This is just one fine example of the countless excellent and usually unsung tasks done by on-duty and off-duty police officers, every single day of the year. It has been posted here with full permission from its author, Temporary Sergeant Karen Stanton, whose important goal is to highlight the crucial importance of cyclists wearing helmets. If you are not convinced, check out the image of the boy’s head scan, below.
It is too easy for so-called experts to claim that only four or five key problems cause the majority of road crashes. That claim is indeed true — and of course we teach trainees all about those issues — but to act as though these are the only dangers that drivers will ever face is incompetent and is asking for trouble. There are many seemingly minor problems that collectively still cause hundreds of thousands of crashes and far too many deaths and injuries in the USA every year. In whatever training time we have available to us, we teach our trainees how to comprehend and deal with many of these additional dangers, too.
It may *seem* trivial but even small objects like this, hanging from the rearview mirror and swinging around, can trick a driver’s eyes into not noticing a child or a cyclist who just happens to be at that angle to the vehicle (which typically means on a curve or at an intersection). Plenty people have died as a result of this type of seemingly innocent scenario so please take all hanging objects off your rearview mirror. This person is also using a hand-held cellphone while driving, thus making a dangerous incident dramatically more likely. (Image copyright, 2017.)
Regrettably, there are many things that drivers frequently do that make things very unsafe for people on bicycles, but of course that isn’t the full story.
Cyclists who sensibly are in conspicuous clothing, but only one is being wise enough to wear a safety helmet. (Copyright image.)
Bicycles are involved in many crashes, injuries and deaths, and there should be a focus on preventing these events from happening.
With support from the Danish foundation TrygFonden, the Traffic Research Group at Aalborg University has completed the first randomised controlled trial (RCT) of the safety effect of high-visibility bicycle clothing.
Cyclist’s Yellow Safety Jacket. Photo used here by permission of Harry Lahrmann, Associate Professor at Aalborg University. Photographer: Tor Asbjørn Thirslund
Making the streets safer for cyclists and promoting cycling for all are goals of the International Cycling Safety Conference, to be held Sept. 21-22 at the University of California, Davis, Conference Center.
Cyclists riding correctly on the left in Britain. Copyright image.
The attached video shows how to reduce a senseless and completely avoidable type of crash that can badly injure or even kill cyclists, in something known as “dooring.” Do what’s known as “the Dutch reach!”
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Of course, bicyclists can also help themselves by always wearing cycle helmets and remaining alert, undistracted and observant.
To coincide with this year’s Tour de France cycle race, the THINK! Road Safety team have issued a timely reminder that it’s not just drivers who get distracted and cause crashes, people on bicycles do, too!
From the THINK! Road Safety team.
As a footnote: Congratulations to British rider Chris Froome for his fourth overall TdF victory today, and his third win in succession.
Undercover police officers in Birmingham, England, posing as cyclists, caught a trucker who has becomes one of first motorists in Britain to be prosecuted under a new law for driving too close to a bicycle.
In several American states, recent laws have mandated a minimum gap of just three feet when a motor vehicle is passing a person riding a bicycle but other countries have laws requiring a 1.5 metre gap — in other words 36 inches in the USA versus 59 inches in other countries… 62 percent more safety space.
This image is the wrong way around for American viewers who, of course, drive on the right, but this gives some idea of where the bicyclist must be allowed to ride (i.e. not in the gutter) and how much gap is truly needed for safety when a motor vehicle is passing. (Five feet is a very close equivalent to the 1.5 metres shown here.) Photo: Daily Mail; used here under ‘fair use’, for safety purposes.
Will having just three feet of space be acceptable? It is surely obvious that having a large vehicle, maybe even something as big as a semi-tractor-trailer whizzing past just three feet away will at the very least be unnerving, and given the buffeting of the air that can be created by a large vehicle, it’s not hard to conclude that it could be risky, too. And then there’s the question of what happens when a driver is incapable of accurately judging a gap of three feet. There is clearly and indeed most literally not much room for error.
And the second question is: How exactly is this law going to be actively enforced in the states in question? Or should the question be: IS this law going to be actively enforced in the states in question?
One thing is for certain, and that is that I am very curious about how the gap is going to be measured, from one state (or country) to another,
“Not too long ago, I was riding my bicycle near the corner of 9th and Carpenter behind a motor vehicle, which was behind another motor vehicle, which was behind a bus. No one was moving very fast, as is often the case on South Philadelphia’s narrow streets. But that didn’t matter to the middle-aged man in the pickup truck behind me. Flustered and in a red-faced rage, he incorrectly told me I was legally required to get out of his way. Ignoring him at first, I turned my head only when he threatened to violently run me over with his vehicle. I pointed to the car in front of me, and the one in front of that car. “No one’s going anywhere fast,” I said with a shrug. But that only made him angrier. “I don’t care,” he yelled out the driver’s side window. “I’ll run you down!” Sound familiar? If you’re a person who rides a bike, it probably does…”
“…[Bad] situations occur because people on bicycles and motor vehicle users are expected to share city streets. And while people on bicycles make mistakes, too, their mistakes don’t have the same potential to hurt other road users like that of a guy in a pick up truck who thinks he’d get to his endpoint two minutes faster if the bicyclist were out of the way…”
