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Bicycle Safety: How to Not Get Hit by Cars | Back to Part I of this article | Collision Type #6: The Left Cross A car coming towards you makes a left turn right in front of you, or right into you. This is similar to #1, above. Local cyclists hit this way include Dr. Lee Chilton, John Howell (former president of the Austin Cycling Association), and Janne Osborne. How to avoid this collision: 1. Get a headlight. If you're riding at night, you should absolutely use a front headlight. It's required by law, anyway. 2. Wear something bright, even during the day. It may seem silly, but bikes are small and easy to see through even during the day. Yellow or orange reflective vests really make a big difference. I had a friend ride away from me while wearing one during the day, and when she was about a quarter mile away, I couldn't see her or her bike at all, but the vest was clearly visible. 3. Slow down. If you can't make eye contact with the driver (especially at night), slow down so much that you're able to completely stop if you have to. Sure, it's inconvenient, but it beats getting hit. Collision Type #7: The Rear End You innocently move a little to the left to go around a parked car or some other obstruction in the road, and you get nailed by a car coming from behind. How to avoid this collision: 1. Never, ever move left without checking your mirror or looking behind you first. Some motorists like to pass cyclists within mere inches, so moving even a tiny bit to the left unexpectedly could put you in the path of a car. 2. Don't swerve in and out of the parking lane if it contains any parked cars. You might be tempted to ride in the parking lane where there are no parked cars, dipping back into the traffic lane when you encounter a parked car. This puts you at risk for getting nailed from behind. Instead, ride a steady, straight line in the traffic lane. 3. Use a handlebar mirror. If you don't have one, go to a bike shop and get one. Collision Type #8: The Rear End, Part II A car runs into you from behind. This is what many cyclists fear the most, but it's not the most common kind of accident (except maybe at night, or on long-distance rides outside the city). However, it's one of the hardest collisions to avoid, since you're not usually looking behind you. The best way to avoid this one is to ride on very wide roads or in bike lanes, or on roads where the traffic moves slowly. Local cyclists Tom Churchill and Andrew Turner, and probably William Sigtryggsson died this way. All three of these incidents happened at night, and at least two of them didn't have lights. Getting rear-ended in the daylight is rare. How to avoid this collision: 1. Get a rear light. If you're riding at night, you absolutely should use a flashing red rear light. Bruce Mackey (formerly of Florida, now head of bike safety in Nevada) says that 60% of bike collisions in Florida are caused by cyclists riding at night without lights. Bike shops have red rear blinkies for $15 or less. (I have some cheap ones for $5 if you don't mind putting a rubber band or clear tape on it to hold the lens on since the friction tabs tend to break off. Call me at 512-494-9226 if you want one of these.) These kind of lights typically take two AA batteries, which last for months (something like 200 hours). I can't stress this item enough: If you ride at night, get a rear light! 2. Choose wide streets. Ride on streets whose outside lane is so wide that it can easily fit a car and a bike side by side. That way a car may zoom by you and avoid hitting you, even if they didn't see you! 3. Choose slow streets. The slower a car is going, the more time the driver has to see you. I navigate the city by going through neighborhoods. Learn how to do this. 4. Use back streets on weekends. The risk of riding on Friday or Saturday night is much greater than riding on other nights because all the drunks are out driving around. If you do ride on a weekend night, make sure to take neighborhood streets rather than arterials. 5. Get a mirror. Get a mirror and use it. If it looks like a car doesn't see you, hop off your bike and onto the sidewalk. Mirrors cost $5-15. Trust me, once you've ridden a mirror for a while, you'll wonder how you got along without it. My paranoia went down 80% after I got a mirror. If you're not convinced, after you've used your mirror for a month, take it off your bike and ride around and notice how you keep glancing down to where your mirror was, and notice how unsafe you feel without it. Collision Type #9: The Crosswalk Slam You're riding on the sidewalk and cross the street at a crosswalk, and a car makes a right turn, right into you. Cars aren't expecting bikes in the crosswalk, so you have to be VERY careful to avoid this one. Devorah Feldman was hit in this type of collision, effectively ending her career as a competitive athlete. How to avoid this collision: 1. Get a headlight. If you're riding at night, you should absolutely use a front headlight. It's required by law, anyway. 2. Slow down. Slow down enough that you're able to completely stop if necessary. 