Cyclist hit by a car: the cyclist must have been running red light!

Have you read the comment section of news articles about cyclists who got hit by a car lately? Does it get a bit old how most of these sections quickly deteriorate into a bunch of rants about how cyclists are a bunch of law breakers who routinely run red lights and stop signs, even when the cyclist(s) in the news articles did no such thing? Somehow a few of us are under the impression that a great way of conversing with the rest of the world is by always blaming the cyclists for a crime they may NOT have committed whenever they get hit by a car on an American road. It doesn't seem to matter if it is well established that the cyclist(s) in question didn't commit the crime - if any other cyclists the commenters had ever noticed on the road have ran or rolled through a red light or stop sign, then all cyclists must automatically be guilty of it.

Translate that to drivers; if driver A runs a stop sign, does that automatically make driver B guilty of stop sign running? Why is it so hard for some to hold their tongue/fingers and wait for all the info pertaining to an incident to come out before presuming to act as self-appointed prosecutor, judge and jury and pronounce someone guilty? Especially when there is a fatality involved?

I no longer have a car, but in all the 10 years of 30,000+ miles per year that I drove first a Dodge Caravan then a Toyota Corolla I was a good enough a driver to never earn any sort of ticket. Now that I mainly transport by bicycle, I get along great with most drivers I share the road with, and I don't run red lights or stop signs or do any of the other icky stuff like riding against traffic or on the sidewalk. And yet if I get unlucky and get hit by a car tomorrow, it is a sure bet that some a--holes will pop up on news articles covering my crash to lump me in with lawless red light runners or the amazingly rarely spotted cyclist who ride "4 deep on a narrow road".

So... if you happen to be one of those 'cyclists are all red light runners' folks, here are a couple of videos for you because, you know, cars don't run red lights at all... ever. Uh-uh. Not gonna happen...

 

And cars never cut other cars or bikes off either, or merge without first looking, or getting into the wrong lane, or whatever else thingy. No, drivers never do any of that stuff. Drivers never notice any of that stuff done by other drivers... Do they? Hello???

Why don't the cyclists use the bike rack?

I'm sure many have had this question popped up in their head when they see a bike locked up to a sign post or a sidewalk rail or just about any sturdy metal thingy even though there is an empty bike rack available. So why don't cyclists use the available bike rack?

Short answer: because some bike racks are really unsafe to park my beloved bike at. You have seen many of them, they are the low racks like the one in the picture above, where you can only lock either a front or a back wheel with a U-lock (much harder to break than the cable version) and no part of the bike frame. So, locking my bike up there means there's a good chance of me coming back out of the library/restaurant/shop only to find a wheel locked to the rack... without the rest of the bike. A road bike wheel is expensive. Yes. But not nearly as expensive as the rest of the bike!

 Another library, another bad bike rack (there's no way you can U-lock any part of the bike frame to this rack). Luckily this one is surrounded by metal railing, so I locked my beloved Giant Defy to the railing instead, and so did a recumbent cyclist who got there before I did.

 It bugs me a bit that many bike shops around town only offer bad bike racks like this one in front of their store. There was no other bike around, so I managed to lock the frame to it by taking up two spaces instead of just one. I wonder how many bikes get stolen from in front of bike shops each year. I mean... what better setting for a thief to just grab a bike and ride off than in front of a bike shop that offers no sight-line to the bike rack from inside the store? I mean, people do that all day long there... going off test-riding bikes that they didn't arrive on. A bike thief would blend right in!

Now these are good bike racks for a change. I can U-lock the frame and the rear wheel (the two most expensive parts of the bike) to these racks. We need more of them around!

