I don't know if I would call it a conspiracy, but it certainly feels like that - for motorists, and against everyone else who uses the road. For the longest time, almost EVERYTHING in North America revolved around the car. That is slowly starting to change, but you can't reverse decades of behavior and culture over a short period of time.

Even the way the news of fatalities of cyclists is reported is biased IN FAVOUR OF and thinking more about the motorists, than the pedestrian or cyclist that is hurt or killed. There was a cyclist killed recently on River Road in Vancouver (a popular riding route). In the media reports I saw, both the police reports and the reporters stories seemed more concerned to be getting the news across the River Road was still open to traffic and that River Road is a safe road to drive. The death of the cyclist? It was as if the driver had hit a road cone! It seemed of little importance! THIS is the truly shocking and worrying part about all this.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

If you want to understand this, I cannot recommend "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt highly enough. It's a depressing read as a cyclist in many ways, but it does help to explain things.

https://www.amazon.com/...ding=UTF8&btkr=1

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Agreed - "Traffic" is a Must-Read if you want to understand that behavioral and cultural angle I mentioned above, and why, things are not going to get better sooner.

In Ontario, this spring the Provincial Government is supposed to be tabling Vulnerable Road User Legislation, that will start to shift some of the responsibility back to motorists, for serious injuries sand fatalities of vulnerable road users (cyclists & pedestrians). There is expected to be fierce push-back from automobile groups. The legislation and laws will not pass easily - but it's a start. A start for drivers to realize, that for too long, they have been able to essentially walk away from the mayhem, destruction and carnage that has resulted from there frequent negligence while driving!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Much as I despise and fear the situation as it is, I don't have much hope that anything will actually change. Keep in mind that for close to 80 years, drunk driving was a "boys will be boys" and "everybody does it now and then" thing. It wasn't until the 1980's that a serious effort was made to change the public perception that a DUI death was "just an unfortunate accident" that "could happen to anybody". It has taken two generations to educate people to understand that DUI death is a form of homicide - not "bad luck". I believe I once read that over 20,000 people a year were being killed in the US by DUI in mid century. 800+ cyclists a year are not nearly as noticeable a number. When combined with the fact that we are widely despised and considered a huge nuisance by a majority of drivers (I get seriously pissed off myself sometimes) I don't see some MADD type uprising against cyclecide converting the public anytime soon.

Hi all,
If I threaten someone with a baseball bat, that is a crime. If I injure or kill another person with a weapon, that is a crime. I wish that there was a group prosecuting all the times that a cyclist was run off a road or verbally threatened with a deadly weapon (4000 lb SUV). If you break the law and hit someone else, you are at fault and should be prosecuted.

That said, we as a group are not good at following the laws ourselves. I'm pointing the finger at myself also. I've been on lots of group rides where stop signs and lights were ignored. We all do or did it at some point. As a group, cyclists need to show motorists that we respect the law and deserve a place in the road.

Wonder is this fuels the gravel road riding. I know for me I ride almost exclusively gravel. Rarely see a car and people typically drive slower on gravel.

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Preach brother! :-)


Do you think this is blaming the victim a little? The fact that I run a stop sign now and then doesn't mean you were asking for it when a person hits you with their car.

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Damon Rinard
Engineering Manager,
CSG Road Engineering Department
Cannondale & GT Bicycles
(ex-Cervelo, ex-Trek, ex-Velomax, ex-Kestrel)

It doesn't BUT it certainly doesn't create a nice warm and fuzzy feeling for cyclists in general in the minds of the motorists that witness it. I'm not saying it's right but it's human nature.

I think it might be part of it but didn't the gravel cycling start in the midwest in low traffic areas anyway? They just happen to have lots of lengthy gravel roads. I bought a gravel bike this year (my road bike only could handle size 25c tires) as I have a bunch of gravel riding in my area and want to take advantage of that. I'll still do road riding by I pick and choose safer areas for sure

I know for me personally gravel riding has taken over because I'm nervous about riding on road. Still have some road to get to gravel. I like gravel because there are just a ton of gravel roads by me (I live in farm country) and the gravel roads seem to have much steeper and longer climbs. I'll drive to the Barry Roubaix route just for the climbs and safety (knock on wood).

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

yeah but its in a cycling rag... which means only some cyclist will read it.

needs to be in People in the checkout lines... TMZ on TV, Kardashins , Sportcenter ..housewifes of this and that .. you get the idea.

