Some bicyclists break laws a lot (and often shouldn’t).

Most motorists in Minneapolis drive unsafely.

And then people get upon these message boards and try justifying this stuff. Op- ed pieces are written about how “Bikes should get off the road” and “I’m going to run you over”. Cut it out, damnit. People are dying here (in Minneapolis a biker was killed today May 20; elsewhere in MN a biker was killed May 16, 2009; fatalities happen nearly every month. We who pay attention know people are dying.)

Motorists who take that cavalier attitude are basically homicides waiting to happen. Your cool intellectual analysis doesn’t clear your blame, and your “get off my roads or else” attitude makes people wish you were dead instead of your next victim. You’re going to kill a human being.

You should know by now this is not the way, tsk, tsk. If you want to be killing people you’re, um, wrong.

But who knows, maybe you’re right bicycles don’t belong on the road. Same thing with pedestrians crossing the road, motorcycles, mopeds, subcompact cars, Amish buggies, cops on bikes, joggers, etc. It could be argued that people who might fall to harm or death (ie all people) should be prohibited from being on the road.

Do bicyclists have to start carrying firearms to protect themselves? Motorists are trying to hit us. Really.

The biker should take responsibility for safety. Motorists should too, but many won’t.

– know that some of the cars have “Uninformed Motorists” and watch out for them
– stay off the sidewalk where it is harder to be seen at cross walks, and easy to run over pedestrians.
– have a mirror and watch out for vehicles passing too closely
– stay alert, be prepared to stop if you get cut-off, and slow down at intersections.

When motorists claim that bikes are walking path toys that should stay off the roads they are not selfish. They have not fully considered the benefits of cycling, and don’t realize that bikes are also a practical form of transportation. Bikes are better than cars in some cases. Bikes don’t pollute, are easy to park, are efficient and low cost, and are faster where there is lots of traffic.

If informed motorists can not be convinced that bicycles should be on the road I suppose that their vehicle makes them feel powerful and putting down bikes helps them feel better about their time spent in traffic jams, pollution, fuel costs and/or obesity.

The my-mass-is-bigger-than-your-mass approach to crash dynamics implied by “Selfish Motorist” is also a gross oversimplification. For one thing, a cyclist hit by a car absorbs only a small fraction of the energy originally possessed by the car. The forces and energies involved in two motor vehicles colliding are far higher and mitigate the protective features of the vehicle bodies (which is how you get 35,000 fatalities per year). In addition, the higher mass sometimes works against motorists. Motorists are often crushed between parts of their own vehicle body. Rollovers are a common crash type, and a bicycle rollover is not going to be as serious as a SUV rollover. Although less common, motorists also either burn or drown while trapped in their vehicles.

Crash data indicate that motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians all have roughly similar fatality rates that fall in the general range between 0.1 and 1.0 fatalities per million hours of travel. Motorcyclists, in contrast, are more like 10-15 fatalities per million hours. For reasons that are clearly not understood by “Selfish Motorist”, crash data also show that cyclists who use sidewalks are actually more likely to be hit by a motor vehicle than those using the road.

The real problem here is that motorists think a driver’s license is a deed to the roadway when it really is just a permit to operate a piece of hazardous machinery.

How about driving safely as an answer? SUDDENLY braking for a bicycle that is directly in front of you? WHY would you have to SUDDENLY brake this high speed vehicle? Can a motorist avoid running into a postal truck? A garbage truck? A stop light? If your looking where you are going, you route around the cyclist. If your not tailgating the car in front of you (2-3 second gap… it’s THAT easy)… you don’t rear end them or run over the bike that the car in front of you went around safely.

That is why those of us in the know do NOT take “Share the lane” as “Ride in the gutter/glass/stormdrains so that a car can clip you, right hook you, and then claim you must have swerved”. We move further out into the traffic so you can SEE us in FRONT of you at a distance, and you can simply use your turn signal to indicate you are going to pass and either change lanes or plan your pass when safe to do so. It’s the Selfish Drivers that think “Share the Road” means “Get the Hell out of MY Way”. Sharing is actually aimed at the drivers… not the cyclists. When I’m biking instead of driving I might impact your total trip time by almost… 5-10 seconds overall… maybe. More than likely not at all, since drivers with this attitude wind it out when they pass and get caught at a stop light 100 feet down the road. Ones that maintain a safe distance from all traffic in front of them (2-3 second gap in the dry daylight, 6 in rain, 10 in snow), when encountering a cyclist that is riding about where the vehicles right tire track is, rarely find their time effected at all. It’s just those drivers that are doing things besides driving, and driving in a dangerous manner for whatever reason… late for something? To cool to follow the rules? Got that 500hp motor and need to show it off in a 30mph speed zone?

The motorist is almost ALWAYS at fault and rarely if ever gets as much as a traffic infraction issued when KILLING a cyclist. Often the cyclist is issued one that got hit just to justify NOT charging the motorist, assumed guilty for being in an out group.

It’s human psychology and it’s ignorance on motorists part that gets cyclists killed. The motorist is the one driving the deadly vehicle, they are the one that should be shouldering the responsibility for their actions when operating it. You don’t blame outlaw Quicky Marts because people rob them… you blame the people committing the act, NOT the victim.