Jackie Price Dunn Memorial Ride & Fund

We have had a few cycling deaths here in San Diego this year, but the passing of Jackie Price Dunn after a freak crash during a Velodrome race this past Tuesday hit the cycling community hard because of its circumstances. I think we all know in some level that every time we put on the helmet and roll our bike out into the city traffic there is a chance that we will end up dead or injured from colliding with a car. The velodrome, however, is a car-free environment with smooth surface to ride on... Even when in high speed races you don't expect much more than bruises and road rashes to result from a crash. Jackie went down hard and hit her head. The helmet survived but her brain didn't. I wasn't there and don't know how it really happened, but I doubt if it would have made any sense to me if I were... Sometimes you can do everything right and still end up with a catastrophe.

San Diego Velodrome

Anyhow, this Saturday (June 22nd) morning Jackie's friends and fellow local cyclists are getting together at 8am to ride one of her favorite cycling routes, the Bayshore Bikeway & Sweetwater Bikeway from Tidelands Park on Coronado to Plaza Bonita and back, in her memory. Everyone is invited and more details can be found at this Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/212819032199962/

A fund has also been established to help her family pay for her medical & funeral cost: http://www.gofundme.com/3brxtw

Added on 29 June:
Another memorial ride & fund-raiser in her honor is scheduled for July 4th. The bike ride starts/finishes at Moonlight State Beach in Encinitas at 7:45am. Two routes offered, with mutual rest stop at Double Peak. There is a fund-raising dinner (for Jackie's favorite charities) afterward at Union Kitchen & Tap in Encinitas from 11am - 2:30pm. More info at the event's facebook page.

Why aren't the cyclists riding in the bike lane/road shoulder/far right edge?

I often see complaints by a subset of drivers who probably don't ride their bike on city streets that cyclists are often seen riding in the traffic lane when there is road shoulder/bike lane available. So, why don't cyclist always ride in the bike lane/road shoulder/far right edge of the road?

People don't always check their six before opening their traffic side car door...

You can't see this from the car, but 3/4 of this bit of bike lane is covered in broken bits of glass.

These won't do anything to car tires, but road bike tires go flat riding over them. Even the ultra-tough Gatorskins aren't immune to punctures!

Pine cones & other fruits are cute as long as they aren't in the bike's path! Also, when there are big trees lining the street, there tends to be root bumps and cracks right under them in the bike lane/road shoulder.

I added the vertical red bar to make the ickiness of this root bump more visible... Try hitting that thing while going at speed on a bicycle. It can really destroy the wheel (among other things)!

A bit of sand on the road won't cause a car to skid, but these can really cause a bike crash.

We cyclists haven't got a windshield.. Try riding into protruding tree branches at 15 mph. It hurts!

Branches are hard to see, even from a bicycle. This particular limb was at throat level...

You wouldn't drive a car over this, why should a cyclist ride his bike?

With all the broken glasses and radial tires' wire bits on the road, I get punctured most often from goathead thorns...

Some roadside protective ramps have ends that jut out. This one will easily take a shin off a cyclist and send him spilling into the traffic lane.

Every week from the night before to the night of the trash collection day, of course, there are extra obstacles in the bike path/road shoulder.

Also... a lot of time it is safer for a cyclist to ride left-center of the only through traffic lane when entering an intersection if he is behind a tall car so that the cars coming from the opposite side of the road that might be waiting to make a left turn would see him and know not to try to turn right as the tall car in front of the cyclist is going past.

A lot of street corners here have cars parked right up to the intersection. A street-savvy cyclist going straight will also ride more toward the middle of the right-most through lane rather than far to the right so that cars coming out of the side street will be able to see him (drivers tend to just look to the middle of the road for other cars before they make the right turn onto the cross street... and end up hitting a cyclist they should have seen but didn't).

So, the next time you see a cyclist riding in the middle of the traffic lane, please think about what legitimate circumstances that might force him to be riding there (believe me, most cyclists are sane and really dislike riding in traffic, surrounded by cars) rather than to immediately go into the road rage mode and assume all sort of evil motifs on the cyclist's part.

Why cyclists shave their legs....

