Recently, I passed a second year since I returned to bicycling after a long hiatus. In the last year, I logged over 4000 km (2485 miles), hardly a lot by many riders point of view but significant enough for this 73 year old.
Along the way, I’ve faced the danger of the road. I ride with a friend who was hit by an impaired driver back in the early 2000s. My friend’s life changed dramatically and he has spent the last decades learning to live with the outcome of that person’s incompetence. He lost his career but eventually got back on a bike, competing in the paralympic class races. He has learned to live with the limitations this driver imposed on him. He is lucky to be alive. The youth who hit him was high and was allowed to get behind the wheel again and eventually ended up in other accidents and killed himself by overdosing. A tragic waste of life. Should he have been allowed to drive again?
Another friend who rides with me was clipped by the side view mirror of the car of an elderly woman who should not have been driving. Luckily for my friend, the injury was not very bad, and he got the license of the driver and the police went ahead and charged her. I assume she is driving again.
I rode a bike into the rear end of a pickup truck that ran a yellow light, nearly killing myself. I have had a Collie run under my front wheel, throwing me over the handlebars. Any wonder I carry bear spray with me? I narrowly avoided running into a car door while riding on Eastlake Ave in Seattle.
Lately, there have been high profile incidents of bicyclists being killed by drivers. The most recent was a man in Chicago named Riley O’Neil, an urban planner who led the bicycle parking program and other key efforts at bicycle infrastructure in the city.
Riley was killed while in a bike lane that did not give enough distance from parked cars opening their doors directly into the lane. A car door was opened into the lane, Riley swerved into the traffic lane and was hit and killed by a truck.
In the wake of his death, I have monitored social media on the incident. A common refrain from some is that somehow the bicyclist is to blame, either for not watching out for car doors opening, or that he shouldn’t have even been on the street (read *any* street) as it is dangerous for bikes.
It occurred to me that I never hear that in the wake of a car death, that people decide that it was the fault of the driver for getting into a car in the first place. I never hear the road itself is dangerous to cars so the best solution is to not drive. Occasionally, I will read that a certain stretch of highway is “dangerous” and should be fixed and many times, is fixed. We demand that our roads are safe for cars, yet that doesn’t stop more than 44,000 people from dying in car accidents in the U.S. every year. Should those people not have been driving? Was the road to blame? Was it not safe enough? Do we do nothing to help lower that death toll?
Our roads were originally built for getting traffic like wagons and bicycles out of the mud of the late 1890s. Bicycles were a huge fad around that time. Cars and trucks were first a novelty but eventually we have become brainwashed that they are the only vehicles that should be allowed. Car drivers demanded that roads be improved for their benefit. The fact that most bicycle riders are also car owners so they pay the same road and gas taxes as those who don’t use bicycles do not seem to matter to the critics. We are often given little attention as road budgets escalate, and yet the minute a road is enlarged, it seems that it is too packed with traffic. Building more lanes is not a solution to traffic. In fact, it seems to make it worse.
I also hear that bicycle lanes are often “empty” at the given moment a driver passes by. I drive on many roads that are virtually empty of vehicle traffic for the time I ride on them. Should we rip those roads out? No, because we assume that people will eventually drive on them.
Many people I talk to say they stopped riding or have never ridden because the roads are too dangerous. I agree with them. Whether for bikes, motorcycles or other cars, people are more distracted than ever. Huge screens on electric vehicles, cell phones, radio, I’ve even seen women putting on mascara as they drive. It’s all a huge distraction. Roads are poorly maintained, they are often overloaded with cars, with drivers annoyed at the never ending slow speeds they end up driving even on gigantic freeways.
The answer is not to blame the cyclist. First, you have one less car to deal with on “your” road. That should make your trip faster, not slower. Secondly, the cyclist has a right to be on the road. Third, building more specialized bike lanes will move more traffic off “your” road, which should lead to you getting to the Starbucks coffee line with the other cars that much faster in the morning.
Making roads safer is not just for adults. Children used to ride everywhere. My bike gave me a special freedom and maturity when I was a kid. Now, parents are too afraid to let their children out on the streets with their bikes. How is that an improvement? Why shouldn’t children be safe when riding bikes? Why shouldn’t adults too?
Things are improving. Seattle has a sophisticated bicycle infrastructure, promoted for decades by advocacy of the Cascade Bicycle Club and work with the University of Washington. It gets bicyclists off the car roads onto dedicated bike lanes or bicycle paths entirely off the road. Portland and Minneapolis are also very advanced in their bicycle networks. New York, Chicago and other cities are making inroads. Bicycle deaths are down in the last few years (a little over 1000 people died on bicycles last year). 90% of those deaths are adults over 20, meaning 100 of those were essentially children or teens. Do we really want to be sacrificing our children to car drivers?
Bicyclists are not without some part of this problem. Many riders don’t wear helmets. They often don’t have lights on their bikes. They ride at dusk or night in dark clothes.
According to the engineering safety firm ACCRA “Bicyclists are essentially invisible to motorists at night and hence should and must, per state laws, take the necessary precaution to see and be seen. Every state requires a white front light to illuminate the bicyclist’s path of travel when riding between sunset and sunrise. Front lights are required to be visible typically at a distance of at least 500 feet. Some states require only a rear red reflector visible at a distance of at least 500 feet, whereas some require a rear lamp emitting a red light at a distance of at least 500 feet.”
The newest safety feature is rear facing radar. I won’t ride without it. It’s a game changer to see cars approaching from behind and have the ability to modify my riding to get further into safety.
We have to stop blaming the victims of poor road design, distracted drivers and our inability to demand safer ways to ride, especially in urban environments. Europe has learned how to design for bikes and cars. Tens of thousands ride daily in many European cities. It can be done. That has not only improved driving in those cities but has drastically reduced air pollution, which kills thousands a year who suffer from asthma and other lung related diseases.
It will take time, some mistakes in design will be made, but it will improve driving as well as biking. The more people who get out of their cars and into biking will mean improvements in mental and physical health as they improve exercising.
So when you hear of the death of a bicycle rider, remember they were a person with a family, friends, job and coworkers. The fault was not theirs but the society we have created that ignores the needs of those not able or willing to drive.
Filed under: Alternative Transportation, Bicycles | Tagged: bicycle, safety | Leave a comment »
