Both are to blame here but dressing in dark colours with no lights is asking for this to happen, as I said, people should looks to mitigate issues where possible, in the dark, lights are a no brainer, not using them points to not having a brain, they are cheap enough and easily found, no excuse tbh
Yes, the driver should look, you can look and ‘not see’ though, its easy miss a bike, very easy. Missing one who is using LED’s would be an issue though. Interesting thread.
My mantra, if on a bike, assume everyone else is trying to kill you.
No. Yes, cyclists can go out of their way to avoid accidents. I think they should. But stop normalizing people operating heavy machinery when they should not. There’s no right to driving in conditions where you can’t properly see. If you can’t see a cyclist, you also can’t see a drunk person stumbling into the road. You’re operating the heavy machinery, it’s your responsibility to do so in conditions where you can be safe doing so.
Cyclists can make themselves more visible and I think it’s good practice to do so. But the fault lies with the driver. It is not the cyclists’ responsibility to help and or encourage unsafe driving.
I do agree to a point, yes, the driver should have seen him, had he been using appropriate equipment, she probably would have, I would rather go home safe after a ride, on my bike and not in an ambulance, you cannot expect people to do the right thing, expect them to do the wrong thing, especially when you are in as vulnerable position as on a bike, on a public highway.
I am glad that the incident was minor and that both families aren’t dealing with much more tragic circumstances.
I hope your other half is doing okay and is processing the situation. It’s a lot of complex emotions and it will likely hang around with her for a while. Picking at the technicalities of the situation to assign fault or absolution honestly is only like stage 2 of the whole process.
I have been almost hit in a car-backup situation by a neighbor and, as a driver, almost hit a motorcyclist once.
“You are invisible and everyone is trying to kill you.”
^ This is what my brother was told when he took a motorcycle class. I say it to myself all the time on my bike.
I also curse under my breath at every person, whether walking, riding a bike, or whatever, on the MUP(!) who is not at least the tiniest piece of reflective clothing after dark. They are invisible until I am entirely too close. Riding a bike around cars without lights or reflectors is even worse because the stakes are higher. I get not wanting to wear HiViz. I don’t own any. But reflectors and lights are not a big ask.
Caveat: I’ll assume some cities might be well lit. We have observatories here, so the dark skies regulations keep things very dark.
This is a interesting Blog on the subject of SMIDSY. If I recall it basically say our brains are developed for 1000s of years of running (hunting) speed. Stick it in a fast car (or RAF jet for that matter) it struggles to keep up with the image processing and quite often bits are missed out when the images are put together (often a cyclist or motorcyclist is in that image that’s left on the cutting room floor). The RAF to mitigate that teach their pilots to carefully scan the horizon and scan it again to fill in any of those gaps.
This is the crux for me. I agree that cyclists do well to wear reflective clothing (Rapha has some excellent black jackets that are still very reflective of black is what you like).
It’s one thing to have the immediate reaction to blame the cyclist if you just had a close call and are processing that. I also understand having that reaction out of empathy for a loved one who just hit a cyclist.
I do understand that. But it’s another thing to encourage that reaction on the internet. I would much rather the OP and the driver could recognize that reaction and try to suppress it because I think we all have seen this unfold: someone hits a cyclist and their own incapacity to process that then led them to double down on the victim blaming of someone who is also under shock, also still processing, and possibly hurting.
The driver is at fault. I find it strange that in these situations even among cyclists empathy for the driver often outweighs empathy for the rider.
Because even cyclists do stupid things. Riding around at dark with no lights, no reflectors, and dark clothes is stupid. End of story. No excuses. One is already taking a risk riding in the dark.
I won’t even ride my bike at night or dusk with lights because I value my life too much. And I’m a 40+ year serious cyclist.
The whole point of one side of this discussion is accident avoidance which is different than assigning fault.
There was an incident last week at JFK airport where an American Airlines plane ended up on an active runway where a Delta flight had just been cleared for take off. Fortunately quick reaction by the air traffic controller in seeing the incursion and calling it out and then the Delta crew in getting their plane stopped in the nick of time prevented a collision that could have killed 400 people.
The events are “on tape” so its 100% clear the AA crew was at fault. They were given a specific
taxi instruction but somehow managed (despite reading it back correctly) to misunderstand it such that they ended up crossing the active the runaway. They were 100% at fault.
