Adults who ride bicycles on the road with cars present a problem, and they know it.
When I drive my car, I get mad at cyclists who weave in and out of traffic, won’t move over, never stop at a red light and flip me off when I come within eye contact of them — the self-righteous bastards. When I ride my bike, I hate all those people in cars, some of whom are texting while driving — far worse than driving drunk.
Timothy Egan in the New York Times argues “[I]f each side could just think a little more like the other side, it would go a long way toward improved safety.” It’s unclear how exactly that would work, or what problem that would solve. Sure, we should all be more careful, less hostile and aggressive, when on the road, regardless of our chosen vehicle. But even if bikers suddenly stopped daring drivers to run them down, and drivers started driving competently, would that change things?
Cities are changing, quickly, to accommodate the new urban commuter. It’s not quite like the transformation from horse carriages to backfiring internal combustion engines, but a revolution is underway. Uber, Lyft and other ride services make it easy not to own a car. Bike commuting is at an all-time high in many cities.
But lanes for cyclists and signage for special routes might offer little more than the illusion of safety.
When a car hits a bicycle, the bike loses regardless of who is the bigger jerk. It’s not a fair fight and it never will be. That some people prefer to ride their bikes to work isn’t wrong or bad, but it forces them onto roads with cars. It’s not wrong to drive a car on the road either, even if bikers think the new paradigm is that automobile drivers have a duty to somehow accommodate bikes they can’t possibly anticipate.
She was doing all the right things in the morning commute, traveling in the bike lane, wearing a helmet, following the rules of the road. In an instant, Sher Kung — new mother, brilliant attorney, avid cyclist — was struck and killed by a vehicle making a turn in downtown Seattle last month.
At the scene, the truck driver wept and swore he never saw her. Mourners placed a ghost bike, painted white, at the corner. In the local law office of Perkins Coie, where Ms. Kung worked, colleagues passed by the poster in her office — “It’s a girl!” — and couldn’t believe she was gone, dead at 31.
A terrible story, without a doubt, but where is the wrong? The outcome was a nightmare, but there is no indication of malice or negligence. And yet Sher Kung, new mother, young lawyer, was dead. Horrible.
It’s still somewhat rare for a bike rider to be killed by a motor vehicle, rare enough to wonder why. In 2012, the last year for which full numbers are available, 726 cyclists lost their lives nationwide — almost two a day. It’s far safer to fly. In that same year, there were zero fatalities from commercial airplane accidents in the United States. The death of a single cyclist has a chilling effect on everyone who pedals for work, exercise or pleasure. Can’t we get it right?
This is the wrong question. The question is how can we get it right, and the answer is that for all the efforts, the sad anecdotes, the bike lanes, signage, public awareness, Egan offers nothing remotely suggesting an answer.
Last year, Daniel Duane caused a stir in these pages when he wrote a piece titled, “Is It O.K. to Kill Cyclists?” His point was that in most bike-vehicle deaths, the driver gets off with a minor traffic citation, a mere inconvenience.
Harsher penalties may deter some accidents, but I doubt it.
Penalties for what? The reason the driver “gets off” is that the driver did nothing wrong, even if the result is a dead cyclist. When there is no wrongdoing involved, penalties have no impact. On the other hand, when the automobile driver does wrong, he should be as culpable as his conduct dictates, regardless of his status.
It’s better to learn from places with long biking traditions, and to change the way we think about the road when on the road. In the Netherlands, deaths per total number of miles cycled are much lower. This is attributed to educated bike riders, who stay in the lanes, signal properly and obey traffic signals. In turn, drivers learn to look for cyclists who may be just out of mirror range.
Other countries have a culture more steeped in commuting on bicycle than by car. Whether medieval narrow streets that can’t accommodate modern traffic, or cost, or just a way of life, shifting the calculus from cars to bikes would likely change the relative equation in favor of cyclists. If a bike hits a car, it may make a dent, but it won’t kill.
