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Optional equipment for safety’s sake

November 13, 2020/2 Comments/in The Savvy Cyclist /by John Brooking

Editor’s note: This is the fourth article in a series directed mostly toward beginners. The introductory article covered checking the bicycle for safety, and each article links to the next. So far we’ve covered lights, rear-view mirrors, and bells. Lights are required by law at night. Mirrors, and in most places, bells, are optional equipment.

Optional Equipment: Policy and Good Sense

The American Bicycling Education Association requires that everyone wear a helmet in its on-bike sessions, but makes no policy statements about any legally-optional equipment. Such statements can do as much harm as good. Convenience (“just hop on the bike”) can be at odds with having to manage equipment and change in and out of special clothing. Expense may be a concern.

So: You decide what measures you will adopt to improve your comfort and safety, beyond what the law requires. Generally, longer rides merit more preparation, as comfort takes on more importance. The special clothing that recreational and racing cyclists wear isn’t just for show. But some options apply to any ride.

Bright & Tight

There’s no doubt that some colors show up better than others. Although bright-colored clothing is optional — and no substitute for lights at night — it can’t hurt. Retroreflective surfaces on your clothing or on accessories such as panniers are even more helpful to a driver whose headlights are shining on you.

Dorky, or super practical? You decide.

When I talk to kids about bike safety, I sometimes ask for a show of hands: “How many of you have ever gotten your shoelace caught in the chain?” There are always a few.

This is the meaning of “tight”: Make sure you don’t have any loose straps or clothing dangling, especially if your bicycle doesn’t have a chainguard. I like to take care of long shoelaces by tucking the extra length into the sides of my shoes.

You can roll up long pant legs, or secure them with rubber bands or straps, or tuck them into your socks. You must wear long socks to allow this. Some people think this is dorky, but it is super convenient, and only the socks ever get chain stains.

Many pedals lack retroreflectors. Reflectorized legbands not only substitute for these, but also are visible from the sides.

reflectorized legbands: optional equipment but can substitute for pedal reflectors

Reflectorized legbands: bright and tight.

Secure any hanging strings or straps from backpacks or panniers. Do not dangle baggage from the handlebar, where it risks getting caught in the spokes of the front wheel.

Those who wear dresses can tuck extra material under the saddle, or use this cool trick to make the skirt into faux pants with a penny and a rubber band. Some European-style bikes eliminate this issue with a full chainguard as well as a “skirt guard” over the rear wheel, but these are not common in North America.

Wear a helmet?

In the Five Layers bike safety model, a helmet is included in the last layer, “Injury Reduction.” Protective equipment helps only when all the previous safety layers have failed.

Your chances of needing a helmet are pretty low on any given trip, especially if you follow all the other safety advice. But the consequences can be dire if you hit your head without a helmet. Many cyclists have stories of crashes in which they feel their helmet saved their life. I have had less severe crashes, thankfully, but I have had a few solo falls in which my helmet tapped the ground. It happens.

In North America, most states require a helmet for children and younger teens, but it is optional for adults. Should you choose to wear a helmet, make sure that it’s certified by the U. S. Consumer Protection Safety Commission, CPSC. (If you want a deep dive into geekiness, here’s the CPSC’s technical document on the subject.) Replace your helmet every few years, when it has begun to deteriorate, and of course whenever it’s involved in a crash. There is little difference in effectiveness between the better inexpensive helmets and a $200 helmet with all the latest features — though weight, ventilation and appearance vary. For comparisons, check out the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute’s reviews.

Helmet fit and adjustment

A helmet needs to be snug on your head. It must be level on your forehead, not pushed back. The strap must be snug under your chin. The ear straps should come together just under your earlobes.

Image credit: Bicycle Coalition of Maine

Two easy ways to remember helmet fit are the “two finger test”, and the “eyes, ears, and mouth” test.

Eyes: Your helmet should come down on your forehead about two fingers’ width above your eyebrows.
Ears: Each ear strap should come together just under and slightly in front of your ear, as if you were making a letter V with your fingers under it.
Mouth: The strap should be just tight enough to fit a finger (or two side-by- side) between the strap and your chin. When you open your mouth, you should feel the strap tighten.

A helmet may have a visor — helpful when the sun is low, and at night. Even without one, your helmet can help block glare if you tilt your head down. And as described in a previous article, a helmet is a convenient place to hang a rear-view mirror.

Footwear: So many options

Open-toed shoes can really mess up your toes in a crash. Insecure footwear like flip-flops can also impair your control of the bike, if they slip around or fall off while you’re riding.

