Anxiously awaiting the outrage about how the woke mob is forcing their liberal ideas like ‘pedestrian safety’ onto ‘real americans’.
But seriously this is a great step towards engineering safety solutions for driving. The workplace hazard control heirachy is Eliminate, Substitue, engineer, administrate, PPE. In automobiles most of the vehicle dynamics systems are still PPE/admistrative (seat belts and speed limits)
Unfortunately the safety rating of automobiles in the US is almost entirely based around the safety of that vehicle’s driver/passengers. Things like very bright headlights and massive front grilles increase the US safety rating of the car while making that same vehicle more dangerous to every other thing on the road.
Going off road cannot be the solution. We need transportation justice. Roads should be safe for all users, not those who can afford to use them. As for radar tech, I feel it’s making drivers lazy, as the radar may fail. The solution is very stiff penalties, such as in northern European countries.
Going off road or online. Agreed. I choose this now because of the status quo and because my young children need their dad.
Stiff penalties alone wouldn’t work here because drivers rarely get charged with anything. This is the first step. And it echoes the comments made by several: it starts by: not saying “it was an accident”. If some crazy combination of events like a tree collapses in front of you just as you go, you swerve to avoid it and hit someone who was there, wrong place, wrong time, then ok maybe it was an accident. Most of these people hit stories are not accidents. They are always linked to drivers not being 100% focused on doing what they should be doing: driving.
thanks for the post burn sheep - lots of good things to ponder on in there.
the auto braking to avoid/minimize front end collision makes a lot of sense to me (if killing humans isnt too high on one’s list maybe striking deer is and perhaps the result is better for the vulnerable road user).
i love riding my bike / i defer to the quietest roads I can easily get to / i wear bright (helmet/shoes/socks/jersey) and have numerous lights / my safety is only partially in my hands. i do ride much more gravel than even a few years ago - when I can get to those roads.
i also have a notion that group rides are usually safer as they seem much more visible (perhaps naive).
hugely agree the narrative is not in a cyclist’s favor. i hope i get to see the time where there is more blame/shame placed on the driver and more empathy for the vulnerable road user (perhaps like drunk driving has become much more frowned upon than maybe the 70s).
The new GM 2500 / Silverado is bananas. I’m not a short person - 6’4". And walking in front of one that I don’t think had any aftermarket lifts done, I could not see over the top of the hood.
Jalopnik lampooned GM with a good article, “Hey Maybe Someone Go Check And See If GM’s Truck Designers Are OK.”
i used to ride and train there. so sad. and it really reinforce why so many of us have move to gravel riding instead of the road…
Gravel and online. The latter definitely being far less fun. But I can’t help thinking that if I got hit and killed now my kids would barely remember me by the time they get to be teenagers. So, I take the boredom.
Same here. Zwift, gravel, winter fat biking, mtn biking during offseason (from IM training). I used to ride outside on the busy paved roads on my tri-bike and it just got to be too dangerous. I didn’t feel safe anymore with distracted and many times aggressive and malicious drivers. Many might argue the chances and statistics are very slim to get hit and or killed by a vehicle. But we read about this way too often. And it just takes a second for some idiot to make a fatal mistake. I don’t want to be another statistic or get killed by some asshat. I feel like I put my life into the hands of a careless general public lacking kindness if I were to ride my tri bike on those paved roads.
My condolences to the riders. This is very tragic.
Sometimes I’m glad that I’m old and headed for the exit - I don’t think I want to see the rest of this movie.
I’m getting to the point where I’m just grateful I got to enjoy so much of the movie (and it wasn’t animated). I look at roads I used to ride at different periods of my 5 decades as a cyclist and many of them I’d be scared to ride now.
The new GM 2500 / Silverado is bananas. I’m not a short person - 6’4". And walking in front of one that I don’t think had any aftermarket lifts done, I could not see over the top of the hood.