Then again, if a bike hits a pedestrian, the situation reverses again. Cyclists don’t like to talk about the scenario where they are the killers. It makes them unsympathetic. The same urban centers where cars predominate also tend to have a lot of pedestrians. As annoying as cars are to cyclists, pedestrians are too. There is no sympathy for the cyclist who blows through a red light and nails someone lawfully crossing.
Cities keep spending money and painting lines as if they hold magic powers over human behavior. Car drivers suck. Bike drivers suck. Pedestrians aren’t a whole lot better, except they lack the capacity to harm cars or bikes.
The thing to do is to realize how vulnerable you are whenever two wheels try to share a road meant for four wheels. A bike rider is flesh, bones, tendons and skin against a two-ton S.U.V. What would be a fender-bender, scrap or brush between cars can be fatal to a cyclist. As glorious as it is have the wind in your face, to be gliding along on your own power, it can all change in a flash. Getting on a bike in the city is an act of faith in a flawed urban contract, and in beating the odds.
A bike lawyer friend, Steve Magas, once explained to me why cyclists ride down the middle of the lane on a busy road, intentionally blocking the cars from passing him. These are the radical cyclists, the extremists, daring drivers to do something about his deliberately blocking the road. They know what they’re doing, and they do it to screw with drivers, because bicycles.
“Can’t we get it right?” Maybe the answer is “no.” Maybe none of us, driver or cyclist, really wants to give an inch. Maybe our infrastructure can’t account for both cars and bikes on the same roads. Maybe cyclists are just as responsible for their own poor behavior as car drivers.
But two things are certain: first, we are a car-driving nation, and the existence of the automobile on the road isn’t going away any time soon. Second, when cars and bikes collide, bikes lose. Neither of these is going to change, so no matter how much you love riding your bike to work, you’re playing a game of chicken which you will lose.
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I biked and rollerskated all over New York City, and recognizing the realities you do here after cell phones proliferated made me stop riding my bike. I miss it, but there are just too many people in cars here sending “just one text.”
I’ve seen it from all angles. A dear friend who is now a vegetable after having been struck riding his bike. A dear friend who was terribly injured after being struck by a bike as a pedestrian. A dear friend who hit a bike that flew out of nowhere with his car. Everyone in Manhattan has these stories.
As an aside, I watch in fascination as people walk while texting right into intersections, head down and completely oblivious, with oncoming traffic. This happens constantly. I assume this is Darwinian, or perhaps Malthusian. No doubt their families will miss them, but you can’t blame the cabs (unless you’re Dersh).
Every bicyclist knows that when your bike is on the road you Are like the smallest dog at the pound. You better be the meanest mofo around or you will get chewed up. Yeah, so we hog the lanes. We coast through stop signs. We flip people off. Cuz if we didn’t, cars wouldn’t notice us and just now us down.
Bike culture developed into its current state for one reason – to help keep us safe.
So it’s death before dishonor? I wonder if other cyclists agree. Your attitude strikes me as the kind of thing that goes really nicely on a tombstone.
it’s about showing cars who’s boss. you said it yourself. all drivers can tell you stories about the rude arrogant bicyclists. yet even though the math of a car-bike collision is stacked completely against bicycling, fatalities are very rare.
one of my favorite activities on my bike is to roll through a four way stop making eye contact with every driver at the intersection like, “that’s right. I’m going and you’re going to wait. I’m here and I see you and I know that you see me and you’re going to wait. i am the boss of this situation.”
Another potential solution – I’m so tired of these “no fault accidents” where the drivers get off with no fine because “accidents happen”. I think if bicyclists developed a culture of civil suits this would get them even more visibility on the road. If a driver is careless, let them spend $10k in lawyer fees to show a judge that they’re not at fault. maybe we need an activist legal firm to take the lead here.
Yeah, that’s not going to do you much good if the driver isn’t as fascinated with you as you are with yourself. I know it’s hard to believe, but bikes aren’t always the most interesting thing happening on the road.
