Thursday, March 20, 2008
Pause
Last week's ghastly accident in which three cyclists were mowed down, two killed, by a county sheriff's deputy in California who crossed the yellow line and entered the wrong lane of traffic gives reason for pause. This was a good article on the legal response and media portrayal of the incident, by Bicycling and the Law author Bob Mionske. Check out this quick video too.
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4 comments:
This really hit home here. I've been one of those people left on the road for dead after being hit. One of the things that I have also noticed is that many of the police agencies in my region (and I would assume others as well) do not know how to do proper investigations on car/bike accidents. In the one of the accidents where I was hit, the officer did not see any damage on my bike and assumed I did not get hit. I had to show him that if a car hit me in the way that it did, it would not hit the bike since my legs were shielding the bike from the impact. I was the outside point of contact. I even had to show him the spot bruise on the leg where the point of impact was and how it was at the average height the typcial vehicle mirror that made the contact. I can see a law enforcement backlash against cyclists in the region where that tragic accident happened because one of their own is involved. Hopefully it won't. In the end, everyone most people think it is the cyclist's fault which should reinforce the idea on our part to make sure your position is above question. The advice I give out to people in this area is: follow the traffic rules, make sure you are acting in a predictable manner to cars and never make the assumption that the other people are going to do the correct thing. It might not be totally fail safe as this accident has shown, but it certainly reduces your chances of being another road statistic.
Hey, glad you made it out ok from these crashes. I ignore this stuff as a quasi-effective coping strategy, but seriously a family friend said to me recently as I headed out wearing a grey jacket, "I know I sound like your grandmother, but where are you bright colors?" I'm trained to make fun of those blaze yellow jackets but if it saves your life, well... And one of the cases Mionske discusses in his book has to do with a trial in which a motorist aims to fault a cyclist because the cyclist was wearing dark colors at dusk. I've got some blinker lights on the race bike - good for twilight crits too.
The loud colors aren't just a projection of one's personality. It's a nice way of saying 'Hey you chowderheads, I'm on the road here too.' For the twilight crits, try some neon stickers on the carbon wheels in a pattern that once the speed gets up there, makes that nifty blur.
Speaking of colors, the Advil blue works for you. Darn it, that sounds a bit hokey there.
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