Actually if you are interested in where this attitude has come from then this podcast is worth listening too on your next long run

http://thedollop.libsyn.com/159-pedestrianism


its called the Dollop - two american comedians that cover american history in an entertaining way. and to summarised, yes it was a conspiracy theory, but this way it will take you 15-20km to figure it out.


enjoy

I agree with Damon on this point. I don't think there's any need to treat motorists like some esteemed paternal figure whose approval and respect we need to earn.

Motorists cause immense daily carnage to other motorists, pedestrians, and, of course, cyclists. Around 100 fatalities in the U.S. per day or around 3300 per day worldwide. And we have to show them we "deserve" a place in the road? Screw that.

Don't get me wrong. There is a lot of bad behavior by cyclists. And I think instruction in law and etiquette is important to learn and constantly reinforce with cyclists. I just don't think we have anything to prove to motorists before deserving equal access to infrastructure or fair treatment in the legal system.

If I threaten someone with a baseball bat, that is a crime. If I injure or kill another person with a weapon, that is a crime. I wish that there was a group prosecuting all the times that a cyclist was run off a road or verbally threatened with a deadly weapon (4000 lb SUV). If you break the law and hit someone else, you are at fault and should be prosecuted.


Here's what happens locally in Ontario and I believe other parts of Canada. If a cyclist or pedestrian is hit - and there is serious injury or even a fatality, often what happens is the lawyer for driver pushes hard to get a Careless Driving charge and an admission of guilt from the driver of that charge. This removes any criminality from the situation. This is assuming no alcohol involved. It may not even go to trial in this case!

This is why you can have a fatality, the motorist say "Yes" to Careless Driving, and some BS default excuse "I did not see them", and they walk away with a fine, and maybe s few demerit points. This happens over and over and over again. Of course the cycling community is outraged and incredulous, because again, motorists are getting off-the-hook for any real serious responsibility for negligent behaviour.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I was hit by a pickup truck in 2014 while on a touring bike. I had gone about 33,000 km through 26 countries by that time, and had bicycled in some pretty busy areas (Mumbai, Jakarta, Bangkok) so was well accustomed to traffic.

I was hit on a normal country road with reasonable traffic about 30 km from Bend, Oregon. There was a car behind the pickup truck and they witnessed the whole thing. The driver in the pickup admitted to the police that he didn't see me despite the large and bright pannier bags on my bike. Later he tried to change his story but was already on record for admitting fault and his statement was corroborated by the trailing car.

I survived with a concussion, 2 collapsed lungs, 12 broken ribs, needed surgery on my knee and had extensive bruising. It has been over 2.5 years and I still can't run and am just getting full range of motion back in my shoulder. He was charged with "Unsafe passing of a person operating a bicycle" (ORS 811.065). It is a Class B traffic violation and carries a maximum fine of $360.

Something is a little out of balance.

This is a great book...I have often quote from it. Kind of scary how humans aren't even biologically wired to be able to handle speeds 25+ MPH!

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"Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps"
Blog = http://extrememomentum.com|Photos = http://wheelgoodphotos.com

Something is a little out of balance.


What I'd like to see and needs to be done is someone or some entity look into the hundreds and thousands of incidents like yours, and the more serious ones where there has been a fatality of either a cyclist or a pedestrian. Do a bit of grand and thorough review across North America

My gut tells me that things are grossly out of balance - that thousands of motorists have really got away with minor charges, or no charges in many cases, when and where they have left in their wake, mayhem, carnage, and ruined lives, and where I am sure if they looked into it in more detail, there really has been a significant amount of negligence on the part of drivers, but that the whole of the system as it is set up now, is meant to almost always relieve drivers of any form of responsibility for their actions!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Last time I heard (and as always, I could be wrong), something on the order of 30,000 motorists are killed each year in the USA. While 2 cyclists killed per day is too many, 30,000 motorists is WAAAAAY too many.

It's not just in the US that motorists are irresponsible (ie they become complacent, cocooned in their 5 star rated vehicles, and don't take their responsibilities seriously enough) and kill cyclists, they kill other motorists as well. Drinking, cell phones, tiredness, boredom on long straight roads, etc etc, all combine to make it much more dangerous to operate a motor vehicle than people accept.

Unfortunately, nothing will change until motorists change. They/we, will not change until we are personally impacted by the ramifications of our actions. Killing a cyclist has pretty much no consequence in many countries. Killing another motorist also carries little actual consequence in most cases.

