are dangerous.
WalterBright 6y ago
I'm both a cyclist and a driver. I regularly see middle-aged cyclists riding without the sense of a 6 year old. I don't get it. I also avoid driving in residential streets if I can avoid it because of kids on bikes, and I know they're crazy. I did crazy stuff on a bike as a kid, and barely survived.
railton 6y ago
In the UK the majority of drivers who kill cyclists do not go to prison https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-28345522 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-28345522 It's a common bit of dark humour in the cycling community that if you want to get away with murder, make sure the victim is riding a bike at the time.
spikeheap 6y ago
Reminds me of the saying: “If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day long, you’re the asshole”

folex 6y ago

It's so strange to have this "areas of death" in our towns. You turn the wrong way - you're dead. You saw the wrong color - dead. I understand that it takes some evolution to solve that, but it's SO. STRANGE. Imagine people who never saw that concept - high speed (>30mph) roads near pedestrians. And then someone comes and says "Let's build these danger zones with custom rules, they will allow people to leave public transport for personal vehicles. And if you step it wrong, you might get killed!". Would these people agree? Would they take it as a natural idea? Insane.

joeyjojo 6y ago
Looked at a billboard designed to grab your attention - dead.
- anoncake 6y ago
  Put that billboard up – promoted, probably.
VBprogrammer 6y ago
I'm pretty sure you could frame anything as it's negative externalities and make it sound crazy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_crisis_of_1894 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_crisis_of...
sfjailbird 6y ago
Agreed, and I believe people of the future will be astounded that we used to accept that public streets were killing fields for small kids, animals and the inattentive. (Not to mention having a significant portion of the area taken up by idle vehicles, but I digress.) I believe the solution will be autonomous cars, which are not only (overly) cautious, but can pick you up or drop you off, and then scuttle off to underground parking or to pick up the next person.

conradludgate 6y ago

To take some wisdom from HotFuzz https://youtu.be/puK5CwThaq4 https://youtu.be/puK5CwThaq4 I'm a cyclist and I've had a few incidents in the past. Some of them my fault, some of them not. But calling them accidents is very damaging

sjaak 6y ago

To all the outlawed cyclists I'd like to say: show your fellow countrymen how it's done in the salvation state of the Netherlands. Cyclists own the roads here, see for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8

Moru 6y ago
Watched it and still see a car swerving around on the wrong side of the street against trafic crossing in between bikes. I'm so happy living in northern Sweden with much less trafic. People are getting more agressive though, I have had drivers of cars honk their horns when I cross roads where I had right of way, or driving fast to get over crossings before pedestrians. The snow piles at the side of roads and crossings have been higher than people this winter and drivers don't care, they still drive fast around corners on streets that are missing the curb and some of the road because of the snowpiles. The side of the roads are also more dangerous because of the ice buildup of melting snow so can be very dangerous not to bike in the middle of the street. Thankfully we have bike roads almost everywhere.

jacquesm 6y ago

Just the other day here a guy in an SUV passed through a cloud of cyclists pedal to the metal during the morning rush hour when a lot of local kids cycle to school either with their parents or alone. I confronted him a little bit further on (when he had to slow down again, which is one reason why such hurrying makes no sense, it's just too busy). His motivation: none of the kids put out their hand. So that carries a potential death penalty these days, in case you weren't aware of it, and this is supposedly the most bike friendly country in the world. His own ~7 year old daughter was in the passenger seat, I wonder how he would feel if it was his kid on the road with a person like him zooming by in an 1800 Kg vehicle. People like him are the reason I still ride with my kids to school in the morning. I called the police and reported the asshole for reckless driving, they said they'd follow up on it which I trust they really will. Driving is a privilege, and I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.

