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> Findings suggest larger vehicles are involved in pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes with more severe injuries that result in higher hospital charges. I've c

> Findings suggest larger vehicles are involved in pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes with more severe injuries that result in higher hospital charges. I've commuted 10s of thousands of miles by bike the last 30 years, mostly in an urban environment. This doesn't surprise me. I can't read the whole article, and the excerpt doesn't offer any data or speculation about the causes of this. So, with some experience, I'll speculate. I'm happy to have real data instead! So, why? Well, my first thought is that the impact surfaces of those vehicles are much higher off the ground. Rather than being tossed up onto a hood, people might be more likely to be hit directly. Also, the visibility in tall vehicles is worse. For the driver of a sedan, my whole bicycle and torso are eye-level for them -- I'm easier to see. To a Suburban driver, my head and maybe shoulders are at eye level. I've ridden next to [ostensibly] passenger vehicles where the drivers are above my head level; they'd have to look _down_ to even see me. And even aside from the height, modern vehicles have narrower windows and larger pillars. This alone makes a big difference. As a contrast, compare an old car with a modern one. The old Benz has at least 150% the visibility. It's like driving inside a fishbowl. * A 1980s Mercedes wagon -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_W123#/media/File:Mercedes-Benz_W123_T-Modell_rear_20090430.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_W123#/media/File... * A modern Chevy Suburban -- https://www.chevrolet.com/suvs/suburban https://www.chevrolet.com/suvs/suburban

