On 11/17/2010 12:27 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 16, 11:01 pm, wrote:
On Nov 17, 2:33 pm, Phil wrote:

The
most common manner of collision is when a driver strikes a cyclist
from behind"

What the ~!?

Calling Frank Krygowski to the terminal...

(He just loves to write about what he calls "fear from the rear".
According to Frank, we shouldn't be concerned at all that we might be
hit from behind.)

Hits from the rear are responsible for a large percentage of cyclist
fatalities. But cyclist fatalities are extremely rare. (There were
not even 700 in all the U.S. in 2009, if I recall correctly, compared
with over 4000 pedestrians, and tens of thousands of motor vehicle
occupants.) In the US, there are at _least_ 8 million miles ridden
between bike fatalities.

That's just a guess.

Even if true, assuming 80K bike lifetime miles (not very much for a
serious cyclist), that's a 1:100 chance. Too damn high.


The vast majority of bike crashes or wrecks are caused by something
you see in front of you, not behind you. Most common causes of bike
crashes are simple road hazards - things like gravel, potholes,
slippery stuff, cracks that swallow wheels, etc. After that, there
are cars that turn left in front of you (left in the US), cars that
right hook you, cars that pull out of stop signs or driveways, car
doors that open in front of you. There are a surprising number of
bike-bike crashes, too.

The Portland study was interesting in that it recorded that about 50% of
"serious traumatic events" involved motor vehicles.


If you worry about the minuscule chance of being killed from behind,
and therefore spend a lot of time gazing into your rear view mirror,
you're almost certainly _more_ likely to get into a wreck from a left
cross, a right hook, a door, a pull-out, a pothole, a slippery spot,
or even a dog.

The problem of "hit from behind" crashes is that there's not much a
cyclist can do to prevent them, that's what makes them so disturbing.