clairity 6y ago
> “...I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.” that’s too punitive, but i’d be quite happy with a quickly escalating, income-/wealth-adjusted fine. so like 0.01% of yearly income on first offense, 0.1% on second offense, 1% on third offense, or something like that, on a rolling 12-month basis, where you can voluntarily give up you license for 3 months to reset the scale of you can’t/don’t want to pay. driving without a license could reinstate the scale and invoke the next level of fine on top.
- caslon 6y ago
  How is it too punitive? They're operating a massive structure of (usually literally) flaming steel. If they can't consider the safety of people who very plausibly will be their victims without constant vigilance, they really shouldn't be driving. Doubly so for pickups, which are now so large that they offer a near-nonexistent risk on the driver's end for poor driving and nearly-certain serious-injury-and-or-death for anyone caught up against it.
  - clairity 6y ago

DocTomoe 6y ago

Is it, though? I would understand this like the "more guilty" party was being named - the one that caused the accident. Where I live, the newspapers print rather graphic photos of particularly bad car-on-car accidents when the happen locally. Part of that is sensationalism, sure - but part of it is making people aware that bad accidents actually do happen, even if you never individually were involved in one, and that you should think about when you made bad decisions that could have lead to accidents in the past - it makes you, subconsciously, show more attention the next few times you drive. While this may not have been the case in this particular accident, the number of times I see cyclists' complete disregard for traffic rules and thus in effect their own safety is too high. Generally painting cyclists as traffic victims absolves them from any wrongdoing, makes them pay less attention, and may thus lead to more accidents.

matsemann 6y ago

Yes! This one is also great: "How We Talk About Drivers Hitting Cyclists" https://www.outsideonline.com/2392955/lets-talk-about-drivers-hitting-cyclists https://www.outsideonline.com/2392955/lets-talk-about-driver... Media always portray it as a passive car just happened to hit a cyclist. But that shapes the discussion. It was an action by a driver. Not “he was struck from behind by an automobile while riding his bicycle a mere block from his home.”, as the article says. The cyclist wasn't struck. It wasn't by an automobile. It was a driver (actively) hitting him. When it's framed like that instead, one can actually start improving and understand why it happened and try to avoid it in the future. Instead of portraying it like a freak accident like a meteor just happened to strike and there is really nothing to be done.

jl6 6y ago

The vast majority of cyclists are also drivers, while the majority of drivers are not cyclists, so I think it’s quite reasonable to expect the cyclist to have the more rounded perspective on road safety. The only cyclists I see behaving recklessly on the road are groups of teenage boys, and that’s more to do with them being teenage boys than being cyclists.

nielsole 6y ago

Other phrases (at least in german media): "cyclist injures _himself_ badly" "The cyclist wore no helmet" (as if that changes fault in an accident) The car "couldn't stop in time" (e.g. for a red light before hitting a cyclist/pedestrian in the intersection) When the cyclist is struck at night the car driver sometimes is quoted with the claim the bike had no lights. While sometimes that may be right, the car driver obviously didn't see the cyclist (otherwise they wouldn't have run them over) and the light is often damaged in the accident. The cyclist on a stretcher is not available to counter that claim leaving a biased report.

WalterBright 6y ago
> the light is often damaged in the accident You can tell if the light was on when it was damaged, by examining the filament. They do this in airplane accident investigations to see which panel lamps were on when it crashed. This doesn't work for LED lights, though. Just incandescent.
- aembleton 6y ago
  Do any cyclists still use incandescent bulbs?

yyy888sss 6y ago

Bikes are similar to pedestrians not cars. In bike friendly places such as the Netherlands or Cambridge UK cyclists and those on foot share the same part of the city. It helps in these places that almost car drivers also use a bike to get around so they are more aware, but the main thing is designing the cities so that high speed 2-40 ton vehicles are totally separated from low speed 50-100kg cyclists and pedestrians.

patrickdavey 6y ago

Willy May, He died maintaining his right of way, He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong. Never argue with a bus, and never trust a driver that hasn't looked you in the eye, and even then be wary.

diebeforei485 6y ago

If there is no dedicated bike lane (or if it is blocked by a taxi or FedEx truck), I usually take the entire car lane. Cars tend to pass way too close, and taking the lane (which is completely legal where I live) means I have some space to move a little bit away from a car while it's passing too close.