As for suing drivers, you seem to have as strong a grasp on how that works as you do on how to protect yourself from a couple tons of steel that doesn’t care if you live or not. One hint: insurance.
surely there’s always room for an old fashioned negligence / wrongful death tort.
also, you need to file a lawsuit so you can subpoena for the cell phone / text message records.
Let me guess. You still don’t see any flaw in your position. Oh well.
By the way, you realize this is a law blog, and most of the readers are law talking guys, so your efforts to justify your position is good for a few chuckles. Right?
You didn’t get the hint. Sad face.
As a cyclist I couldn’t disagree more. The attitude that you describe makes the problem worse. I have three goals as I head to work in the morning – get to work, stay aware, and stay visible. Staying visible doesn’t mean being an asshole.
And as someone who biked to work in Minneapolis almost on a daily basis I can tell you the lanes and other types of new signage DOES make a difference. In my new adopted city of San Diego – there is very little if any accommodations for cyclists so the end result is I end up driving to work most of the time versus dealing with bad roads and even worse drivers (god help you if it rains here – might as well just stay home at that point).
Car v. Pedestrian is no fun, either, and we know who loses. We’ve a depressing family history of that, as my father was hit by a bus in Brooklyn, my sister by a cab in Mexico City, and me by a car in Pittsburgh. [You think I worry about my kids?]
We all survived intact. And really, nobody was at fault for any of it. Which just makes everyone feel worse since none of us (not drivers, not pedestrians) have anyone to blame.
The ancient legal doctrine of sterus accidit prevails, no matter how far into disfavor it has fallen.
As a bicyclist who doesn’t ride to work but for fun and fitness while racking 5-6000 miles per year I must disagree with Andrew . Bike culture, like car culture, is about the person behind the wheel or handlebar. Flipping folks off and being a mean “mofo” doesn’t keep you any safer. Sometimes “hogging” a whole lane happens for a small stench for safety and if that slows a car down it’s no different than a bus or semi going slow for a bit. Share the road with all that have to use it and behave, most cyclists drive as well as bike and it pains me to see a bad cyclist as much or more than a bad driver. All that said, there are only two kinds of bike riders, those who have gone down and those who are going down. When you have that basic understanding and know it means not only could you be hurt but dead, you are ready to ride.
I ride with a local club that racks over a million miles a year within it’s rides, we track all accidents and injury’s. We only had riders hit by cars a couple of times, (and one death) but can’t count the # of times other bikers have caused each other to go down. Accidents do happen, but really happen more often when your being a mofo.
Well, it is a bit different. In fact, it’s a lot different.
“Sometimes ‘hogging’ a whole lane happens for a small stench for safety…”
Reminds me of my days in New England, where the roads often aren’t wide enough for even shoulder, and bike lanes are (outside of the cities) but a feverish dream. Nothing was more stressful than having to drive around bikers who have no choice but to hog the whole lane, and I wonder how many auto accidents are caused by drivers trying to pass bikes. After a bit of reseach it seems that my home state of Connecticut suffers about 800 bike crashes and 5 fatalities a year.
Oh, and from 2005 to 2007 sixteen people were injured biking on interstate highways. I cannot comprehend how that happens (why would someone bike there???).
There are places where a freeway is the only practical way to get from A to B, and cyclists are allowed on the shoulder in many of those places.
And bicycles are prohibited on some freeways. Point?
Simply trying to help Mathew I comprehend why bicyclists would be on freeways.
Matthew wrote about interstate highways, not freeways (yes, they’re different), and his point wasn’t whether it was legal, but whether it was insanely dangerous.
Another all too common car v. bike scenario is the car driver who has parked his car appropriately, but then flings open the driver door without checking the rear view mirror. A number of EFF staffers who cycle to work have been injured this way, one seriously.
When I was a callow yoot, I did a fair amount of cycling, including to l-sk00l if the weather wasn’t terrible. Got hit bad by a car once. Fortunately the injuries weren’t as bad as they could have been, but that pretty much ended my time as an urban cyclist.
Happens all the time. People are selfish and careless. Hobbes.