emmelaich 4y ago
Agree with your speculation. Here's another one. Even WHEN THE DRIVER sees you, some subconsciously ignore you. I'v had people look straight at me, keep driving then looking shocked when they finally realise and hit the brakes. I can only surmise they perceive traffic in terms of threats. When you're in a bigger car, threats are reduced.
- Smoosh 4y ago
  This effect also applies to motorcycle riders who are often "seen but ignored".
- analog31 4y ago
  There's that famous video of people dancing, where a person in a gorilla suit enters and leaves the action, and at the end, people don't remember seeing the gorilla. I think drivers are creatures of habit, especially in heavy traffic on a familiar route such as their daily work commute. They are not really in complete control of their cars -- certainly if traffic is heavy enough that nobody is following at a safe distance. Now throw distractions into the mix. I'm also an experienced urban cyclist, and I believe that route choice is a major safety factor. I have some rules of thumb for roads to avoid, and am extremely lucky that I live in a town that is fairly cycle- and pedestrian-friendly. I have a hunch that car drivers in my town have gradually adapted to the presence of cyclists, for the better. I do ride on 55 mph roads in the countryside, but only ones with very little traffic, and the region has quite friendly drivers. Stories from cyclists living in other states suggest to me that straightforward aggression is a factor in a lot of the close passes and other antics that they experience.
  - mudita 4y ago
    You slightly misremembered the invisible gorilla test, a classical study about inattentional blindness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness#Invisible_Gorilla_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness#Invi... Somewhat fittingly "the basic Simons and Chabris study was reused on British television as a public safety advert designed to point out the potential dangers to cyclists caused by inattentional blindness in motorists."
    - Lio 4y ago
      I beleive that the paper was originally titled "Gorillas In Our Midst" which is a wonderful play on the title of the Dian Fossey book Gorillas in the Mist.
  - Chris2048 4y ago
    According to the Gorilla study: > failure to attend to it while engaged in the difficult task of counting passes of the ball I'm not sure how this applies to commuting, except when the driver is attentively looking at other cars.
- kqr 4y ago
  At one point when biking to work I stopped at an intersection and filtered to the front. The head vehicle was a huge yellow thing built for construction work. I turned my head to see if I could see the driver (then at least he would have a chance of seeing me) and you know what he did? He understood what I was doing and pointed straight at me to indicate he had noticed me. This is something I've started doing when I'm driving now, too. I wish everyone did it.
  - david-gpu 4y ago
    I'm in my 40s, I've never had a car, and the only thing that makes me feel somewhat safe when I cross in front of a vehicle is making eye contact with the driver, which is sometimes difficult with the prevalence of tinted windows. In my experience, drivers look for other cars, not for pedestrians. We are not a danger to them, so they subconsciously filter us out, as we are not a threat to them. To make things worse, in North America traffic rules are particularly hostile to pedestrians, allowing things such as right turns on red. Which is to say, as a pedestrian I am naturally not allowed to cross the street when the light is red for me, but for some unclear reason, if I were to be driving a 2-ton vehicle then somehow it is no longer considered dangerous for me to ignore the same red light. Bonkers.
    - kqr 4y ago
      The difficulty with eye contact is that it's easy to interpret as being there when the other person really just looks through you. Very common to hear about accidents when one person was confident they had eye contact and then the other just had no idea they were there. In fact, eye contact works so badly for me that I prefer looking at the front tyres – their direction and angular acceleration tells me a lot more about where the vehicle is about to be. Pointing, however, is very explicit and rarely happens by accident.
    - mitchdoogle 4y ago
      People don't look for peds because they aren't trained to, and for the most part, peds aren't that common. Only if you're in a dense urban center, would I say that they're common (in the US)
- dfxm12 4y ago
  That sounds like consciously ignoring you and is seriously psychotic behavior!
  - mjhay 4y ago
    I have had similar experiences cycling a number of times. It's really more of a mental block. They aren't expecting to see a cyclist so they don't see one.
- mitchdoogle 4y ago
  I don't think threat assessment is driving people's driving habits. More likely, they didn't actually see you, or if they did, they made an assumption that you were going to wait for them or otherwise not be in their path. That could be because they don't know the laws concerning cycling, or maybe being tired/distracted/inebriated.
  - danielfoster 4y ago
    It’s not unheard of for drivers in NYC to deliberately force bikers off the road if they want to cut in front. It’s happened to me.
bobthepanda 4y ago
A direct hit is likely, but even worse is a higher possibility of getting knocked under the vehicle and towards the wheels.
caseyross 4y ago
Anyone remember the 1990s-2000s US-market civilian Hummer models, and how people at the time felt them to be absolutely massive? Well, the 2023 Chevy Suburban is a comparable size to the largest of those Hummers. There are so many incentives for size creep, and improvements in occupant safety features and self-driving functionality just add fuel to the cycle, by making drivers feel like they can adequately control ever-bigger vehicles.
Neil44 4y ago
I think the hight of the driver works both ways as you can see over lower vehicles and see conflicting traffic sooner. ref visibility - one thing I don't like about newer cars in general is they have very thick A and B pillars for crash protection which can completely hide things from you. You have to constantly move your head around to sweep your blind spots.
bbarn 4y ago
I too have primarily commuted in city traffic by bike for decades until recently (moved to an island). I've been hit by both cars and trucks. Back home I have two VW cars - a golf, and an Atlas. The Atlas has far superior visibility, is equipped with proximity sensors all around, lights on mirrors that warn of potential blind spot vehicles... I feel much more confident I won't injure a fellow cyclist driving that car than the golf. It also ferries all of my wife and my friends' bikes to distant races very well. I think you can find any two single cars that prove one way or the other that visibility is worse. In general though one of the selling points of larger vehicles in increased visibility. Now let's just get rid of the "cross over" which seems to have all of the down sides of both.

emmelaich 4y ago

Agree with your speculation. Here's another one. Even WHEN THE DRIVER sees you, some subconsciously ignore you. I'v had people look straight at me, keep driving then looking shocked when they finally realise and hit the brakes. I can only surmise they perceive traffic in terms of threats. When you're in a bigger car, threats are reduced.

