Wednesday, December 01, 2010

No Duh! Aussie study finds drivers at fault 87% of conflicts with bicyclists

I got wind of this story from Streetsblog's Daily Headlines:

From a site called Bicycle Radar comes the story "Drivers at fault in majority of cycling accidents".
(Read the story first before continuing here.)

As a cyclist who takes my responsibilities as the operator of a vehicle very seriously, I find the results of this report to be right on the money with the reality I see on the streets here in New Jersey. Even when following the letter of the law to my best abilities, I constantly have issues with motorists. Dangerous passing including passing too close, passing on blind turns and passing on narrow roads with oncoming traffic make up the vast majority of issues I have with motorists. Still, such incidents add up very quickly on a 2 hr, 40 mile ride. It's not uncommon for me to have up to 10 such uncomfortable incidents on a ride of such length on roads with very little traffic. I've even had three incidents in the past 14 months where I followed my LCI training, took the lane and tried to waved off the overtaking vehicle on a blind turn or rise, only to have the vehicle ignore my actions go, for the pass and nearly cause a head-on collision with the on coming car. What else can one do to proactively defend one's self on the road!

For those of you interested in more here's the link the abstract of the original study called "Naturalistic Cycling Study: Identifying risk factors for on-road commuter cyclists."

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