<story><title>It&apos;s Never a Bicycle Accident</title><url>https://slate.com/business/2021/03/shawn-bradley-bicycle-hit-by-car.html?ck_subscriber_id=1208045072</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>albertgoeswoof</author><text>One of the linked accidents in the article looks terrible, a man is cycling along the road, a bus overtakes him and clips his handlebars, knocking him to the ground and then running over his torso with the rear wheels of the bus.&lt;p&gt;What a lot of people don’t realise is that you can’t overtake bicycles in a single lane. If there’s no cycle path&amp;#x2F;markings a bicycle takes up the full lane for exactly this reason. Bicycles can’t cycle close to parked cars due to passenger doors opening up randomly, and the sides of the road by the curb is generally not maintained enough to cycle in.&lt;p&gt;Cars&amp;#x2F;buses&amp;#x2F;trucks have to wait until they can safely overtake.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jillesvangurp</author><text>The solution to this is fixing local legislation. As a car driver your risk is asymmetric: you will have a few scratches&amp;#x2F;dents on your car and the other side ends up in hospital (or worse). So, it&amp;#x27;s important to bias traffic rules to protecting more vulnerable participants like cyclists or pedestrians.&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of things that work in various countries:&lt;p&gt;The Netherlands fixed this ages ago. You hit a cyclist with a car, it&amp;#x27;s your fault regardless of the circumstances for the insurers.  The net result is a country where drivers are very mindful of cyclists and check their right side mirrors before turning right and their left side mirror before &amp;#x27;dooring&amp;#x27; a passing cyclist. Failing to do that is expensive and there are so many cyclists that it is in any case a good idea. Besides, nobody wants it on their conscience to have people hospitalized because of inattention, sloppiness, or incompetence.&lt;p&gt;France at some point introduced a simple traffic rule that states that when over taking cyclists you need to give them a lot of space. So, now you see cars slowing down and overtaking cyclists properly on two lane country roads: i.e. waiting for the left lane to clear and then using that and giving the cyclist at least a meter or so of clearance. It&amp;#x27;s kind of funny to see that in action but it works. Failing to do that has hefty fines associated with it if you get caught. So drivers actually do this. France has a lot of cyclists on country roads training and getting taken over by cars doing 90 km&amp;#x2F;hour is not risk free unless they keep their distance. So, a completely sane rule. Any accidents tend to be very nasty. And again, nobody wants that on their conscience anyway.&lt;p&gt;London introduced fees for entering the downtown area. Unless you have to be there, you&amp;#x27;ll want to avoid that because it&amp;#x27;s expensive. It also has cameras all over the place so if you mess up, it will be on camera. That was mainly done for pollution and security reasons but it also made it a safer place to bike around.</text></comment>
<story><title>It&apos;s Never a Bicycle Accident</title><url>https://slate.com/business/2021/03/shawn-bradley-bicycle-hit-by-car.html?ck_subscriber_id=1208045072</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>albertgoeswoof</author><text>One of the linked accidents in the article looks terrible, a man is cycling along the road, a bus overtakes him and clips his handlebars, knocking him to the ground and then running over his torso with the rear wheels of the bus.&lt;p&gt;What a lot of people don’t realise is that you can’t overtake bicycles in a single lane. If there’s no cycle path&amp;#x2F;markings a bicycle takes up the full lane for exactly this reason. Bicycles can’t cycle close to parked cars due to passenger doors opening up randomly, and the sides of the road by the curb is generally not maintained enough to cycle in.&lt;p&gt;Cars&amp;#x2F;buses&amp;#x2F;trucks have to wait until they can safely overtake.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kennywinker</author><text>This 10,000x! The people who tell cyclists they need to “follow the rules of the road” are the same ones who will tailgate you and yell at you when you take up the full lane.</text></comment>