Smoosh 4y ago
This effect also applies to motorcycle riders who are often "seen but ignored".
analog31 4y ago
There's that famous video of people dancing, where a person in a gorilla suit enters and leaves the action, and at the end, people don't remember seeing the gorilla. I think drivers are creatures of habit, especially in heavy traffic on a familiar route such as their daily work commute. They are not really in complete control of their cars -- certainly if traffic is heavy enough that nobody is following at a safe distance. Now throw distractions into the mix. I'm also an experienced urban cyclist, and I believe that route choice is a major safety factor. I have some rules of thumb for roads to avoid, and am extremely lucky that I live in a town that is fairly cycle- and pedestrian-friendly. I have a hunch that car drivers in my town have gradually adapted to the presence of cyclists, for the better. I do ride on 55 mph roads in the countryside, but only ones with very little traffic, and the region has quite friendly drivers. Stories from cyclists living in other states suggest to me that straightforward aggression is a factor in a lot of the close passes and other antics that they experience.
- mudita 4y ago
  You slightly misremembered the invisible gorilla test, a classical study about inattentional blindness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness#Invisible_Gorilla_Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness#Invi... Somewhat fittingly "the basic Simons and Chabris study was reused on British television as a public safety advert designed to point out the potential dangers to cyclists caused by inattentional blindness in motorists."
  - Lio 4y ago
    I beleive that the paper was originally titled "Gorillas In Our Midst" which is a wonderful play on the title of the Dian Fossey book Gorillas in the Mist.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  According to the Gorilla study: > failure to attend to it while engaged in the difficult task of counting passes of the ball I'm not sure how this applies to commuting, except when the driver is attentively looking at other cars.
kqr 4y ago
At one point when biking to work I stopped at an intersection and filtered to the front. The head vehicle was a huge yellow thing built for construction work. I turned my head to see if I could see the driver (then at least he would have a chance of seeing me) and you know what he did? He understood what I was doing and pointed straight at me to indicate he had noticed me. This is something I've started doing when I'm driving now, too. I wish everyone did it.
- david-gpu 4y ago
  I'm in my 40s, I've never had a car, and the only thing that makes me feel somewhat safe when I cross in front of a vehicle is making eye contact with the driver, which is sometimes difficult with the prevalence of tinted windows. In my experience, drivers look for other cars, not for pedestrians. We are not a danger to them, so they subconsciously filter us out, as we are not a threat to them. To make things worse, in North America traffic rules are particularly hostile to pedestrians, allowing things such as right turns on red. Which is to say, as a pedestrian I am naturally not allowed to cross the street when the light is red for me, but for some unclear reason, if I were to be driving a 2-ton vehicle then somehow it is no longer considered dangerous for me to ignore the same red light. Bonkers.
  - kqr 4y ago
    The difficulty with eye contact is that it's easy to interpret as being there when the other person really just looks through you. Very common to hear about accidents when one person was confident they had eye contact and then the other just had no idea they were there. In fact, eye contact works so badly for me that I prefer looking at the front tyres – their direction and angular acceleration tells me a lot more about where the vehicle is about to be. Pointing, however, is very explicit and rarely happens by accident.
  - mitchdoogle 4y ago
    People don't look for peds because they aren't trained to, and for the most part, peds aren't that common. Only if you're in a dense urban center, would I say that they're common (in the US)
dfxm12 4y ago
That sounds like consciously ignoring you and is seriously psychotic behavior!
- mjhay 4y ago
  I have had similar experiences cycling a number of times. It's really more of a mental block. They aren't expecting to see a cyclist so they don't see one.
mitchdoogle 4y ago
I don't think threat assessment is driving people's driving habits. More likely, they didn't actually see you, or if they did, they made an assumption that you were going to wait for them or otherwise not be in their path. That could be because they don't know the laws concerning cycling, or maybe being tired/distracted/inebriated.
- danielfoster 4y ago
  It’s not unheard of for drivers in NYC to deliberately force bikers off the road if they want to cut in front. It’s happened to me.

bobthepanda 4y ago

A direct hit is likely, but even worse is a higher possibility of getting knocked under the vehicle and towards the wheels.

caseyross 4y ago

Anyone remember the 1990s-2000s US-market civilian Hummer models, and how people at the time felt them to be absolutely massive? Well, the 2023 Chevy Suburban is a comparable size to the largest of those Hummers. There are so many incentives for size creep, and improvements in occupant safety features and self-driving functionality just add fuel to the cycle, by making drivers feel like they can adequately control ever-bigger vehicles.

Neil44 4y ago

I think the hight of the driver works both ways as you can see over lower vehicles and see conflicting traffic sooner. ref visibility - one thing I don't like about newer cars in general is they have very thick A and B pillars for crash protection which can completely hide things from you. You have to constantly move your head around to sweep your blind spots.

bbarn 4y ago

I too have primarily commuted in city traffic by bike for decades until recently (moved to an island). I've been hit by both cars and trucks. Back home I have two VW cars - a golf, and an Atlas. The Atlas has far superior visibility, is equipped with proximity sensors all around, lights on mirrors that warn of potential blind spot vehicles... I feel much more confident I won't injure a fellow cyclist driving that car than the golf. It also ferries all of my wife and my friends' bikes to distant races very well. I think you can find any two single cars that prove one way or the other that visibility is worse. In general though one of the selling points of larger vehicles in increased visibility. Now let's just get rid of the "cross over" which seems to have all of the down sides of both.