Different shoes work best with different kinds of pedals:

Rubber soles are slippery when wet on pedals with smooth metal platforms, but fine on pedals with teeth that grip.
Leather and hard plastic soles slide around on anything other than rubber-block pedals.
Toeclips and straps work well with most athletic shoes, but can leave marks on the uppers — not good for your fancy shoes.
Clipless pedals need special shoes with cleats. Beginner cyclists do better to postpone foot retention. Learning how to safely use clipless pedals on roads and trails is a skill in itself.

Fingerless cycling gloves are a wise option in warm weather.

Gloves

Gloves increase comfort and avoid injury if you break a fall with your hand — and not only injury to the hand. You’ll be more willing to put your palm down if you know that the pavement will not sandpaper it.

Gloves are not only last-resort passive safety equipment, either. At night, a glove with a reflectorized back makes a super blinking turn signal for drivers behind you. Just stick out your arm and turn your wrist back and forth. Many gloves and mittens have reflectorized patches; few fingerless bicycling gloves do, though you can add reflective tape yourself.

Next…

In the next post in this series, we move on from equipment to riding technique.

The View from the Cab of a Turning Truck

October 30, 2020/11 Comments/in The Savvy Cyclist /by Keri Caffrey

I’ve written a lot about what bicyclists need to know about trucks. Why? Because every year, bicyclists are killed by turning trucks.

Truck drivers have a lot working against their seeing and avoiding a cyclist who rides into a bad spot. Yet trucks are big and easy for cyclists to see and avoid. Cyclists just need to know what to do to stay safe.

Getting out the word about turning trucks

Most of the lessons I’ve produced about turning trucks involve illustrations and animation. But last fall, I had a wonderful opportunity to stage real-world scenarios with a semitrailer truck, a professional driver, and a crew of support staff and extras. The following video is the product of a lot of other people’s work, and my very enjoyable morning in the cab of a truck.

Here’s the finished product, a four-minute video:

What about technology?

Many cycling advocates insist that the problem of truck blind spots can be solved with technology. I asked driver Bob Dolan: What kind of video camera technology is out there? Is it helpful? Does it make things harder or easier?

Here is his response:

We have side-mounted cameras on our tractors that will shoot out both sides and look at traffic on either side. Some trucks have rear-facing cameras. The issue you’re going to see with some of those cameras is you’re looking at a lot of information to process… you have all these screens in front of you and you’re trying to drive a truck… that becomes a distraction. So no matter what you’re adding to the vehicle, you’re adding more distractions to the driver.

A lot of the advanced warning devices on a tractor trailer — because of the size and complexity of the truck being able to bend — a lot of signals don’t come into us as real signals… it might be going off that there is something to one side, but it might be a false signal because of the height of the vehicle or the length of the vehicle.

So the technology is there, but it’s not as reliable as it would be in a car.

Here’s what you should take away from Bob’s comments:

Don’t ride in the blindspot and rely on truck driver vigilance and technology to rescue you. Instead, ride where YOU are in control of your safety.

It took a lot of people to make this happen.

Expect another post about how we made the video. It’s quite a story.

Mighk wilson setting up Miovision camera

Orlando’s Better Data Can Make You Safer On Your Own Bike

July 17, 2020/15 Comments/in The Savvy Cyclist /by Mighk Wilson

Editor’s note

We love to give you the tools to keep you safe on your bike. New research from transportation planner and CyclingSavvy co-founder Mighk Wilson offers surprising insights about your safety when riding in bike lanes, on sidewalks, or on the edge of travel lanes.

In this three-part series, Mighk describes his bikeway research, and how the way he gathered data for it differs in critical ways from other bikeway studies.

You’ll be impressed.

Metro Orlando Bikeway Study

This is the first in a series of articles on new bikeway research which I’ve completed for my employer, MetroPlan Orlando. Findings of this research are useful for planners and designers, and for bicyclists. The study compared risks to bicyclists riding on sidewalks, on streets with bike lanes, and on streets without.

This first segment will cover:

My own professional and personal history with bike lanes;
How most bikeway studies don’t clearly show how bikeways might prevent motorist-caused crashes; and
An overview of the data and basic findings of my research.

The second segment will help you make better decisions as a bicyclist. The third segment will address the “safety in numbers” premise and how bicyclists truly get to “Vision Zero” (the goal of eliminating fatal and serious injury crashes) [1].

Part One: Better Data, Better Understanding

I Used to Be Mr. Bike Lane

When I started work as a bicycle planner for MetroPlan Orlando in 1993, I was quite supportive of bike lanes. After all, the cities and towns that had lots of bicycle traffic had them. Wouldn’t that mean that people there had good experiences with them?

