Two friends got run over by a car this week while riding their bikes. One is doing fine, the other was likely on his last ride. I’ve been on the radio this week and talking to a number of my non-cycling friends about bike and pedestrian safety this week and I wanted to share a few points here.
Why weren’t the cyclists wearing better helmets
One question I’ve heard a few times is why don’t cyclists wear helmets like a motorcycle rider. Specifically, why aren’t they wearing full face helmets all the time? My best response was to ask “Should women who are assaulted be wearing less revealing/sexy clothing?”.
Phil Gaimon shared a poignant video this week addressing the same issue. While our media seemed to not blame the cyclists, it’s very common to hear that a cyclist was wearing black and that contributed to them getting hit. We don’t hear that if a black car is involved in an accident though. Somehow if a car is black it doesn’t affect it’s visibility but it does affect a cyclists visibility.
The next question I often got was, were they wearing high visibility gear? While the answer was yes, both had flashing lights on the rear of their bikes, the unfortunate results of two studies is that the more high visibility gear you wear the less you’re viewed as human. Dehumanization leads to increased acts of aggression by drivers, even if that driver is a cyclist themselves.
So cyclists should be more visible, but doing so makes them a bigger target for acts of aggression?
I’m not sure how to square that circle and keep myself safe so I can go home to my children after a bike ride.
Ultimately unsafe cycling infrastructure is a choice. It’s a choice that cars are the main mode of transportation and that if you’re not in a car, you don’t count enough to fully use city infrastructure. You see this when you pull up to a light and it won’t change if you’re not in a car. You see this when parking in bike lanes is the norm, and a cyclist is screamed at (like I was yesterday) if they don’t dive back into a bike lane when there are 3 parking spaces empty. It doesn’t matter if entering/exiting traffic is the more dangerous thing, that motorist wants to get to the light and wait and you’re stopping them from waiting. It doesn’t matter if the bike will get to the light at the same time as the car and also wait.
That bike better not waste 14 seconds of driver time1.
That’s all I’ve got this week.
- Yes that scenario is exactly what happened to me yesterday. ↩︎