Yet another cyclist killed. pH (Several, actually)

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

--
JS

On 9/9/19 10:00 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/8/2019 6:24 PM, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 3:09:00 PM UTC-5, pH wrote:

There was an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel back in May about a
cyclist killed around the Davenport area.Â* There was *never* a follow
up about who it was or the circumstances around the death--I even
called the local radio station to ask that their news department
please follow up on it and give us further information as it became
available.Â* Nada thus far.

That second fatality involved the cyclist being struck by a car going
in the same direction, ie: "struck from behind".

The League of American Bicyclists had a project going on a few years
ago called "Every Bicyclist Counts"
(https://bikeleague.org/content/why-e...fatal-crashes).
It was an imperfect study, for reasons enumerated in the report, but
it had some interesting findings. The most important (to me) was that
a third of the bicycle fatalities were the result of the cyclist being
"struck from behind".

Now, since this is such a common mode of death for cyclists, it would
seem reasonable to try to provide the cyclist with some form of
defense. To my way of thinking, this is a rear-view mirror. Of course,
the presence or absence of a rear-view mirror wasn't even mentioned in
the League's study, and this information is apparently not one of the
data collected when a cycling death is investigated.

I just got back from an organized ride (the 50th annual Harmon
Hundred) and I noticed that fewer than 10% of the riders had mirrors.
It would be interesting to study the correlation (if any) between
mirror use and "rear-impact" fatalities. I hypothesize that one exists
and it is negative. But without data...
I always ride with a mirror on the street; it can't hurt.

I wouldn't call hits from behind "such a common mode of death for
cyclists" because _all_ cycling deaths are tremendously rare.

Rare per individual cyclist. Significant enough numbers to perform
analysis of the circumstances of the rare events that happen across a
large population.

Other data
shows there are well over ten million miles ridden per cycling fatality.
And as John frequently points out, half of cyclist fatalities are judged
to be the fault of the cyclist.

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


Also, other data has shown that the usual hit-from-behind deaths happen
on rural roads, to unlit night cyclists.

Hang on a moment, just above you said "I wouldn't call hits from behind
"such a common mode of death for cyclists" because _all_ cycling deaths
are tremendously rare", and now you claim there are "usual
hit-from-behind deaths".

Isn't "common" and "usual" saying practically the same thing?

Having said that, I almost always use a mirror when riding.

If people were forced to have a mirror on their bike, there is of course
no reason to suppose they would use it.

--
JS

On 9/9/19 10:40 am, Sir Ridesalot wrote:


I find it quite interesting that a bicycle on the road is under the
law considered to be a vehicle but it's the ONLY vehicle allowed on
the road that does NOT have to have a mirror or even two.
Interesting.


I find it quite mundane. A person riding a bicycle has (or at least can
have) far better awareness of their surroundings than other vehicle
operators - including what is behind and to the side of them - without
need of a mirror. More like a wheeled pedestrian than an automobile
operator.

--
JS

On Sunday, 8 September 2019 23:21:16 UTC-4, James wrote:
On 9/9/19 8:24 am, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 3:09:00 PM UTC-5, pH wrote:

There was an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel back in May about a
cyclist killed around the Davenport area. There was *never* a
follow up about who it was or the circumstances around the death--I
even called the local radio station to ask that their news
department please follow up on it and give us further information
as it became available. Nada thus far.

That second fatality involved the cyclist being struck by a car going
in the same direction, ie: "struck from behind".

The League of American Bicyclists had a project going on a few years
ago called "Every Bicyclist Counts"
(https://bikeleague.org/content/why-e...fatal-crashes).
It was an imperfect study, for reasons enumerated in the report, but
it had some interesting findings. The most important (to me) was that
a third of the bicycle fatalities were the result of the cyclist
being "struck from behind".

Now, since this is such a common mode of death for cyclists, it would
seem reasonable to try to provide the cyclist with some form of
defense. To my way of thinking, this is a rear-view mirror. Of
course, the presence or absence of a rear-view mirror wasn't even
mentioned in the League's study, and this information is apparently
not one of the data collected when a cycling death is investigated.

I just got back from an organized ride (the 50th annual Harmon
Hundred) and I noticed that fewer than 10% of the riders had mirrors.
It would be interesting to study the correlation (if any) between
mirror use and "rear-impact" fatalities. I hypothesize that one
exists and it is negative. But without data... I always ride with a
mirror on the street; it can't hurt.


