It's Never a Bicycle Accident
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It's Never a Bicycle Accident
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Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#2Victimblaming is par for the course whenever a cyclist gets injured. It's really infuriating. I don't think that blaming the driver is good either, as the article says, most of the time it's a failure of the infrastructure that even made the situation possible. Very few drivers try to actively kill cyclists.
Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#3I wish journalism was concerned less with words and more with pointing out how to solve problems. This one in particular seems to be mostly a failure at city planning and lack of drivers education. It seems to me that car companies should be way less powerful in the US than they were 50 years ago (in terms of % of GDP), thus there should be a way out of this. Compare good and bad cities, shame the bad ones. Get insurance firms on board. Have websites compiling these kinds of things into liveability indices. Give good cities trophies or whatever. Once home prices are affected by it, incentives should be clear.
Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#4Another quite common headline technique is "Car hits pedestrian/bicycle/other-car". As if the car was driving itself. It somehow shifts the blame away from the driver to the object, the car. Similar to accepting that software has bugs and thus anything can happen an no one is to blame.
It sucks to read this, but its completely sound and logical for those who only drive cars. As more people start using bicycles these days, its slowing shifting though.
Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#5I always tell people I am not a cyclist, I am a bloke who rides a bike. The vilification of a group is how you make harming them palatable to people, and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists".
I am far sooner a friend, a son, a partner and someone you know, than a cyclist. I don't even qear lycra, and I spend my whole ride trying to be courteous so at least extend me the same courtesy.
Also, get off your fucking phone. Yes, you. Are you so basic and selfish you can't spend a second from your skinner box? Yes, at lights too. Driving your car is the most important thing you will do today, at least be present for the occasion. I promise the memes will be there when you get to your destination.
Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#6Never? Some accidents involving bicycles and cars are the bicycle's fault, some are the car's fault. Some are both, some are neither's.
Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#7Totally agreed, above all as a full-time cyclist
I've also been struck by behind, on my left arm, by a car driving fast. Couldn't use my arm for 1 month
Small nitpicking: I just don't like the final sentence comparison with
> "That’s not a bike accident more than getting bit by a shark is a swimming accident"
Sharks do it intentionally, even if that's probably often out of confusion with other preys (they don't like human flesh), it's a natural thing as much as a rhino could charge you, a croco or a mosquito could also bit you. Cars however, is one of the many artificial things in this over-consumption society. I'd have more compared it like:
> That’s not a bike accident more than getting shot by a bullet while walking in the street is an accident
Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#8Never? Some accidents involving bicycles and cars are the bicycle's fault, some are the car's fault. Some are both, some are neither's.
For none of them it's useful to think of "an accident" because that doesn't lead to actions that prevent future crashes.
Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#9I always tell people I am not a cyclist, I am a bloke who rides a bike. The vilification of a group is how you make harming them palatable to people, and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". I am far sooner a friend, a son, a partner and someone you know, than a cyclist. I don't even qear lycra, and I spend my whole ride trying to be courteous so at least extend me the same courtesy. Also, get off y…
> get off your fucking phone
I generally look not so much at the car, but the driver, to see if he sees me. If he doesn't, I get off the road. Also if he's on the phone. If I'm behind the car, I watch for his brake lights and backup lights.
Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident
#10One of the linked accidents in the article looks terrible, a man is cycling along the road, a bus overtakes him and clips his handlebars, knocking him to the ground and then running over his torso with the rear wheels of the bus.
What a lot of people don’t realise is that you can’t overtake bicycles in a single lane. If there’s no cycle path/markings a bicycle takes up the full lane for exactly this reason. Bicycles can’t cycle close to parked cars due to passenger doors opening up randomly, and the sides of the road by the curb is generally not maintained enough to cycle in.
Cars/buses/trucks have to wait until they can safely overtake.