Having been riding in the mountains a lot this year I gave in to prevailing cycling wisdom and shaved my legs. No, it doesn't make me significantly more aerodynamic. Not that I have noticed, anyhow. I did it in case statistics catch up with me (if you put in 150 miles/week of cycling, then it is not if but when and how you are going to crash. I had a bad crash last September and knew from experience that road rashes are sucky enough to nurse without adding on the aggravation of the bad combination of adhesive bandages and leg hair...

I've read how many other cyclists like the look and feel of their well sculpted hairless legs. Well, I don't. I liked my legs hairy. My leg hair wasn't eliminated in my species' evolution process, and my legs don't look right without it. You can call me a Fred if you'd like, but you've better be able to repeat Cabrillo tidepool hill 10 times in an hour if you do or I'll drop you going uphill... and film the whole process on my handheld camera for posterity.

Anyhow... I didn't like the look and feel of my now hairless legs. I still don't, but I sure was glad that they were hairless when my square rear tire decided to slip on a curve last Sunday and earned my left knee this year's first road rash. Yes, I shaved my legs, but not because I think they look better that way but because road rashes are a lot easier to deal with without having hair involved.

Untruth in advertising...

Riding bicycle 150 miles each week is pretty effective at keeping me from pudging up like a soaked Sponge Bob so far, though I wish people would quit telling me that all that riding means that I can now eat anything I want. It's true that I can now down the deliciously fatty Carl's Jr Double Bacon Cheeseburger every now and then without immediately trying to spill out of my jeans, but every pounds that I can shave off and keep off (without re-speedily introducing by way of psych-soothing fast food) also make the many steep or long (or both) hills around town a lot easier to cycle up.

A 'Hey, look at skinny me eating this fatty burger' poster at a Carls' Jr Restaurant.

I really dislike those promo posters at fast food places like Carls' that have outrageously skinny models pretend to put an arterial-clogger burger into their mouth. I don't believe for a minute that those beautiful models would stay in the shape that they are if they actually regularly eat the burger that they're advertising. Neither do I believe that those sexy women with shiny curly hair that do hair products commercials got their beautiful hair from using the products they're trying to sell. Rather, the hair product companies are hiring people with naturally beautiful hair to pose with the company's hair products for pay.

And so on and so forth. So, I think burger joints ought to shape up and hire pudgy people to feature in their burger ads for them. It may not make their burger look sexy, but at least it would be more believable.

Sharrows and such

Sharrow on Adams Ave

Ever driven down a San Diego street and noticed the bicycle under a double chevron logo on the road surface? That's a 'sharrow', and it doesn't designate a bike lane. A lot of local cyclists dislike the thing because they think that that's the city's way of copping out of making proper bike lanes for cyclists to ride on.

Park Blvd bike lane

Having a proper bike lane on major streets would be even nicer, of course - as long as it isn't Thursday where much of the bike lanes would be occupied by garbage dumpsters that people put out in the morning before going to work and wouldn't be back to wheel them back into their yard/alley until they get home late in the evening. In the meanwhile they just sit in the bike lane blocking two wheel traffic, forcing cyclists like me into the car lane.

A bike lane on trash day

When widening the street to add a bike lane isn't quite an option, tho, I like seeing sharrows on the street to remind the cars to keep an eye out for us skinny little two-wheelers, too.

BMUFL sign on 6th Ave

It's even better to have periodical Bike May Use Full Lane (BMUFL) signs along with the sharrows on the roads. I don't think cars notice the signs by themselves as much. Many drivers I've chatted with say they notice sharrows more than they do white street signs like the BMUFL ones. It would be nice if drivers in general look out for bicycles more. Then perhaps many cyclists won't be scared off and do things like riding on the sidewalk, where they become even harder for cars to spot than the ones riding on the road.

How not to ride a bicycle

Then, of course, there are some idiot cyclists who will just do what they want regardless of how unsafe it is for them and for others... like running traffic light or riding against traffic (on the wrong side of the road). No sharrow or sign or bike lane can save dodo's like that...