3. Don't ride on the sidewalk in the first place. Crossing between sidewalks can be a fairly dangerous maneuver. If you do it on the left-hand side of the street, you risk getting slammed as per the diagram. If you do it on the right-hand side of the street, you risk getting slammed by a car behind you that's turning right. You also risk getting hit by cars pulling out of parking lots or driveways. These kinds of accidents are hard to avoid, which is a compelling reason to not ride on the sidewalk in the first place. And another reason not to ride on the sidewalk is that you're threatening to pedestrians. Your bike is as threatening to a pedestrian as a car is threatening to you. Finally, riding on the sidewalk is illegal in some places. (In Austin, those places are the Drag, and downtown on 6th St. and on Congress). If you do plan on riding on sidewalks, do it slowly and EXTRA carefully, ESPECIALLY when crossing the street between two sidewalks. Collision Type #10: Wrong Way Wallop You're riding the wrong way (against traffic, on the left-hand side of the street). A car makes a right turn from a side street, driveway, or parking lot, right into you. They didn't see you because they were looking for traffic only on their left, not on their right. They had no reason to expect that someone would be coming at them from the wrong direction. Even worse, you could be hit by a car on the same road coming at you from straight ahead of you. They had less time to see you and take evasive action because they're approaching you faster than normal (because you're going towards them rather than away from them). And if they hit you, it's going to be much more forceful impact, for the same reason. (Both your and their velocities are combined.) How to avoid this collision: Don't ride against traffic. Ride with traffic, in the same direction. Riding against traffic may seem like a good idea because you can see the cars that are passing you, but it's not. Here's why: 1. Cars which pull out of driveways, parking lots, and cross streets (ahead of you and to the left), which are making a right onto your street, aren't expecting traffic to be coming at them from the wrong way. They won't see you, and they'll plow right into you. 2. How the heck are you going to make a right turn? 3. Cars will approach you at a much higher relative speed. If you're going 15mph, then a car passing you from behind doing 35 approaches you at a speed of only 20 (35-15). But if you're on the wrong side of the road, then the car approaches you at 50 (35+15), which is 250% faster! Since they're approaching you faster, both you and the driver have lots less time to react. And if a collision does occur, it's going to be ten times worse. 4. Riding the wrong way is illegal and you can get ticketed for it. Bruce Mackey says that 25% of cycling collisions are the result of the cyclist riding the wrong way. There's one possible exception to riding the wrong way. When you're riding in the country on narrow, high-speed roads, it may be helpful to ride against traffic so you can see what you're up against. Compared to city traffic, country traffic is likely to have less roadspace for bikes and cars to share. That being the case, riding the wrong way allows you to bail into the shoulder if a car doesn't see you. You don't have problem #1 above because side traffic is rare, and #2 is avoided because you're riding primarily along one road and not turning right. Country traffic is more likely to be sparse, which means that you may have the ability to switch to the "correct" side of the road when a car approaches you from ahead. I did a 100-mile ride with a friend once, continually switching from the left-hand side of the road to the right-hand side depending on whether traffic was approaching us from ahead or behind, since a vehicle passed us only once every several minutes -- but when it passed us, it was doing 70mph+, and we wanted to be as far away from it as we could. But remember that vehicles will still approach you faster when you ride the wrong way, and it's still illegal. It's your choice. More General Tips Avoid busy streets. One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they start biking is to take the exact same routes they used when they were driving. It's usually better to take the streets with fewer and slower cars. Sure, cyclists have a right to the road, but that's a small consolation when you're dead. Consider how far you can take this strategy: If you learn your routes well, you'll find that in many cities you can travel through neighborhoods to get to most places, only crossing the busiest streets rather than traveling on them. (In Austin, north of campus, go through Hyde Park. Between UT and downtown, take Rio Grande or Nueces. Between S. 1st and Lamar, take Riverside instead of Barton Springs. For more ideas for Austin, get one of the Austin Bike Maps.) Light up. Too obvious? Well, if it's so obvious, then why do most night-time cyclists ride without lights? Bike shops have rear red blinkies for $15 or less. If even that's too much for you, then I have some cheap $5 red blinkies. Headlights aren't quite so easy, because most bike headlights have sorry battery life (usually only a few hours of run time). One solution is the $30 LightWave flashlight, which runs for 15 hours on rechargeable AA batteries (even longer on alkalines). The secret to the long battery life is that the light comes from four white LED's, which lightly sip battery juice compared to standard