Really Great Bicycle Safety Document

[Grog]

I was surprised at the statistic that 70% of bicycle-related accidents are the fault of cyclists.

Have you gals noticed that whenever there is a bike accident, cyclist killed, and no witness, it's always the cyclist that swerved into the car lane or appeared out of nowhere?

Also please notice that it doesn't say that 70% of the cyclists were responsible for the accidents: they say that 70% of the cyclists had violated a traffic rule, and 45% of the motorists had violated the traffic rule. So there is at least shared responsibility on a great number of accidents. Moreover, a motorist can be violating no traffic rule by opening his car door after "looking" (yeah right), but may still cause a cyclist to crash quite heavily. When there's no context provided, I tend to have little trust of bike-car accident stats provided by the police....

However, it's true that countless numbers of cyclists are acting stupidly on their bike, recreational and non-recreational. I think the "think and act like a vehicle" is the most important rule.

[SadieKate]

However, it's true that countless numbers of cyclists are acting stupidly on their bike, recreational and non-recreational. I think the "think and act like a vehicle" is the most important rule.

I think what I am going to call the "bike path culture" for lack of any other term to use is frequently the cyclist's downfall. For some reason, many riders on bike paths or closed roads (like a school campus) completely loose all commonsense. They swerve, they turn in front of other cylists, they don't signal, they don't look at or for anything which might be an obstacle including other cyclists. I could go on and on. You know that they wouldn't be driving so haphardzardly all over the road. But many of these people are taught from childhood that the bike path is only a playground, not a transportation thoroughfare. I am constantly surprised by the number of adults who neither know that cyclists are usually subject to the same laws as cars or commonsense would dictate that you behave the same way, even on a bike path. It just seems obviousl that slower riders should stay to the right and at least look before turning.

Don't even get me started on the pedestrians who stroll down the bike path in our town when there is a sidewalk 3 feet away. Again, I think they are used to treating a bike path through a greenbelt as a playground so they don't understand that some people are using the path as a means to get from point A to point B. Grrr for the soccer parents who congregate on it as the viewpoint from the sidelines. None of these people would do the same in the street.

If we as a culture would teach our children think and act like vehicles on the bike path, it might translate in the long run to better riders and drivers out on the road.