In Holland, they teach the drivers to twist in their seat and open the door with their right hands, so the driver is already looking back towards where the cyclists might be coming from before they open the door.
There is a lot that road design can do to help. Successful road design in Europe has made a big difference, and the occasional good design in the US is noticable. Instead of telling people what they “should” do, a proper design recognizes and accomodates what they will do. The successful designs treat cars as legitimate appropriate users of the roads, bicyclists as legitimate appropriate users of the roads, and pedestrians as legitimate appropriate users of the roads. You give each appropriate space, especially designing intersections to reflect the limitations of each form.
It does make the system work much better than the mutual hostilities that afflict users and designers of most US local roads.
You still need to recognize local cultural, population, weather, and geographical variations. Last week I had an enlightening discussion with a Swiss colleague who sometimes uses an electrically assisted bicycle on his rather hilly commute. Proper etiquette of automobile, powered bicycle, and unpowered bicycle sharing a road has never reached this level in the US.
If there’s enough room for the road width, great. In older areas, design isn’t the issue.
As for “legitimate appropriate users,” not necessarily. While it may be fashionable to say so, it’s not accurate in all situations.
I read the original article a couple of days ago, and was struck by this paragraph:
I’m not sure what it’s called when you argue ‘X could help, but we should learn from places that do Y’ when you neglect to mention that those places also do X. An article in the Boston Globe last year, entitled “After every crash in Netherlands, intense scrutiny,” described one unfortunate accident where the police reenactment showed that the truck driver probably couldn’t have seen the cyclist.
This information was used to redesign the intersection in less than a month.
But a crime had been committed, and the truck driver “received the maximum sentence of 240 hours of community service and a provisional sentence of two months in prison. His driver’s license was revoked for 18 months.”
On the one hand, that’s not a very harsh sentence for manslaughter — certainly unthinkably low for any sort of maximum sentence here in the US where maximums are all about making the prosecutors’ lives easier; but on the other hand, it’s actually much harsher than the non-sentence that would happen here in the US, where the concept of criminal liability when even the state stipulates there is no intent or even negligence would be anathema.
I can’t help but think that this sort of system helps to explain why ambulance chasing is so much less popular in Europe than it is here — the impetus to punish, even in a token fashion, those who have caused you pain is probably greatly lessened when the state has already done it.
“the truck driver probably couldn’t have seen the cyclist.”
How does punishing the driver, even if mildly by US standards, for an accident that could not have been avoided (unless, perhaps, the cyclist was at fault for being where he couldn’t be seen) help to reduce accidents? Perhaps by encouraging non-bicyclists to stay home, but that’s hardly a functional approach in a world where people have to go outside their property lines from time to time.
One of the distinct impressions I’m getting from all this is that to cyclists, “sharing the road” means do what’s good for them and screw the cars. If they want to foster antagonism and lack of concern, this flagrant selfishness is the way to do it.
Obviously, it wouldn’t keep this particular accident from happening, but apparently the Dutch feel strongly that safety is enhanced enough by strict liability in this instance to make it worthwhile.
Here, we sometimes use strict liability laws for drunk driving deaths, but seem much more interested in using them to make sure that “child molestors” go to prison even when the “child” was 16 and looked 21 and had a fake driver’s license that said she was 19.
You’ve conflated a lot of confused ideas here. Bottom line is that just because a death occurred doesn’t mean a crime has been committed, which means a person shouldn’t be punished, whether harshly or not.
And none of this has anything to do with whether a negligence suit is appropriate.
Maybe so. It’s hard to contemplate or describe systems that are that different.
Right. And in the US, under those circumstances, a crime wouldn’t have been committed, but in the Netherlands it apparently was. As I tried to convey, I think it’s difficult for the average American to consider that it could possibly be fair for him to be considered a criminal for something he didn’t intend to do and couldn’t have easily forseen happening.
But neither do a lot of suits for negligence. Those are often putatively about reparations, but a lot of them seem to be about grasping for some sort of closure. For example, studies have shown that the doctors that get sued are not the ones who kill the most patients, but the ones who kill the most patients in an unsympathetic manner. It seems that lawsuits sometimes wind up being about lots of money simply because that’s what it takes to attract a tort lawyer.