But it didn’t take me long to cross paths via internet forums with the infamous John Forester [2], and to have my assumptions challenged.

While Forester and his supporters had reasonable concerns about bike lanes, there was no solid data to show that they were worse (or better) for bicyclists than a regular travel lane. Concern about bike lanes was based mostly on direct experience. I had little, as the Orlando area had no bike lanes.

I found it frustrating that some bicyclists complained so much about bike lanes, while others expressed a strong preference for them.

A Quest for Answers

It took quite a few years for the Orlando area to get bike lanes and for me to gain enough experience with them. I found myself frequently having types of conflicts that rarely occurred when I used regular travel lanes. But still, I could find no good objective evidence about relative safety.

It became clear that to assess it, I would need lots of detailed crash data and good measures of bicyclist counts and behaviors.

Assembling crash data was fairly easy. MetroPlan Orlando had been collecting and analyzing crash reports since 1997. Also, I had a solid understanding of how bicycle/motor vehicle crashes happen.

But getting good counts would entail thousands of hours sitting next to roads, counting and observing bicyclists.

A few years ago, computer/video technology finally made counting efficient and effective. I now have the combination of crash, behavior and exposure data to allow useful analysis. But before I get to that, I want briefly to discuss the shortcomings of other studies.

Sloppy Bikeway Research

A number of studies published over the past decade or so have purported to show better safety performance of streets with bikeways compared to those without. Some are before-and-after studies of the same streets. These studies have a major problem: they treat all bicyclist-versus-motorist crashes the same, as if all would be affected in some way by the presence of a bikeway.

But clearly, the presence of a bikeway would not impact many crashes one way or the other. For example, a bicyclist might roll out of a driveway and fail to yield to an approaching car, or a motorist might blow through a red traffic signal at speed. Also, some crash types would likely be made more common by the presence of a bikeway, such as “wrong-way bicyclist” crashes when a bikeway either encourages or requires bicyclists to travel facing traffic.

montreal study comparison streets with and without separated bike lanes

A bikeway study street and its “comparison street” in the 2011 Montreal cycle track study.

Such studies have too many other kinds of failures to describe here, but the highly-touted 2011 Montreal cycle track study by Lusk and Furth [3] had a particularly serious failing. That study compared parallel streets with and without cycle tracks, but the paired streets were often radically different from one another.

One comparison, for example, was of a one-lane, one-way, low-volume residential street with a cycle track vs. a two-way, four lane street with high traffic volume and storefronts. A traffic engineering journal’s peer reviewers likely would have thrown out the Montreal study, but an injury prevention journal published it. The reviewers apparently didn’t catch this major failure of methodology.

Our Data

The MetroPlan study ensured that the control (no-bike-lane) streets were like the bike lane streets: same number of lanes, median type, same or similar posted speeds, similar traffic volumes, similar land use, and even similar surrounding populations.

We selected ten streets that had had bike lanes for at least ten years, and for each of them, a control street that also had not seen major changes for ten years. The streets were mostly suburban, with just a few a bit more urban.

We had ten years of crash data for all of the streets, categorized by crash type (who turned, who crossed, who violated right-of-way, etc.); the bicyclist’s position leading up to the crash (travel lane, bike lane, sidewalk or other non-roadway position); and the bicyclist’s direction of travel (with or facing the regular flow of vehicular traffic, or crossing the roadway).

Left: Mighk Wilson with the MioVision camera system, which is portable and records 48 hours of video. Right: the pole-mounted camera provides a birds-eye view of the roadway and the sidewalk.

Video Data Collection

Using a MioVision camera, we counted bicyclists, with their position and direction, on each bike-lane street and its control street during the same 48-hour period. With this information, we were able to estimate miles of bicyclist travel by multiplying the counts by the length of the study street, and then by 1,825, which gets us from 48 hours to ten years of exposure.

With ten years of crashes and of estimated exposure, we could calculate Bicyclist Miles Between Crashes. A high number means lower risk. (I’ve rounded to the nearest thousand miles for clarity.)

With the video, we were also able to estimate typical speeds for bicyclists. Traffic engineers typically use an “85th-percentile speed” for traffic studies. (85% of the travelers are going at or below this speed.) We found the 85th-percentile speed to be 12.4 MPH for sidewalk bicyclists, 15.7 MPH for bike-lane users, and 18.4 MPH for travel-lane users.

We also looked at five shared-use sidepaths (“trails” directly adjacent to roadways) that had been in place for more than ten years, and collected the same crash and exposure data for them.

Key Findings

This section will explore the risk of a motorist-caused crash.