I can’t find my post but I think I said somewhere around here that if you get hit by a car, you* might *stand a chance of survival by being rolled over the slope of the hood, but being hit by a truck - with that massive, tall and FLAT frontal area - is pretty much the same as being hit by a bus or a freight train
I ride that stretch, in the opposite direction the group was on, all the time. Where they were hit is probably the safest part of that road since it has a good sized shoulder.
The bridge does arc a bit and I had though that perhaps the driver came over the crest and didn’t see the group but I saw the impact area today and his visibility wouldn’t have been impacted by the arc.
I wasn’t 100% sure where the impact happened but on my ride today I could see a very long black tire rub mark on the concrete barrier that separates the road from the sidewalk. I wasn’t sure if that was from the accident or had been there before but when I got home I saw an article on azfamily.com that mentioned the truck had hit the barrier. From the mark it left he hit that barrier HARD!
I’ve ridden with the woman that was killed and another male that is recovering from a broken collar bone/ribs. There is a GoFundMe if anyone would like to help
The new GM 2500 / Silverado is bananas. I’m not a short person - 6’4". And walking in front of one that I don’t think had any aftermarket lifts done, I could not see over the top of the hood.
I can’t find my post but I think I said somewhere around here that if you get hit by a car, you* might *stand a chance of survival by being rolled over the slope of the hood, but being hit by a truck - with that massive, tall and FLAT frontal area - is pretty much the same as being hit by a bus or a freight train
OR - In my case, I crashed and slid under the truck. (he swerved to miss me, but I slide the same direction he swerved) The truck didn’t touch me. Had it been a prius or some other “little car” I would have smeared into the pavement.
I’m very glad a truck and not a car was behind me when I crashed.
Going off road cannot be the solution. We need transportation justice. Roads should be safe for all users, not those who can afford to use them. As for radar tech, I feel it’s making drivers lazy, as the radar may fail. The solution is very stiff penalties, such as in northern European countries.
This is very true. The athletes can afford to shift to gravel/indoors training, but there is plenty of folks out there who have to ride their bikes to work/school/stores. They have no choice. They are the ones who are the most at risk because they often ride at night when it is way more dangerous. I like the idea of transportation justice, it needs to be a bigger thing.
I’ve lived and trained in Goodyear for 17yrs. I have ridden that road too many times. I know a lot of the people and the woman who passed.
Another point. The driver DID NOT STAY. He jumped in the truck but it was too damaged to drive away. He was also towing a trailer.
This is horrific and when I see the police posting about it I am infuriated.
Landscaping trucks are ALWAYS parked in the bike lanes in estrella (closest residential community) and never ticketed.
The schools have lines of cars stopped in the bike lane.
The Goodyear police have done ZERO about this.
There is a news conference at 1:30az time that will be live on their Facebook.
Ive heard it both ways from cyclist that were involved, some are saying he did not try to leave and was assisting/trying to help and other saying he tried to leave so at this point no one knows for sure. I’m not trying to defend him in anyway but clearly no one knows 100% either way.
From what I’ve read the woman that passed, and possibly others, were under the truck so it is possible he was trying to move the vehicle but again I wasn’t there and even the individuals involved are not agreeing so we’ll have to wait and see what the investigation reveals
Going off road cannot be the solution. We need transportation justice. Roads should be safe for all users, not those who can afford to use them. As for radar tech, I feel it’s making drivers lazy, as the radar may fail. The solution is very stiff penalties, such as in northern European countries.
Going off road or online. Agreed. I choose this now because of the status quo and because my young children need their dad.
Stiff penalties alone wouldn’t work here because drivers rarely get charged with anything. This is the first step. And it echoes the comments made by several: it starts by: not saying “it was an accident”. If some crazy combination of events like a tree collapses in front of you just as you go, you swerve to avoid it and hit someone who was there, wrong place, wrong time, then ok maybe it was an accident. Most of these people hit stories are not accidents. They are always linked to drivers not being 100% focused on doing what they should be doing: driving.
Francois is correct. If you want the penalties to be an effective deterrent, then certainty is more important than severity.
Francois is correct. If you want the penalties to be an effective deterrent, then certainty is more important than severity.
