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It's Never a Bicycle Accident

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Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#31

Post by jspash »

anovikov wrote: post #11

Absolutely untrue. I am not a cyclist but i have about once in 3 months or so, a near accident where i just barely avoid crushing or rolling over some crazy cyclist that falls on his damn bike right under my car or drives from round the corner at full speed without damn looking anywhere. However careful i am trying to be it's just a matter of luck that i didn't kill anyone (and i once scratched my car and the other g…

"At the very best, they [old people | horse riders | children | motorcyclists | other drivers] are a hinderance because cautious people have to completely avoid a lane where one $X is driving on the edge of, thus slowing down the entire car traffic.

$X are dangerous and they don't know what they are doing, they are a danger to themselves and others."

So where do we go with this line of thought? As you can see, it's not helpful in any material way. We need to make the roads safer for everyone, including other drivers. And not vilify a small (but increasing) and vulnerable portion of road users because of anecdotes.

BTW, I'm a motorist, cyclist, horse rider, old person, ex-child. So I might be biased.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#32

Post by adrianN »

bogle wrote: post #22
adrianN wrote: post #2

Victimblaming 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.

You should try cycling in my town. Okay, that's hyperbole but the way the drivers of many vehicles show massive aggression towards cyclists on the roads is narrowing the margin between an accident and a murder.

It's not very nice to cycle in my town either, but I don't think that they actually intend to cause a crash.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#33

Post by conradludgate »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #10

One 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…

I've been teaching my girlfriend how to cycle in London recently. I've told her that she needs to stand her ground, and not cycle so close to the pavement. It's scary though. I've told her for now that if she sees a bus, to stop and let it go ahead because they can be so dangerous

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#34

Post by DocTomoe »

Is it, though? I would understand this like the "more guilty" party was being named - the one that caused the accident.

Where I live, the newspapers print rather graphic photos of particularly bad car-on-car accidents when the happen locally. Part of that is sensationalism, sure - but part of it is making people aware that bad accidents actually do happen, even if you never individually were involved in one, and that you should think about when you made bad decisions that could have lead to accidents in the past - it makes you, subconsciously, show more attention the next few times you drive.

While this may not have been the case in this particular accident, the number of times I see cyclists' complete disregard for traffic rules and thus in effect their own safety is too high. Generally painting cyclists as traffic victims absolves them from any wrongdoing, makes them pay less attention, and may thus lead to more accidents.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#35

Post by bogle »

brnt wrote: post #16
WalterBright wrote: post #6

Never? Some accidents involving bicycles and cars are the bicycle's fault, some are the car's fault. Some are both, some are neither's.

Dutch law has a nice solution: liability correlates with weight. The more weight you put on the street, the more explaining you have to do, because you chose to potentially cause more damage. In a collision, the weightiest vehicle therefore is by default liable, unless they can prove otherwise. This means that in bicycle-car accidents, drivers almost always pay, and in bicycles pedestrian accident the cyclist.

We are trying to persuade our government here in Scotland that presumed liability [1] would be very effective. It is common throughout Europe.

[1] https://www.cyclelawscotland.co.uk/blog/article/the-time-is-...

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#36

Post by VBprogrammer »

adrianN wrote: post #8
WalterBright wrote: post #6

Never? 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.

Absolutely. Motorcyclists are actually pretty good at adopting this philosophy, or at least the ones I know. Of course motorcycles (for the most part) have the advantage of being able to out accelerate most cars on the road so they have some extra options.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#37

Post by kennywinker »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #10

One 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…

This 10,000x! The people who tell cyclists they need to “follow the rules of the road” are the same ones who will tailgate you and yell at you when you take up the full lane.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#38

Post by WalterBright »

adrianN wrote: post #2

Victimblaming 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.

> Victimblaming is par for the course whenever a cyclist gets injured.

To be fair, the injured party in an accident has no particular relevance to who is at fault.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#39

Post by jacquesm »

conradludgate wrote: post #33
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #10

One 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…

I've been teaching my girlfriend how to cycle in London recently. I've told her that she needs to stand her ground, and not cycle so close to the pavement. It's scary though. I've told her for now that if she sees a bus, to stop and let it go ahead because they can be so dangerous

Cycling close to the pavement is super dangerous because if your pedal so much as touches the kerbstones on the downstroke you'll get thrown into traffic. I've seen more than one kid fall in the way of oncoming traffic like that, fortunately without anybody getting hurt but still, it can happen in a fraction of a second.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#40

Post by adrianN »

WalterBright wrote: post #38
adrianN wrote: post #2

Victimblaming 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.

> Victimblaming is par for the course whenever a cyclist gets injured. To be fair, the injured party in an accident has no particular relevance to who is at fault.

At least in my city the statistics pretty clearly show that the drivers are "at fault" most of the time, but as I said, I believe the people responsible for the infrastructure are actually at fault. We could make our roads much safer by building them differently, but for some reason we don't.
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