On 9/9/2019 1:16 AM, James wrote:
On 9/9/19 2:19 pm, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 9 Sep 2019 13:24:48 +1000, James
wrote:

On 9/9/19 9:03 am, John B. wrote:

And a number of studies have shown that as many as half, or more, of
bicycle auto collisions are the fault of the cyclist... but I don't
suppose that the League highlighted that :-)

"California Highway Patrol data from 2012 show there were 5,090
collisions in LA County that year involving bikes and cars. In 2,759
of those cases, the CHP determined the cyclist was at fault and in
1,878 cases, they determined the car driver was to blame."


Perhaps there is a cultural difference at work to explain the difference
in Australia, where a number of studies have concluded that the drivers
are at fault in something like 4 out of 5 cases.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed...s-report-finds


It seems to depend largely on who is writing the reports. The CHP
report I mentioned was written by them for (I imagine) their
headquarters. I've also read a report from aÂ* couple of sites about
coroner's reports showing a rather large percent of dead cyclists that
"had drink taken"

But when you turn to the Bicycle page it immediately becomes "t'wasn't
us, it was some other guy done it", which, I guess,Â* makes sense :-)


I disagree, at least from an Australian POV.

"A report released last week by the Royal Automobile Association of
South Australia found that in 195 out of 277 crashes between cars and
bicycles (just over 70 per cent) the cyclist was not at fault. "

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-14/cycling-collisions-should-drivers-be-held-legally-liable/8613858

Again, it seems different here. I can recall only four or five bike
fatalities in our area going back 20 years. (Other car-bike crashes
don't often make the "official" news or the word-of-mouth news.) Such a
small sample isn't worth much statistically, but:

The earliest was a young boy riding west on the sidewalk on the south
side of the street. A truck driving north turned east at the
intersection. The boy ran into the side of the truck and was run over.
Supposedly the boy's bike had no brakes. I'd call that one a bicyclist
fault.

About five years ago, an avid cyclist trained at high speed on a rural
rail-trail MUP. He was famous for not stopping at the intersections with
roads. He rode out in front of a car driving on a country road.
Admittedly, almost all drivers exceed the speed limit by at least a bit,
so the motorist may have been doing that. But the cyclist definitely
blew the stop sign. I'd assign fault to the cyclist.

About three years ago, a rather weird guy who spoke to almost nobody and
used his bike in sort of "homeless" fashion rode downhill and westbound
under a freeway overpass in the eastbound lanes of a four lane arterial.
A woman entering the arterial from an entrance ramp hit him head on.
Cyclist fault.

About 8 years ago, a worker on night shift at a local hospital was a
hit-and-run victim. He got off work at something like four in the
morning. He was known for having many lights on his bike. The driver was
never caught. Almost certainly motorist fault.

Probably 20 years ago, a retired physician was riding his daily loop in
our large metropolitan park. The park has a weird, AASHTO-violating bike
facility, a bi-directional bike lane on the west side of a road that's
one way north for motor vehicles. There are about a dozen "pull off"
parking areas on the west side of the road, and the designer (who knows
nothing about bikes) installed six bollards at each parking area, half
of them before and half of them after each pull off. At first, the
designer put stop signs for the bicyclists at each bollard set, but
later took them down. The bicyclist was riding downhill headed south. A
northbound motorist pulled across his path into a parking spot and hit
him head on. He was paralyzed, then died several years later. I suspect
the motorist was at fault, but the designer may be partially at fault.
(I don't think the stop signs were present then.)


--
- Frank Krygowski