Cycling is a dangerous activity, especially if you ride on the road, dodging potholes and seemingly being invisible to drivers who believe that the road is there for them alone. Some localities are notoriously lax at prosecuting drivers who endanger cyclists, or promote bikers’ safety only grudgingly; they would prefer that we just go away and leave the roads open for cars to proceed well above posted speed limits. Examples of this mentality are easy to find—ask any biker—but an especially good one comes from the state of Florida, where signs are posted every so often telling bikers things they already know about avoiding cars and not saying anything to drivers about how to avoid running over bikers. Here’s an example of Florida’s bike-friendly signage:
If the drivers don’t get you, the gators will. I think I’ll scratch Florida off my list of preferred cycling spots.
[Hat tip to Marc Stern]
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Yikes! Will chomp for bikers.
Don’t think the cycling’s any better at Grand Teton National Park. Took off one summer to camp/cycle there. Stunning scenery, but motorists killed 2 bicyclists the month I was there. Zeeeoooouuu, whoooooosh, yernnnnnng.
If I am elected President, I’m putting in a silent Teton-Yellowstone monorail. No more vehicles!
How well do bikers observe, comply with, the laws of the road? The rules for bikers are quite extensive. But in urban areas, bikers often do not observe them. If a motorist is involved in an accident, usually it can be analyzed and blame placed where it belongs. But bikers can be at fault in causing auto accidents even though there is no physical contact with the bike. Motorists are generally insured whereas bikers generally are not – and bikers have the ability to get away quickly from a scene of an accident they may have contributed to without disclosing information. Just imagine if there were bike lanes everywhere, including areas where the roads were not designed with enough room to accommodate both cars and bikes. Might traffic come to a crawl? Would we all become bicyclists? If so, what would happen to our economy?
Cyclists can be at fault Shag, but they rarely are. If there is damage done in an accident it tends to be on the backs, heads, arms and legs of the cyclists, with relatively little done to the motorist. Having been hit by a clueless driver on my bike (thankfully without injury), and countless other near misses, I think blame belongs almost always on the car.
Traffic hardly ever comes to a “crawl” because of bikes. This fear is really unfounded, despite the occasional backup caused by a rider.
While I think what this demonstrates is that not only is our infrastructure is poorly designed to accommodate anything but cars/trucks, the American psyche is not adapted to share the road either.
In Boston, many bikers with our cowpaths of streets fail to observe the law of the road for bikers. Rather than provide a link here, just Google “Rules of the road for bicyclists” to see how extensive they are. I often see bikers on crowded Commonwealth Avenue weave in and out of traffic during commuting hours and going through red lights, stop signs, changing lanes without signaling. If a violation by a biker of the rules of the road causes an accident, what’s to prevent the biker from taking off?
Shag: Those who ride in the urbanized parts of Boston are more urban guertillas than typical bikers. They take many chances and have lots of broken bones, road rash, wrecked bikes, etc. to show for it. I have never seen reports that they pose serious threats to motorists in significant numbers. In many instances, they do pose serious threats to pedestrians, because the bikers are overly aggressive and the pedestrians are conditioned to watch out for cars but seem to find bikes invisible.
More generally — that is, outside a downtown Boston type of context, Ben has it right when he says that great majority of accidents in which bikers are involved occur when cars pass too close to them. When a 20-pound bike meets up with a 3000-pound car, it’s not the driver who comes away second best. Yes, bikers “can” ride away from accidents in one sense, but more likely it’s the biker who’s on the ground and the car that drives away.
Bicycles have been around for a long time. Bikers are entitled to share roads with motor vehicles. Now we have Segways that really haven’t yet caught on, but might in due course. Wednesday’s NYTimes featured a photo of a Segway/General Motors two-person vehicle that can attain speeds of up to 35 mph. These newer means of transportaion should be entitled to share the road with motor vehicles and bikers. But many roads have capacity issues since they were not planned with all this potential traffic in mind. The issue seems to boil down to road allocation for all entitled to share in it. I recall photos of southeast asian countries with many bicycles overwhelming motor vehicles and rickshaws. Is this our future? Roll back Ike’s highway system? Clog streets in urban areas? There are a number of social and economic issues involved. And how about promoting public transit? Well, here in the Boston area, our MBTA has been pressured by the bikers’ lobby (which is vast) to provide bikers with access to public transit buses with bike storage. This impacts most of the riders who come to public transit without their bikes. It seems that bikers are the tail wagging the dog of transportation problems.
Yes, Shag. Bicycles will undoubtedly put a halt to all transportation and subsequently crumble our entire economic system. It will be complete anarchy. Not because everybody will be in a never ending traffic jam or because of economic collapse, but because none of the cyclists will be following the rules of the road. I feel your pain. I too know what it’s like to try and maneuver a Hummer on a very narrow road.
Ben mentioned the crux of this debate–the state of the American psyche re: automobiles.
We are attached by the hip to this idea that hurling ourselves around in 2-ton steel vehicles is patriotic. In reality, cars are creating far far more problems than they solve. It’s a tragedy that so much public space (roads) has been overrun by these endless queues of fume-belching monsters.