One of the biggest reasons that bicycle safety and traffic safety in general continue to be an issue for all involved, is that so many people do not follow the laws. If no one follows the laws, the police can’t very well arrest/ticket everyone; they could never keep up. So instead, human as they are, the police overlook very common infractions and drivers continue to do as they always have gotten away with doing.

This is the biggest reason that despite having several strong points in the sense of “if only everyone did what they were supposed to this would all work out”, I’m opposed to bikes occupying car lanes because I accept and even expect that people WILL definitely continue to ignore rules en masse and will continue to get away with it.

Cars, buses, trucks, 18-wheelers, trash trucks, etc, are all already taking a gamble with life when they get on the road and reach most speed limits. (eg, 35mph is fast enough to wrap a ribcage around a steering wheel.) For that reason, cars are made to collapse in on themselves to absorb the level of shock that a collision of that class would induce.

But putting a much slower, more lightweight vehicle that offers no protection to its operator in the same lane with large tonnage of fast-moving machinery only exacerbates the situation.

Case 2 – Yes, as you said, this is dependent upon the circumstances working out in the motorist’s favor.

Case 3 – This is the aforementioned pile-up waiting to happen. You seem to assume that a motorist going a normal motor vehicle speed is going to have PLENTY of time to see a bicycle in the lane ahead, but this is ideal at best. Much more often, when driving the car that comes up directly behind the bicycle in a lane, it is more of a surprise and calls for fast reaction and braking, and cars behind that car often cannot see the bicyclist through that car.

The circumstances you use as reference place all of the burden of responsibility on the motorist, and do so in excess. In actual practice, most of the times that I’ve personally seen a bicyclist in traffic, they are happy to accept the privilege of being allowed to use the lane while ignoring all of the traffic rules they, themselves, are expected to adhere to.

Laws regarding safety should not be based on ideals unless they’re going to be enforced, and as you and I both know, they rarely are on the part of the bicyclist. They run stop signs, neglect to signal turns, and any other violation that they feel like doing on a moment’s notice, with almost complete impunity. When the laws of nature occasionally do kick in and they are injured because of it, it is the motorist who is blamed and suffers for it.

This general mindset of bicyclists’ denial that they are causing any risk is part of the problem here. It’s always either the fault of the motorist behind them, or the fault of the motorist behind the other motorist. But conveniently, never could it be the tiny-framed 2-wheeled slow-moving vehicle riding 15 mph in a 35mph zone in the car-sized lane, paying no attention to the rules save for the one that says that cars have to “share” the road with bikes that essentially monopolize it when they choose to occupy it.

Case 1. Do nothing but steer slightly to the left because the lane is wide enough to safely share.

Case 2. Make a partial or full lane change. This requires that there be enough time, base on the speed differential and the sight distance, to check that it is safe to move left.

Case 3. Slow down to the bicyclist’s speed. The sight distance to the bicycle must be greater than the braking distance.

Calculations and experience have shown that Cases 1 and 2 cover most situations. In case 3, collisions are generally avoided except when:
- the bicyclist is not detected soon enough (e.g., no lights at night) (this applies to cases 1 and 2 as well).
- the motorist is traveling much faster than is safe (generally well in excess of the posted speed limit)
- the motorist is inattentive (texting, etc.)

In other words, collisions occur because of illegal and dangerous behavior by one or more parties, not because bicyclists cannot safely co-exist on public roads.

I have yet to hear of one case of sudden braking to avoid bicyclist causing a multi-car pile-up. And there is a good reason: such crashes occur when motorists are following other motorists too closely. Motorists generally do not follow bicyclists — they pass at the first opportunity. When they do follow, it is at such a slow speed that there is no risk of collision due to sudden braking.

However once again, I assert that the standard of safety we should be considering FIRST is the likelihood of FATALITY resulting from a vehicle.

Motorcycles, Smart Cars, Mini’s, Pickup Trucks, Minivans, Sedans, SUV’s, Tractor Trailers, and Buses (did I forget any motorized, high-speed vehicles whose weight and potential speed could hinder their ability to stop quickly?) are all far more likely to kill the unseen bicyclist than that same bicyclist is likely to do much harm, if any, to a pedestrian. Pedestrians and bicycles belong together far more than motorized vehicles and bicycles. Peds and Bikes alike, allow for better reaction time by coexisting on sidewalks. Automobiles typically travel at the speed limit, which is usually above the capabilities of a bicycle, which is one more reason bikes do not belong in the lane.

Worse yet, is that the bicyclist in the road poses a danger to more than just him/herself; suddenly braking to avoid hitting a bicyclist in a lane built to fit the width of cars can cause a deadly multi-car pile-up. Even if I as a driver am cautious enough to look out for bicyclists, should I have to risk being rear ended?

Automobiles – all motor-driven vehicles – exceed the natural speeds that human reaction time was originally designed to respond efficiently to, and are thus in what I would call the “deadly” class. Bicycles aren’t likely to cause much injury than someone running at full speed without watching where they’re going.

(As for tractor-trailers and other gigantic vehicles, that’s a much worse danger all on its own. I don’t disagree with you; it’s just that our economy would virtually shut down without them. I’ve always thought, idealistically, that a separate road system should be built for those types of vehicles to protect the other drivers who wouldn’t stand a chance. But then again, this is the same line of thinking that makes me think that bikes should be off the roads altogether: safety for the one who doesn’t stand a chance in an accident.)