kumaranv 6y ago

It's the same story everywhere. Cyclists are blamed not only for their mistakes but for others' mistakes as well. When an accident happened, a cyclist is blamed irrespective of whoever is at mistake. I have seen it first-hand multiple times. Also, people casually say that why are these cyclists ride on busy roads?

globular-toast 6y ago

I firmly believe that nobody should be using the road in a car until they have learnt to use the road on a bicycle. Pilots don't learn to fly in airliners. Captains don't learn to sail in ocean liners. Why on earth do we let people operate machinery weighing multiple tons and capable of high speeds on the public highway without having anywhere near the same level of experience? 99% of car operators on the road have zero experience of the road outside of a car. A person on a bike is still a person, but a person in a car is a car. They can't feel the road. They hate travelling under the speed limit because there's a tank of fossil fuel and they only need to squeeze a pedal to effortlessly ascend hills or battle the wind. This is why they will never treat cyclists as people and with respect.

numlock86 6y ago

A lot of comments point out situations with car drivers not being considerate of cyclists. Not to defend car drivers, but you could interchange car drivers with cyclists and cyclists with pedestrians and you would end up with people giving the same anecdotes. You see cyclists speeding through "walk only" areas just as you see cars ignoring bike lanes or giving space to cyclists in general. You'll see just as much people on the phone or even texting while riding a bike, too. Et cetera. You might argue a bike hitting a pedestrian probably won't be as lethal as two tonnes of SUV hitting a cyclist, but that's a lame justification curled in the deepest realms of double standards. There's plenty of examples when cyclists didn't care enough about cars because the car is supposed to act as the cyclist is apparently clearly in a disadvantage. Same with pedestrians and cyclists, again. Again, not to defend or blame anyone. I am driving my car maybe two times per month and I am mostly on bike, foot or public transport. But from my experience you just have assholes with egocentric justifications and reasoning on all sides.

matsemann 6y ago
But what is your point? Your whole post is meaningless, it's just useless centrism with fluffy words about "both sides" in order to exonerate drivers.
- numlock86 6y ago
  The point is that comments (in regard to the article) are littered with anecdotes about cyclists getting in danger because of cars. It's a one-sided view. There's problems on both sides equally. Conflicts of this kind are waved off as "the driver was an asshole", which might be correct in single cases, but misses the whole point of the actual problem completely.
  - matsemann 6y ago
    > There's problems on both sides equally. No, it's not. A driver is driving something lethal that kills thousands each year. Don't try to pretend a cyclist being remotely close to a driver when it comes to severity of the actions. It's not a "one-sided view", it's the truth that drivers are far more dangerous than cyclists. If 99 scientists says something and one quack says something else, the truth isn't somewhere in the middle, you know. > but misses the whole point of the actual problem completely True, that cyclists need better infrastructure and similar stuff. What also misses the point is to start devil's advocating that "cyclists are just as bad".

ic0n0cl4st 6y ago

Cycling is almost one of those politically charged conversations which should be banned from HN. As a bicycle commuter and enthusiast (since somehow cyclist is a dirty word) I’ve long since learned that any online discussion inevitably devolves into a sociopathic blame game. I will say, however, that cost is one of the primary issues which is rarely addressed. In the USA the dollar is king and it shows in all aspects of our lives. Compared to automobiles, Bicycles are too cheap for their own good. America would have good cycling infrastructure If bicycles cost $20k to purchase, $5k per year to fuel, $500 to register, $1,500 year to insure and if the bicycling lobby spent hundreds of millions of dollars bribing politicians yearly. Drivers (why isn’t driver a dirty word?), at least in the USA, have a clear sense of superiority and entitlement which drives (pun intended) their sociopathic behavior. “I spent $50,000 on my Tesla and thousands more on licensing and maintenance! That money gives me the right to get back to my bedroom community in San Mateo as quickly as possible, fuck you and your 2-wheels, i’ll run you over with zero legal consequences” is a common attitude. The USA will never get dutch-quality cycling infrastructure until bicycle riders spend driver-level money.