But I guarantee you that all professional pilots who look at this, in addition to the obvious pay attention to where you have been cleared to taxi, they are also being reminded that to avoid accidents, even after a take off clearance is given, its still ultimately the pilots responsibility to keep an eye on the runway to make sure it is clear even if it won’t be “your fault” if you hit a plane that is not supposed to be there.
Its not empathy for one side outweighing the other to discuss how an accident could have been avoided. It’s just common sense. And in any truly safety sensitive job or profession, it is a routine part of any post accident or near miss review.
Yeah, my (n=1) experience is that I’m more complacent when I have my lights vs when I don’t for whichever reason. And sometimes I don’t have them and still need to get home. In some ways not being visible from the front is easier as there isn’t the possibility of a false assumption that they see me b/c of the light.
Was she parked parallel to a curb? Did she use the turn signal blinkers before pulling out of the parking? Did she look over her shoulder before entering the roadway?
Also, this talk of reflective clothing doesn’t seem to matter in this particular incident because as far as I’m aware, it would be hard to see reflective bits from behind when there might not have been any lights directly aimed in the direction of the cyclist from the POV of the driver.
I’m not making a political argument, but a moral one. You were indirectly implying the cyclist had some form of civic responsibility to not be run over by an inattentive driver.
My point isn’t that you shouldn’t do what you can to be safe, but that it isn’t your responsibility. You should have an a priori right to safety.
Similarly, to @STP - in that case you don’t have an inequality of information or risk. A fairer comparison would be asking: if a plane veered off the runway, into the car park and run you over whilst you were setting your satnav to drive away, would the accident investigation ask the driver ‘what could he have done differently’?
Legal responsibilities like looking, signaling, and lights when required, are very different than safety measures that we choose to use like high vis clothing or day time running lights.
Saying that a cyclist was asking to be hit because they weren’t wearing high vis is a pretty gross viewpoint. Somebody riding a commuter bike in waterproofs sounds a lot like a person who needed to get to work and used what they had at their disposal. Being a “serious cyclist” is not a requirement to use the road.
None of us here have all of the info but I see the legal authorities assigning blame to the driver as a more significant indicator of fault than picking apart the cyclist’s bike and clothing choices.
Yes. In your hypothetical any decent post accident analysis in that situation would examine why the car was parked there and was there a viable alternative. The answer may be “no” but the question would most definitely get asked. (In fact, I believe the FAA has a whole host of mandatory setback rules for runways to avoid out of control planes hitting innocent folks on the ground and in some cases where incidents reveal those may not be adequate in certain situations, they have shut down runways or whole airports. They don’t just rely on pilots doing the responsible thing and keeping their aircraft on the runway to avoid accidents).
As mentioned, I have been hit by a car. I was 100% in the right when that happened. But, that did not prevent me from learning from that how to better protect myself in that situation in the future. Its been 20+ years since that happened and I still apply that lesson frequently. Over the years I have collected a whole host of lessons from near misses, many of which (but not all I was 100% in the right. How many more times would I have been hit if I had just bemoaned the fact the driver (or I . . .) violated his civic responsibility and not tried to learn from what happened?
Ok, you misunderstood what I said, as I agree that cyclist and pedestrians should feel safe on the streets at the cost of requiring more effort or inconvenience from drivers.
In the conversation that you responded to I was defending the laws that protect the weaker parties and someone commented that you then get situations where the weaker parties take advantage of these laws.
That is where my response came from:
In the analogy, “doing stupid things” is equivalent to the weaker parties taking advantage of the laws that protect them. I was not comparing people doing stupid things in a Democracy to the weaker party not going out of their way to be safe.
Back in the good old days we used to see this on the TV every night. I still know the words 40 years later.
I think about it every time i see a cyclist all in black or a pedestrian crossing the road jn front of cars at night or an elderly dog walker in a dark green Barbour jacket camouflaged against a hedge on a country road. I think (proper) cyclists are by far the least guilty of this as we have frequent exposure to the risk and have all seen a lot of close escapes.
I was 100% in the right. How many more times would I have been hit if I had just bemoaned the fact the driver (or I . . .) violated his civic responsibility and not tried to learn from what happened?