Or, you read an inartfully written story in which a writer confused concepts and wrote nonsense. It may be as you’ve written, though it makes little sense, but it may also be that it makes little sense because the reporter didn’t understand the concepts he was writing about. In any even, it wouldn’t work that way here at all, and hopefully, with good reason.
And while litigants may want “justice” in negligence suits, lawyers want money, because that’s how they get paid. If there is no money to be made because there is no liability, then there is no reason for a lawyer to take a case. That’s the way incentives are supposed to work; no liability, no money, no lawsuit.
Smart urban riders “hog” the lane not to be obnoxious but because it’s often safer to do so. Had Sher Kung done so, instead of riding in one of Seattle’s most ill-designed bike lanes, she would most likely still be alive.
I’ve seen many a cab in New York “brush back” a cyclist trying to hog a lane and blocking their way. Remember, hogs get slaughtered. So don’t be too sure it’s safer when a bike hogging a lane comes at the exclusion of someone who really isn’t as concerned with the cyclist as they are with their own needs. A safe idea is what doesn’t get you killed, until it does. Then it’s not safe anymore.
But you raise a secondary question: If it is okay for a cyclist to “hog” a lane, is it okay for a car to “hog” a lane and cruise within millimeters of a bike on the shoulder? Or are cyclists special, so anything they do for themselves is fine and screw everyone else on the road?
The okayness of a cyclist taking the entire lane depends on state law, afaict there is no provision in New York law allowing this. Some states allow cyclists to use the entire lane if it is too narrow to be shared, and sometimes there is a special symbol (the sharrow) indicating where cyclists may use the entire lane.
There is no evidence that either drivers or cyclists care about what the law allows or requires. If anything, cyclists stay as far away from arguing about the law because they consistently violate it. So while that may give raise to “okayness” in certain circumstances, that’s not what anyone is talking about here. Except you.
SHG,
You don’t understand. You can’t understand until you have lived in a college town. Probably found in the Tenth Amendment, there is a constitutional right to behave like a slow moving and piggish idiot when you take to a bike. Moreover, for the intellectual elite of land grant colleges, bikes are the ultimate thumb in the eye to the fascist petite bourgeoisie. That is particularly true if you are an art history or theater major. Too bad for you that you can’t see the obvious: bike riders are the ultimate warriors in the ongoing class struggle. The fact that acne dots theirs faces as they ride with the winds of change at their back is of no matter. A higher consciousness is all that matters.
All the best.
RGK
Perhaps it’s not acne, but the scars of gravel kicked up by speeding SUVs, and they will carry these scars with them for the rest of their lives?
Dear SHG, I think the statistics matter. For example: “Neither of these is going to change, so no matter how much you love riding your bike to work, you’re playing a game of chicken which you will lose.”
The statistics show this is as true for driving as for cycling. Per mile, the cycling fatality rate is about a factor of two higher than the driving fatality rate, but interstates are included in those rates so the relevant comparison would result in less than a factor of two. Thus, choosing to ride rather than driving is not appreciably increasing your risk of accidental death (it is reasonably low for both).
My personal experience tells me that a larger proportion of cyclists than drivers commonly do stupid and dangerous things while on the road, so my guess is that an appropriately-behaving cyclist is even less likely to die, and may even have a lower likelihood of accidental death than the typical driver.
Thank you for making this point, by the way: “There is no evidence that either drivers or cyclists care about what the law allows or requires.” It is quite true. If everyone would recognize that they themselves care little about what the law allows or requires, it would help steer arguments towards productive conversations.
I dunno that the stats work out quite that way, but if so, then are you arguing those whiny cyclists should stop gripin’ about the occasional kill. I’m still disinclined to be so cavalier toward anyone being killed.