I contend that 99.999999% of events currently labelled "accidents" are not accidents at all and are entirely preventable. Whether your car is badly maintained, you're distracted, you're travelling too fast for the conditions/your skill level, etc etc, ALL those things are under your control. If a piano falls out of the sky and lands on your car, that's an accident. If you hit someone or something, that is entirely your fault. If you cause someone else to hit someone or something, again you're at fault. As soon as people take responsibility for their own actions, rather than trying to point the finger at someone else, we'll be better off. Only when repurcussions (fines, loss of licence, jail time) become serious enough will we take notice.

In many cases if you crash into someone and kill them, your insurance, that only costs a small amount of money (a few hundred?) will cover the costs. IF you are travelling way too fast, the speeding ticket will cost more than the excess/deductible if you kill someone. While speeding should incur some penalty, it's just wrong that the penalty for killing someone is less than simply driving too fast. When the personal cost of killing someone with your car costs you too much to consider, THEN you will drive to avoid that from happening, at all costs.

There is no one 'silver bullet' solution to eliminating the road death statistics, but we need to do a lot of things a lot differently that what we do now. Fixing the laws would be a good place to start. Then enforcement would be nice too.

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

I have no answer for Montana anymore. I just this afternoon posted a suggestion in a group regarding a route through a stretch of somewhat 'bad' road in western MT, and a person from outside the group responded to me directly. The response was polite but included:

"Do warn riders though that people on the secondary highway drive pickups with big mirrors that stick out quite far to accommodate vision when pulling stock trucks. I ride a bike around here, and give them a wide berth. Be courteous, they live here, and it's their livelihood."


For sure. I'd hate to offend someone by leaving my gore on their rear view mirror.

Self driving cars. That is the only solution. Don't let people control a 4 ton instrument of death.

Yep, or even better - start designing our environment so we don't have to depend on cars. Europe is good in some places, bad in others. Most urban areas are perfectly navigable without a car. The US is appalling. It's been planned on the assumption that everyone will use cars to get around and it's ridiculous.

Bikers pose a challenge to self-driving cars because they sometimes act like vehicles, and sometimes like pedestrians. It's an interesting issue, and now when I'm biking, I try to be really clear about which "mode" I'm in [I am pretty much always a vehicle, in my mind and actions], and when I'm acting like a pedestrian.

I can't say I agree with your view that almost nothing is an accident just because it could have been avoided. What's your definition of an accident? If it's something that can't be foreseen or prevented by any means, then sure, most events aren't accidents, but I don't see what that changes.

• Hit by lightning? - You shouldn't be outside without a Faraday suit.
• Bitten by a shark? - You should never swim in the sea.
• Killed by a tsunami? - Why were you near the coast?
• Hit by a car? - Why were you near a road?
• Got food poisoning? - Why don't you have a personal food taster and did you inspect the restaurant's kitchen before ordering?

Virtually all eventualities can be foreseen as a possibility but that doesn't mean we should take precautions against all eventualities. We have to weigh up the risk, often with limited information. But we can't live risk free. The problem is when it comes to driving our risk analysis doesn't work very well.

There are three problems with driving cars that make them an especially risky proposition:

1. It takes very little to cause a collision and the consequences are often huge.
2. In most developed countries, the majority of adults can drive
3. We drive very regularly

This results in a relatively high risk activity that has become normalised and because most of society can imagine themselves as a driver, they are inclined (subconsciously) to favour a view that removed their responsibility.
Remember when you learned to drive? I'm guessing you were aware of everything that could go wrong? I remember being paranoid that a child could pop out in front of me from behind every parked car..... However, after driving all my adult life and never having this happen, the fear has gone. I still know it could happen but I'm not nervous the whole time. I go faster, I look less, I assume everything will be alright like it's always been before.

So, we all know things can go wrong, but are familiarised to the risk until it fades from our conciousness. We're academically aware of it but not viscerally aware of it. We insulate ourselves from anxiety by pretending the dangers are not real. And incidents generally happen rarely enough that most of us get away with that. Some of us don't.
People should not drive cars as a matter of routine transport and expect not to have large numbers of deaths. I think we've done suprisingly well at limiting the fatalities to other drivers, pedestrians, etc. That doesn't make it something we should accept.

This is not a recent phenomenon and it's really not a car vs. bike thing. There is a much larger and pervasive psychology that takes hold when drivers get behind the wheel of their car. This video from 1950 sums it up well:

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Amateur recreational hobbyist cyclist
https://www.strava.com/athletes/337152
https://vimeo.com/user11846099

A reminder that the Ride of Silence is Wednesday around the world - http://www.rideofsilence.org/main.php. It certainly won't solve this problem anytime soon, but it is an effort to do something rational and peaceful.