markvdb 6y ago

US culture and infrastructure seem to be super car focused and almost universally toxic to people riding bikes. That looks like a problem to me. Could some focus on the car side of the problem help solve this with less expenditure of political capital? Requiring proper driver education for example doesn't require people to show empathy to these weird creatures they've never met - cyclists. I'm certainly not a US culture expert, but that might be one feasible baby step in certain US states.

softgrow 6y ago

In transport academia "crash" vs "accident" is contested. I'm a "crash" person but I'm lampooned by "accident" people for it. It's the wrong word or maybe it doesn't matter. There are even people who argue for some are "crash" and some are "accident". The "accident" example quoted is a motorcyclist who was struck in the face (not wearing a full-face helmet) by a bird then rode onto the wrong side and struck another motorcyclist, at least one died. So was it the bird's fault, ie. an unpredictable and without human involvement, or should the first motorcyclist had a full face helmet? My view is that "accident" implies an act-of-god that couldn't be prevented, whereas a "crash" is an impact, there is no doubt that an impact occurred. If you write off a "crash" as an "accident" you are tempted to not investigate and try and learn from it. The more you dig deeper into "accidents" is you find they some are not. With a decreasing number of fatal crashes, in my Australian state but the same number of police investigating they are starting to find (and prove) that some crashes are deliberate. What has long been suspected of the possibility of suicide and murder by head-on crash is proving to be real. Words can be important.

SauciestGNU 6y ago
Two thoughts here. First, why do we need to choose between "crash" or "accident"? Why can't journalists be more descriptive, even in headlines, by saying something like "bird strike", "single vehicle collision", etc? Second, there's a saying with the motorcyclists I personally know, "full face or no face", meaning in the event of a mishap, helmets that provide less coverage are far less likely to protect the rider. I don't think we should mandate what type of helmet people wear, or wearing a helmet at all, but assigning some responsibility to the rider who got hit where a full face helmet would have protected might be appropriate.
murphyslab 6y ago
There's a similar idea that I've heard since about 2010 about subtly-influencing differences in how a human language appears to impact cognition. > Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn't remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: "The vase broke itself," rather than "John broke the vase." [0] Here's a figure from the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20210319233610/https://www.economist.com/img/b/640/480/90/sites/default/files/fausey-1.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20210319233610/https://www.econo... The difference between "crash" (there's likely a human agent) and "accident" (there is no human agent) seems to be the same. On the other hand, in my experience from editing the professional writing of colleagues, there's often subtle implications from the chose of words. We tend to have so many different options in English, but two words never really mean the same thing because each carries different connotations either from history or from usage. Yet many readers aren't quite aware of those implications. I'm not sure if the implication does not exist for them, or if they are simply not aware of how it might colour their perception. [0] "Lost in translation?", The Economist, 2010-07-29, https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/07/29/lost-in-translation https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/07/29/lost-in-transla...

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EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 6y ago

My little daughter was hit by a bicycle riding on the sidewalk at high speed, leaving her with a permanent scar on her face. Is it a "bicycle accident"? There are millions of criminals on electric scooters and bicycles endangering the public in the cities.

fho 6y ago
> Is it a "bicycle accident"? Yes, but no. All of these accidents have basically nothing to do with the mode of transportation. It's a "being reckless accident". And you'll find recklessness in basically every mode of transportation ... from roller skates, over bikes, cars and even airplanes. And, without wanting to defend the reckless, it's kind of understandable ... tail-gaiting the car in front does not go wrong 99.9% of the time. Clipping traffic on a bike does not go wrong 99.9% of the time. Going down the hill on rollerskates does not go wrong 99.9% of the time. I understand why people are being reckless ... there is no consequence 99.9% of the time ... until ... that last time ... somebody gets hurt.

cbHXBY1D 6y ago

I crashed my bicycle just yesterday going 25mph. It started raining in the East Bay so I took the fast route home, down a winding hill with no room for cars to pass cyclists. The SUV behind me was honking and passed me, barely side swiping me. I reacted by jumping to the decaying road shoulder where there dead branches and a large crack which engulfed my front wheel. I went flying (according to my Garmin) at 24mph and probably got 15 feet of distance. No broken bones though - just bruises, rashes, and cuts.