Yet it’s no surprise when the people who embrace this weird orthodoxy of cardriving put the blame on bicyclists (looking @Shag). Don’t car drivers constantly break laws themselves? (Yes.) The hypocrisy is even greater considering the potential damage (and thus the gravity) of a car breaking traffic laws. It’s literally the difference between life and death for bystanders.
Some day far in the future, this abominable chapter in our transportation history will be over and we will shake our heads in disgust when we think about what we’ve been putting up with.
I’ve lived in the Boston area all my life (78+ years so far) and am a public transit guy. My law office was in downtown Boston for 40+ years and my commute was 98% by public transit, a good public transit system. We have gotten along with only one car, even with four children, putting on average about 7,000 miles annually on it, mostly by my wife. Boston is plagued with serious motor vehicle issues, as are other urban areas. Boston has been under a court order in connection with the BIG DIG to address air pollution issues caused by motor vehicles. These issues have yet to be resolved. Yes, motor vehicles, especially the oversized ones, are a problem and have been for some time. We can’t just get rid of the cars. Too many rely upon their cars to commute to work. It would be nice to reduce car traffic, perhaps to accommodate bikers, and even pedestrians. But what would happen to our economy if drastic steps were taken to reduce traffic? What would happen to people living in the suburbs and exurbs that lack public transit? Some commenters might be suggesting that bikes are the answer. Maybe, but there are a lot more addicted motorists out there than bikers. Good public transit may be the answer. But the costs are high as most public transit is subsidized. So it seems too cavalier to me blame the hummers. There’s a lot of blame to go around. And if reducing traffic significantly could be accomplished, the economic effect just might even impact bikers a tad. A future without cars? I could live with it with the few years I have left. But many can’t, and won’t. I’d like to see an economic/social package put together on getting rid of cars. Volunteers?
Yesterday’s (4/12/09) Boston Globe Magazine (boston.com/magazine) has as its cover article “Is Boston Ready For A Revolution?” by Tom Matlack. The subtitle includes this question: “Can Boston Really Go From Being The Worst City for Bicycling To The Best?” The author, a biker, tells us of his trip to Paris to review its bike-sharing program to consider whether it might work in Boston. This Paris bike-sharing program is somewhat like Zip cars for urban areas. Boston’s longtime mayor has become a bicycle enthusiast who on occasion bikes for his commute between his Hyde Park home and City Hall in the Government Center. Perhaps the mayor thinks that his efforts will be emulated by many. Author Matlack questions whether what works in Paris will work in Boston. Alas, public transit in the Boston area is facing serious financial problems. So where will the funding for bike-sharing come from? But if the bike-sharing craze catches on in Boston, perhaps an investment in deodorant stocks might reap large rewards. And we can all be Lance Armstrongs pedaling our tuches around town.
Living less than a mile from my office, I walk to campus. A fellow faculty member, who lives a few blocks further away, bikes. He passes me every morning, with his proper safety gear and orange visibility flag flapping at the end of its pole.
However, he routinely ignores traffic signs and does not use proper hand signals. A few weeks ago, right in front of me, he was almost flattened by a car when he biked straight through a stop sign without so much as slowing down. He cursed at the driver.
Later I saw him on campus and called him out on his behavior and he screeched at me that I was going to “ruin the world with my advocacy for drivers”.
Whatever. Cycling safety is impossible as long as cyclists continue their holier-than-thou attitudes.
Let me go back to Shag’s original post. However, first in the interest of full disclosure, I am a car commuter, a sometime bike commuter, as well as a cycling weekend warrior. So, I think I see it from all angles.
Let’s face it. Everyone breaks the rules of the road sometimes. Shag–have you always obeyed speed limits? Do you always come to a full stop at a stop sign? Incidentally, do we really want cyclists to come to a full stop at a stop sign, and have cars behind them waiting even longer. Some municipalities allow bikes to roll (slowly) through stop signs. This makes sense to me–as long as they treat it like a motorist treats a yellow light. Bottom line, nobody’s perfect (and people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones).
Cars can cause accidents, too, without ever creating physical contact. But why is this even relevant?
As a biker, I’m also insured by my homeowner’s insurance. Cars can drive away faster from an accident than a cyclist can ride. And as others have already pointed out, most of the time it’s the cyclist who is injured and in no shape to ride away.
If we had more cyclists there would be fewer cars clogging the road. Shag, you seem to have completely missed this point.
The city of Davis has planned for bikes and has bike lanes. A bike lane doesn’t take up much additional space and can usually be accommodated without having to widen roads. This would make it safer for everyone.
I think Shag is being a bit extreme to imply a more bike friendly environment would harm the economy. Society has already done a pretty good job of that without recourse to cyclists.
I wonder what an economic analysis would reveal regarding the contribution of the motor vehicle to our economy in comparison to the bicycle going back, say, to the days of the merry Oldsmobile and coming forward. We could become like some South Asian urban areas with mostly bicycles if we got rid of the cars. Cars have also given us problems. But can we go back to the good old days of the bicycle built for two and perhaps the horse and carriage? Yes, we need a cost/benefit analysis. How much do those tight Lance Armstrong get-ups cost? And how much extra speed do bikers get from them? And how about the contributions made by Kevin Bacon bike messengers in busy urban business areas? If only those damn cars would get out of the way.
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