Most Important Factor: Bicyclist Direction

It is legal to bike against traffic on a sidewalk or path, and illegal in a bike lane or travel lane, but regardless of bicyclist position, we found bicyclist direction to be the most important risk factor. The risk ratio was the same, 5.3 times greater, except for bike lanes, where it was 4.3 times. This means that bicyclists riding against the flow of motor vehicle traffic are 4.3 to 5.3 times more likely to be in a crash than those who ride with motor vehicle traffic flow.

These results show higher relative risk than prior studies, but this study had many more streets and better bicyclist-count data. (Wachtel and Lewiston in 1993 [4] found 3.6 times greater risk, and Huang and Petritsch in 2007 [5] found 4.4 times greater risk.)

Risk by Position

So we know that going with the flow is much, much safer. But if we’re going with the flow, is it better to be along the edge of a travel lane, in a bike lane, or on a sidewalk? For bicyclists traveling with the flow, the Miles Between Motorist-Caused Crashes were:

Travel Lane Edge – 31,000 Miles (Highest Risk)

Bike Lane – 64,000 Miles

Sidewalk – 122,000 Miles (Lowest Risk)

I have assumed that the bicyclist in the travel lane is riding along its right edge. Very few bicyclists use lane control, and only a tiny percentage of crashes involves bicyclists using it. This study could not assess that strategy.

These numbers make it look like the sidewalk is the safest place to ride, with four times lower risk than the edge of the travel lane. The sidewalk looks better than the bike lane too. But stay with me…

The four main motorist-caused crash types for bicyclists going with the flow were: overtaking motorist, drive-out, right hook, and left cross. (Dooring was not a significant issue with these streets; only two of the twenty streets had parallel on-street parking. There was only one reported dooring during the ten-year period.)

Overtaking crashes are very rare. Of 428 motorist-caused crashes on these twenty streets, only ten (2%) involved overtaking motorists. Six of those ten involved bicyclists in bike lanes. But the bike lanes did show a much lower risk for overtaking crashes: 585,000 miles between crashes compared to 92,000 miles for travel-lane bicyclists.

Setting Overtaking Crashes Aside

For now, let’s set overtaking crashes aside and look at the risks for drive-outs, right hooks and left crosses. Again, we consider only bicyclists going with the flow.

Travel Lane Edge – 61,000 Miles (Highest Risk)

Bike Lane – 75,000 Miles

Sidewalk – 122,000 Miles (Lowest Risk)

Here we still see much lower risks for sidewalks, and somewhat lower for bike lanes. But why would there be lower risks for those crash types? They all occur at intersections and driveways with no sort of “protection” for the bicyclist. Don’t experienced bicyclists avoid using sidewalks — and sometimes even bike lanes — precisely to avoid such conflicts?

I have the answer for you in the next article.

Footnotes

[1] Wikipedia article describing Vision Zero, with links to other resources.

[2] John Forester, pioneering bicycling educator, died in April 2020. We have an evenhanded article about him.

[3] The Montreal study may be found here. Michael Kary’s critique of it may be found here, Wayne Pein’s, here and Paul Schimek’s here.

[4] The Wachtel and Lewiston study is available online.

[5] The Huang and Petritsch study is available on the Metroplan Orlando site.

John S. Allen

Passing a City Bus Safely on a Bicycle

June 8, 2020/2 Comments/in The Savvy Cyclist /by John Allen

A savvy cyclist shot this video.

Little did he know that a yet-to-be savvy cyclist would play a starring role in it.

Here’s what the savvy cyclist did in the video.

He sees the bus stopped ahead. Well in advance of reaching it, he looks over his shoulder to check whether there is a vehicle behind him.
There is, so he makes a left-turn signal with his left arm, indicating the desire to merge left to pass the bus.
He verifies that the driver behind him is yielding to let him move left before he does so.
He passes the bus with safe clearance, ready to brake and fall back in case the bus starts to merge out from the curb.
Once in the bus driver’s forward field of view, he signals to the bus driver the desire to merge back to the right.
He positions himself so that he can see a pedestrian crossing the street right in front of the bus. He allows ample time to slow down or maneuver if a pedestrian pops into view.
After passing the bus, he adopts an appropriate lane position, preventing being overtaken by two lines of traffic at once and jammed against the curb.

The next driver behind has let the savvy cyclist into line.