It's stories like these that reaffirm my decision to sell the bikes and give up road riding. I did a lot of tris and used to ride 3 days a week with 50 to 60 mile rides every Saturday but over a period of 6 years, almost everyone in my small tight knit riding group got hit. Most were in the hospital but they all mostly recovered. While I loved the comraderie and exercise and zen like quality of a good long ride, I can't risk it anymore. With a house full of kids to take care of, road riding is an activity I don't see as favorable in the risk v reward category anymore. I moved since my heavy riding days and the roads around my new location are miserable and I wouldn't even think or riding them.

Yes, I do drive a car, fly in airplanes and lots of other things that have an amount of risk, but those aren't hobbies and I am required to do them. I can run, swim and take spin classes to stay in shape.

I contend that 99.999999% of events currently labelled "accidents" are not accidents at all and are entirely preventable.

Correct - There is most often reason, bad choices, too much speed, distraction, etc for the incident - but drivers NEVER seem to get it. They rarely take the full brunt of the responsibility for what has happened. The simple phrase " I did not see them" - is often enough to relinquish them of ANY responsibility. But I'm thinking here - How absurd is this? Think how ridiculous that sounds (but the police, the courts and judges go for this all the time) Isn't seeing where you are going, and what's going on in your view when you are driving a motor vehicle a key skill and responsibility of the driver?? -


Yes and the word "accident" helps in all of this because it sounds like it was some act of God, but rarely is that the case and it's a true accident - they were driving too fast, following too close, not watching where they were going, distracted by who knows what, making poor/bad choices etc . . .


It's shocking actually that there is not more up-roar about the total amount of deaths on the roads each year - from all causes. It's all WAY to high and I am sure many of these deaths preventable, with better behavior!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I can't say I agree with your view that almost nothing is an accident just because it could have been avoided. What's your definition of an accident? If it's something that can't be foreseen or prevented by any means, then sure, most events aren't accidents, but I don't see what that changes.


It's a behavioral thing. Look at more benign events - like snow storms or in particular that first big snow fall. Here in the Toronto area there are many hundred cars that end up in the ditches and many minor collisions that happen. The default cause/blame - The Weather. No - drivers were driving too fast for the conditions that accounts for many of these - that's being irresponsible and/or negligent, or they did not bother to put snow tires on their car - poor/bad choices. That's all on the drivers - but they all blame the weather, and pretty much everyone buys into that!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Add this story to the long list of sad, terrible and tragic stories of death, mayhem and carnage and NOTHING against the driver - http://www.cbc.ca/...ath-sussex-1.4104463

This the high profile incident here in Canada, of emerging road-cycling star Ellen Watters, killed last fall on a training ride near her home! No charges against the driver! Nothing! Good grief!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I've now gotten involved in the development of ADAS systems through work, which my employer has famously become very involved in. This will eventually make the roads safe for us again. I can see we have a long way to go to make it affordable enough that nearly every car has some higher level of autonomous control; it will come but some of us may give up riding first. The legislative issues may be even tougher than the technical issues, so support autonomous vehicle friendly legislation.

That is shocking. Did the collision occur at an intersection? I assume there were no witnesses? The investigation couldn't determine from the damage to the bicycle whether she was hit from the rear? I'm guessing there was no evidence that the motorist attempted to brake before the collision.

After this weekends ransomware issue, do you really want driverless cars on the road?
I'm all for electronic driver assistance, auto braking to avoid accidents and stuff, but please don't give me driverless cars.
Just because there are problems with drivers in cars, doesn't mean driverless cars are a better option.
Besides, I love driving cars! At least 8 out of the 10 best holidays I've ever had have been driving holidays. route 66, driving across Canada or the US, EPIC.
and while we're at it, how about having smaller lighter vehicles. There is no actual need for a 4 ton personal vehicle. I did a 2 week driving holiday years ago (including camping gear) with a 2 year old kid, in a 1981 3 door Honda Civic! There is no need or SUV's

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

I lived in Ontario for years so I can echo your driving in snow stories. I agree that it's the drivers fault, not the weather.

My whole contention was that it's not an accident, it's a choice by the driver that caused the accident. Drivers will only behave responsibly when they personally are held responsible for their driving actions. For example, if you cause an accident, and kill someone, you should lose your licence for life. With that kind of consequence, a huge majority of people will behave a lot better. And getting known killers off the road, will make it a lot safer for the rest of us. If you don't like the risk of killing someone and losing your licence for life either don't drive, or take extreme care!

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"