The idea of mandated mirrors is like mandatory helmets, hi vis and DRLs.

The effective solution is to eliminate the danger.

The rear ended fatalities usually occur on high speed rural roads.

Get your DoT to build separated cycling "roads" parallel to high speed
busy roads.

On quiet rural roads, make car drivers the guests and reduce the speed
limit.

--
JS

I find that it's quite ironic that if a motor vehicle hits another motor vehicle from behind that it's automatically the fault of the vehicle that hit the vehicle in front of it. That is unless there is some proof that the vehicle in front did something so unexpected and unusual for that locale that the following vehicle could not avoid the vehicle in front of it. Yet for a bicyclist getting hit from behind there it is usually the bicyclist who gets the blame.

Cheers

On 9/8/2019 8:38 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

Frank will vehemently disagree with that 1/3 of bicyclist deaths being the result of being struck from behind by a motor vehicle.

Honestly, I don't recall what the proportion is. But as I said,
hit-from-behind deaths are mostly rural at night, probably when the
cyclist has no lights. I think that if you're not that cyclist, being
hit from behind should be very low on your list of worries. And
incidentally, if you ride prominently in the lane, it should be even
less worry.

I've had more close calls with vehicles from behind me than from in front of me.

You're talking about close passes, right?

For me, those dropped way, way down when I started using lane center (or
thereabouts) as my default lane position.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 9/8/2019 9:16 PM, jbeattie wrote:
I get close passes all the time, and again, a mirror would do nothing. I get close passes while riding lane center. Cars just do stupid things whether you're looking at them through a mirror or not.

It's interesting to me that you get close passes all the time. I don't.
For me, they are _very_ rare.

Our riding environments differ, of course. But yours is supposed to be
bicycling paradise. Mine is supposed to be nothing special.

Maybe a few times per year, someone will pass close even when I'm at
lane center. In that case, the benefit of being at lane center is: I can
move right if necessary. IME, riding at the edge generates more close
passes, and there's nowhere to go to escape them.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 9/8/2019 11:24 PM, 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

Interesting indeed. The American data I've seen corroborates John's claims.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 9/8/2019 11:38 PM, James wrote:
On 9/9/19 10:00 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Also, other data has shown that the usual hit-from-behind deaths
happen on rural roads, to unlit night cyclists.

Hang on a moment, just above you said "I wouldn't call hits from behind
"such a common mode of death for cyclists" because _all_ cycling deaths
are tremendously rare", and now you claim there are "usual
hit-from-behind deaths".

Isn't "common" and "usual" saying practically the same thing?

Pay attention to the context. If we discuss the tiny group of
hit-from-behind deaths, we can say what's usual within that tiny group.
That doesn't make it common in any sense.


--
- Frank Krygowski

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 a 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, makes sense :-)

News reports about bicycles are nearly all dependent on somebody else,
if for no other reason than the usual news writer knows nothing about
bicycles.

As an aside, it used to be that a news writer had to apply the 5 W's -
Who, What, When, Where, Why - was the rule. Now if one can get a
little blood in the first paragraph that is all you need.

I would say, though, that I've been riding a bike for, probably, 30
years or so and I never seen a bike crash. Truck crash, airplane
crash, car crash, motorcycle crash, but never a bicycle crash.

Here in Thailand the official number of motorcycle crashes are about
5,500 motorcycle crashes annually. I asked my neighbor who is a Police
Senior Sergeant with 20-odd years service about bicycle crashes and he
said something along the lines that ,"I think I remember we had one,
one time".

In my own mind, I do not believe that riding a bicycle is a
particularly dangerous pastime.
(with or without helmet :-)
--
cheers,

John B.

On 9/8/2019 8:48 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

I rode from my town to another town and along part of the way there was a wide shoulder/bicycle lane. It wasn't too bad until I got to the roundabout and there the shoulder/bicycle lane had a sudden drop into a drainage area and further on yet another and then another. I backtracked a bit, got onto the road, took the right hand lane and rode through the roundabout.

I _always_ take full control of the lane before and through a
roundabout. I think it's the only safe way to ride them - unless you are
timid enough to use the sidewalk and stop at each crossing.

--
- Frank Krygowski