incandescent lights. You'll need to rig up a way to mount the flashlight to your handlebars, because it's not designed with bikes in mind. Ride as if you were invisible. Assume that motorists don't know you're there and ride in such a way that they won't hit you even if they don't see you. You're not trying to BE invisible, you're trying to make it irrelevant whether cars see you or not. If you ride in such a way that a car has to see you to take action to avoid hitting you (e.g., by their slowing down or changing lanes), then that means they will definitely hit you if they don't see you! But if you stay out of their way, then you won't get hit even if they didn't notice you were there. On very fast roads, cars will have less time to see you because they're approaching you so fast. Now, you should avoid fast roads in the first place if at all possible, unless there's plenty of room for a car and a bike side by side. And if there IS such room, then on fast roadways, you can practice invisibility by riding to the extreme right. If you're far enough right that you're not in the part of the lane the cars are in, then they'll zoom by and won't hit you, even if they never saw you. (exceptions to riding on the extreme right are noted below) Here's another example: It's a good idea to signal a left turn, but it's a better idea to make your left turn at a time or place where there aren't cars behind you that could hit you while you're stopped and waiting to make that turn. You can hang out in the middle of the street, stopped, with your left arm out, waiting to make your turn, but you're counting on cars behind you to see you and stop. If they don't see you, you're in trouble. Naturally we don't advocate running red lights, but if you're the kind of person who does, then apply the invisibility principle when deciding on whether to run a particular light: Could any cross traffic possibly hit me if I were invisible? If yes, then absolutely don't do it. Never make a car have to slow down to avoid hitting you (red light or not). Remember, the more you rely on cars to see you to avoid hitting you, the more chances they'll have to actually do so. Remember, you're not trying to BE invisible, you're just riding with the assumption that cars can't see you. Of course, you certainly WANT them to see you, and you should help them with that. That's why you'll wave to motorists whom you think might be about to pull out in front of you, and why you'll be lit up like a Christmas tree at night (front and rear lights). There are exceptions to riding as though you were invisible. For example, often you'll need to command a whole lane of traffic instead of riding to the extreme right, for the reasons mentioned in the next section. Take the whole lane when appropriate. While you'll often prefer to ride to the extreme right to keep out of the way of cars passing you, it's often safest to take the whole lane, or at least move a little bit to the left. As you'll see from diagram #1 above, riding a bit to the left allows cars at cross streets at intersections to see you better. Also, you should take the lane if cars are passing you too closely from behind. This requires cars behind you to see you and either slow down or change lanes. Then again, if you're on the kind of street where you've got cars blocked up behind you or constantly changing lanes to get around you, you're probably on the wrong street and should find a quieter neighborhood street. By the way, it's perfectly legal for you to take the lane. Texas State Law (and the laws of most other states) says you have to ride as far to the right as is "practicable". Here are some things that make it impracticable to ride to the extreme right: Cars are passing you too closely. If the lane is too narrow for cars to pass you safely, then move left and take the whole lane. Getting buzzed by cars is dangerous. Cars are parked on the right-hand side of the road. If you ride too close to these you're gonna get doored when someone gets out of their car. Move left. You're in a heavy traffic area with lots of side streets, parking lots, or driveways ahead and to your right. Cars turning left won't see you because they're looking for traffic in the MIDDLE of the road, not on the extreme edge of the road. Move left. See Collision diagram #1 above. If you're paying attention, you'll notice that there are risks to both riding to the extreme right as well as taking the lane. If you wanted a steadfast rule, then sorry, it isn't that simple. (But take heart, because many of the OTHER concepts we mention in our Top 10 list above work 100% of the time.) If you ride all the way to the right, you risk getting doored, and you make it hard for cars at cross streets at intersections to see you. But if you take the lane, you'll definitely get hit if a car behind you doesn't see you. To make it more likely that they'll see you when you're taking the lane, be lit up like a Christmas tree at night, and take neighborhood streets when you can, since the cars will be traveling slower and therefore approach you from behind slower, and have more time to see you. Around 44,000 people die in car crashes in the U.S. each year. About 1 in 54 is a bicyclist. | Back to Part I of this article | Copyright © Michael Bluejay, bicyclesafe.com. Reprinted with permission.