Philosophical argument, but though the efficiency of deterrence may improve, I’m not confident it’ll be “enough.” Even consistently severe sentencing for other crimes is far from perfect at “fixing people.” All those crimes still exist. And the human costs are enormous. In many cases the first interaction of people with the justice system in a driving-related incident is a fatality. In which case “deterrence” is no longer relevant.
I’m a technophile. I think we need to remove people from the task of driving, with first removing them from final responsibility for emergency braking. Making people lazy in cars is the goal, not a pejorative. And I think someone mentioned things like what happens when the radar/lidar/stereo doesn’t work. There are more effective solutions to that than answering the question, “what do you do when a human being doesn’t work?” With the first part of that answer being at least it’s very easy to determine when a sensor is not working. Determining if a person isn’t working right is much, much harder.
I’m not promoting this as an alternative to accountability right now. Just something to do in parallel. I’m all for full accountability for any human taking responsibility for other human lives while behind the wheel.
The new GM 2500 / Silverado is bananas. I’m not a short person - 6’4". And walking in front of one that I don’t think had any aftermarket lifts done, I could not see over the top of the hood.
I can’t find my post but I think I said somewhere around here that if you get hit by a car, you* might *stand a chance of survival by being rolled over the slope of the hood, but being hit by a truck - with that massive, tall and FLAT frontal area - is pretty much the same as being hit by a bus or a freight train
OR - In my case, I crashed and slid under the truck. (he swerved to miss me, but I slide the same direction he swerved) The truck didn’t touch me. Had it been a Prius or some other “little car” I would have smeared into the pavement.
I’m very glad a truck and not a car was behind me when I crashed.
100 percent with you. Deaths on the roads two or three times that of most European countries. Many of those dead are young. But it is regarded as routine.
Condolences to the family and friends of the two that died and best wishes for speedy recoveries for those injured. It seems like at least every year on Slowtwitch a post similar to this one is written about cyclists being maimed or killed. But it seems just as often that I read of an athlete dying in the swim of a race. Both those types of deaths get my attention because I do ride my bike on the road (not as much as when I was younger) and I do still race triathlons with cold water swims. Fortunately, I believe the odds of either of those deaths happening to me are pretty low but still, it’s always possible. That is why I try to mitigate the risks by using and incorporating in my training/racing the knowledge and experiences from the readers on this forum. There’s plenty of risk out there and it’s up to each of us to decide how much is acceptable in our life’s.
100 percent with you. Deaths on the roads two or three times that of most European countries. Many of those dead are young. But it is regarded as routine.
Locally here in the Toronto area we have Politicians banging on and on about Vision Zero - which in some European Countries they are darn close to.
But the numbers in Toronto and Ontario tell another story completely - driver to driver crashes, and crashes and collisions between drivers and pedestrians and cyclists, and serious injuries and most importantly fatalities from all of that, KEEP GOING UP year over year. EVERY metric is heading in the WRONG direction!
We have also learned via interviews with key Police personal that Police Enforcement has dropped WAY off - in some cases in some jurisdictions almost ZERO. There is a certain kind of mayhem/chaos you see on the roads now - with many drivers literally just doing whatever the heck they want to.
One of my pts owns a towing business. This is far from Toronto in Southwestern Ontario. He says calls to tow away cars for the police are way down indicating that enforcement is way down. No way I am believing the driving is getting better.
One of my pts owns a towing business. This is far from Toronto in Southwestern Ontario. He says calls to tow away cars for the police are way down indicating that enforcement is way down. No way I am believing the driving is getting better.
Former Toronto Chief of Police Mark Saunders was interviewed back in 2019 on CBC Radio and he is quoted as saying that the Toronto Police Force had cut WAY back on Traffic Enforcement and it had been that way for a number of years. There was some subsequent analysis and its showed as I stated in the previous post over the previous 5 years a notable increase in driver to driver crashes. Drivers colliding with pedestrians and cyclists and injuries and fatalities from all of that - all increased. Again as I said, EVERY metric going in the wrong direction!
