Posts Tagged ‘Bicycling Safely’
An Introduction To Bicycling Safely With Traffic
Imagine if everyone drove around the roads at random, without stopping, yielding, keeping a straight line, checking behind, or obeying any traffic rules. The public roads would be total, utter chaos. Fortunately, we have carefully designed, commonly accepted rules of the road, which make driving on the roads a well-organized, cooperative, and relatively safe activity.
Sadly, most bicyclists in the USA don’t use these rules. It’s not really their fault; most have no in-depth cycling education. Many have been told to do things that are illegal and dangerous — such as riding on sidewalks or on the wrong side of the road. We simply don’t teach bicyclists how to be safe by using all the rules of the road to politely cooperate with other drivers — not just signaling turns, but merging, changing lanes, yielding to others, using lights at night, and more.
Improving bicycle safety in traffic is actually quite easy: most car/bike crashes happen with crossing and turning traffic at driveways, intersections, in bikelanes, and with unlit bicyclists at night. These are predictable crashes which can easily be avoided. The most experienced bicyclists have learned how to do so.
Cooperative Cyclists log thousands of miles in traffic, yet have 80% fewer collisions than untrained cyclists. Through study and practice they have learned that by politely using all the rules of the road to cooperate with other drivers, they can ride safer with traffic.
That in-depth cycling education gives Cooperative Cyclists the freedom to travel on any road, day or night, with reasonable safety. Unlike bikelanes “cycling education is self-deployed wherever needed, increases in effectiveness with every use, at no additional cost, and provides complete coverage by being used at every time and location where its use is in any way advantageous.” (John Forester). Bikelanes are a terrible substitute for an in-depth cycling education. A bikelane is not a protected space: crossing and turning traffic still has to be safely and cooperatively negotiated at all driveways, intersections, bus stops, and parking spaces.