The yet-to-be savvy cyclist:

Keeps far right as long as possible before reaching the bus, and does not check for overtaking traffic.
Does not signal to indicate the desire to change lane position.
Swerves out shortly before reaching the bus, again without checking to see if there is any traffic behind.
Rides close to the side of the bus! This puts the yet-to-be savvy cyclist in danger of being swept underneath if the bus merges out.
Would not see a pedestrian crossing the street from in front of the bus until the last split second — and therefore would be likely to collide with that pedestrian.
Merges to the right without signaling to the bus driver.
Merges all the way over to the curb, inviting drivers of motor vehicles to “share” an un-sharable lane.

The other cyclist merges out just before passing the bus. What if a car, rather than another cyclist, had been following her?

I, the savvy cyclist

I’ll admit it, I was the savvy cyclist. What were my expectations?

I believed I could communicate with the driver of the vehicle behind me using a hand signal and head turn.
I knew the driver behind me had to digest my request to merge into line, so I started my communication early.
I did not assume the motorist would cooperate and let me merge, so I checked — trust but verify. This is easy to do with a quick glance into a rear-view mirror.
I understood that passing a bus close to its side places me in deadly danger if the bus merges out, and also invites unsafe overtaking.
I knew the bus driver would have an easier time knowing my intentions if he or she could see me as I prepared to merge right.
I understood that I could safely allow only one line of traffic to overtake after passing the bus. I had to position myself to avoid unsafe passing by two lines of traffic at once.
I had a mental inventory of things to watch for: the bus pulls out abruptly, an overtaking motorist moves too soon, a pedestrian abruptly emerges in front of me. But I was ready, so none of these things would cause me a problem, or even require quick action on my part.

This sounds like a lot, but it’s not. It becomes second nature when practicing “driver behavior.”

I am passing the bus safely. The other cyclist couldn’t see a person crossing the street in front of the bus, and couldn’t avoid the bus if it merged out.

The cyclist in the video was practicing “edge” behavior

Her behavior indicated that she wanted to take up as little space as possible. She was an “edge rider,” naive about potential hazards in front of her, and fatalistic about those behind her. This made her moves unpredictable and turned potential hazards into real ones.

What behavior is truly easier for motorists?

I have long contended that having to slow and follow a bicyclist disturbs motorists much less than the following confusing situations:

The cyclist is inviting me to pass, but the available width looks iffy. The angel on one shoulder says that I should wait till there is more room. The devil on the other says: ‘It’ll be close, but I’ll make it.’

Or perhaps:

The cyclist can’t continue riding behind the bus. She is either going to stop behind it, or swerve out. The angel on one shoulder says: ‘Slow down so she can swerve out in front of me.’ The devil on the other shoulder says: ‘Damn bicyclists.’

How about if you’re the bus driver:

I lie awake at night worrying that I’ll crush a cyclist under my bus.

This has happened in my city.

How much better it is for the mental health of everybody concerned for a cyclist to act as a participant in traffic, rather than a nobody!

The shared-lane marking properly indicates my line of travel. The bus changes lanes to pass me safely. The other cyclist’s wheel is visible in the corner of the picture.

Lower stress and more safety passing a bus

As for cyclists, it is infinitely more satisfying to interact as a full participant in traffic, rather than be a wallflower!

For savvy cyclists, stress levels go way down, safety goes way up — and there’s even more: A rewarding sense of interaction with other people. Almost every motorist will cooperate with you, if you only help them know how to do that.

One more thought

The driver of the vehicle behind me, intentionally or not, was standing guard for me. I was protected from following vehicles. (The word “protected” has been used and misused in other ways related to bicycling, but that is a discussion for another post.)

On any typical ride, a cyclist interacts directly with tens or hundreds of strangers, sometimes thousands. Cycling and motoring are the daily activities in which a person interacts directly with more strangers than in any others.

It’s a dance, and as we say in CyclingSavvy, the dance is yours to lead. I find it soundly rewarding to do that assertively yet cooperatively.

I shot this video in May 2017 on Boston’s Longwood Avenue — here, in case you would care to know. This neighborhood has a high concentration of health science and research facilities. I may well have been photographing a doctor or scientist. Brilliance in one field doesn’t help you understand safe behavior near a bus. That’s why we need to teach all people, no matter how smart, how to ride safely.

Update

I wish that I could offer a bright and sunny conclusion to this article: Longwood-area cyclists signed up for a CyclingSavvy course, discovered how easy it is to communicate with other road users and control safe space around themselves.

Not so. Since I shot the video, the shared-lane markings on Longwood Avenue have been replaced with bike lanes.

2019: Google street view of Longwood Avenue

These bike lanes direct cyclists to ride like the one in my video, and give motorists to understand that this is bicyclists’ proper place and conduct — as shown in the image above downloaded from a 2019 Google Street view.

Enough for now. The reasons bicyclists get set up for failure like this are a topic for another post.