No, no, I’m just saying that on the road you take your chances. Those chances are comparable whether you are in a car or on a bike. There can be endless arguments about whether the statistical analyses are “right” or not, but it would be very hard to argue that they are off by a factor of 10. Maybe they are off by a factor of 2, or even 3. But even if they are off by that much, that is still within the range of various drivers’ daily commutes, so someone choosing to ride rather than drive really isn’t choosing a significantly larger risk than one that is accepted by the vast majority of commuters. Have you ever worried about a friend’s extra chance of dying when his moving to a new house doubled his commuting distance?
I’m not being cavalier about people being killed, I think efforts to improve road safety are good things. I’m just saying that cycling isn’t inordinately dangerous. I suspect the reason for that is that cyclists are small compared to cars, and thus easier to miss.
So your saying you don’t care how they die, bike or car, but they make their bed and now have to die in it!?!
Only playing with you. You may well be right, but cyclists seem to have a significant concern about it, as opposed to deaths in cars, which is why this post was written.
“…cyclists seem to have a significant concern about it, as opposed to deaths in cars…”
This is a valid observation I hadn’t considered. They probably don’t know the statistics. I’ve got about 40K miles on the road commuting to and from work, and I don’t have a significant concern about it.
I used to take part in arguments about bike lanes, rules, etc., but I no longer do. I now think that local culture and familiarity with bikes are a lot more important. In areas where there are more bikes, the bike accident rate is lower because people are more used to bikes being on the road. Bike lanes and share the road signs are probably effects, not causes.
I hadn’t realized that in 2012 the number of cyclist fatalities was 726. That is basically flat from the 90s, maybe a slight decline. Given the increase in bike commuters, that is probably a good sign.
Though the new mother’s loss of live is obviously extremely tragic, is it any more tragic than if the victim had been in a car, or as you point out, a pedestrian. I don’t think so. Nor does it imply that we need to do something to make our roads more bike friendly.
As to Andrew and his ilk, along with the lady in Ohio whose story you linked to, all I can say is their behavoir just makes things worse. I am an avid mountain biker, but hold road bicyclists like Andrew in disdain for their obvious obnoxiousness. Fortunately, there are more bicyclists with some common sense than there are cyclists with Andrew’s attitude.
Finally, I am thankful that New Jersey has a law that bicyclists can ride no more than two abreast and only if they are not impeding the flow of traffic. Further, bicyclists must stay as far right as possible to avoid impeding the flow of traffic. For me personally, that means riding on the shoulder if possible since I value my safety.
In Massachusetts there is a rule about stopping for pedestrians in the cross walk. This may exist in other places.
Occasionally slower witted members of the herd will mistake this law of man for a law of physics and thrust themselves into the path of an oncoming vehicle as if the painted lines on the pavement are some sort of force field. I’ve been on the receiving end of this stupidity once or twice and, after recovering the now empty contents of my coffee cup from the dashboard, have been known to roll down the window and shout something, to the now scowling pedestrian, along the lines of “righteous indignation isn’t going to feel so good with a f*cking shattered pelvis *sshole.”
That said, I suspect, though I do not know, there is ample evidence that this law has saved lives, in the aggregate.
Much the same as it is possible for those slow to adopt seat belts to point out the occasional case where a jammed seat belt has stopped someone from escaping a burning vehicle, the fact is seat belts, and other required safety innovations, are an overwhelming success story in terms of reducing injury and death, in the aggregate.
I don’t think it’s credible to argue the same won’t be true for rules changing the balance between bicycles and cars, given enough time.
There’s a difference. Seatbelts are used by us and our children, both people we love. We often have no clue who a cyclist is (pretty much like we have no clue who the driver of another car is). Some day, cyclists may tell stories of the idiocy of their trying to ride their bikes on the same roads as speeding cars, and their children will listen intently and then utter, “no way, that’s cray-cray. What were they thinking?!?”
You never know.
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Then there are cyclists who get killed by cops.
“Witnesses to the incident said Blouin was biking the wrong way down the street when a police car moved to intercept him. They said they saw the cruiser back up over the cyclist.”
His crime? Biking down the wrong way on a street.