Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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There's always an excuse for drivers.
If a driver isn't paying attention, it doesn't matter what colour a cyclist's clothing are, or that they had a helmet on, or insanely bright lights.
And if excuses are being shifted onto cyclists, what about pedestrians and buildings that drivers smash into on a regular basis? What excuse do you have then?
As someone living in Sweden, I have seen pedestrians and bicyclists wearing dark coloured clothing during autumn nights, they just disappear in the background and VASTLY reduce the distance I can see them at, they just pops out from the background only when you are close to them.
This is not a simple driver issue, these are people who seems to deliberately dress in camo, and then complain that drivers don't pay enough attention.
I am not asking everyone to wear a high-viz vest all the time, but please get a reflector and show that you have some self preservation instinct
Riders should wear adequate gear to protect themselves, but drivers also must drive safely. If you aren't able to avoid dark object, you're driving above the safe limit for current visibility. What if there was a fallen tree on the road? Those don't wear hi-vis
I can avoid dark objects just fine, what is difficult to deal with is people who wear what could the equivalent of camo, and getting pissed that I didn't see them until late.
A tree is much larger than a human, making it more visually distinct.
Lets take an extreme scenario, just to try and find the limits of what is the responsibility of a driver and a bicyclist, I know it is a ridiculous scenario, but it is interesting to see were people feel the limits should be.
A person wears a ghillie suit, and lies down next to the road, he is playing a game of extreme hide and seek with a few friends, well the game day just ended, and he stands up just as a car is 50 meters away, the speed limit is 50kmh, it is dusk, the driver of the car swerves to avoid potentially hitting the person, and hits a light pole on the other side of the road.
Who would you say is responsible for the accident?
A tree is too large? What about a trashcan then. A person who has passed out and fallen from the sidewalk onto the street? Whatever.
If you need to build fantastical scenarios to justify your reasoning, maybe your position isn't as valid as you think. Luckily we have rules and judges for this, someone jumping in front of your car is usually classified as insurance fraud or attempted suicide. If he was on a crosswalk, your fault for not slowing down accordingly.
And anyway, at 50kmh, stopping the average car takes 14, 20 meters maximum, reaction time is 1s usually, let's say you're 90 years old and it takes you 2 seconds, you'll start braking after 28 meters... So essentially in the worst case scenario you'll maybe just touch the guy with your license plate.
Which is totally beside the point by the way, because I was talking about YOUR OWN safety, forget about responsibility, imagine a sinkhole had opened on the road, if you fell in it wouldn't be your fault, right? Yet it's still preferable NOT TO DO THAT!
When going 50km/h the average distance needed to come to a comfortable stop including taking a whole second to figure out what's happening and react is 40 meters.
For an emergency stop (still taking the 1 second reaction time) it's 28 meters.
So if you can't stop with 50 meters you are absolutely unfit to get behind the wheel.
Of course, I've experienced this myself (pedestrians wearing all back on trails at night).
But the responsibility still rests with the driver.
In this case, it was argued that their view was obstructed, which should have meant they slowed down and paid attention even more. Nobody should be driving blindly.
The cyclist here did have a rear light, and was rear ended.
You are right that noone should be driving blind, I fully agree with that, and yes I know that the driver is ultimately legally responsible for the safety of unprotected people in traffic.
But where does the responsibillity of the pedestrian end?
I wrote a rudiculous extreme scenario in another comment in this thread about a person in a ghillie suit playing hide and seek near a road which lead to an accident, please feel free to respond and tell me who you feel are responsible and why in that situation.
There are no right or wrong answers to that scenario, I am simply trying to take this kind of scenario to the edge to try and figure out what the limits are
Did they intentionally try to get hit or cause a crash? If yes, then they bare some (or all) responsibility.
But people wearing regular clothes should not be punished.
We never, EVER see motorists involved in crashed be blamed because they were driving a back car.
This particular crash happened on a lit roundabout where the cyclist apparently had a rear light. The driver was either going too fast, or wasn't paying enough attention.
This is a good thought experiment. There are legal answers, but logically, blame could be given to a pedestrian when the norms are broken (i.e. suddenly changing lane on a path while oneone is trying to pass).
As a cyclist, or motorist, I make a huge effort to ride defensively. If not to avoid people, then to avoid animals popping out of nowhere.
In Sweden, it's illegal for bicyclists to not have lights and reflectors (both front and back) and the law is at least enforced to some degree by police.
I'm a cyclist and I also drive a car. Let us be honest, yes the driver should have been more careful but, with dark clothes cyclists are often almost non visible on the road. I have myself been surprised more than a dozen times finding myself almost rear ending a cyclist because I didn't see them cause of their dark clothes.
That's why I have always worn a hivis jacket, even More now that I have a driver's licence. It's better to be lit like a christmas tree than invisible to other road users.
Literally. I bike and drive and wouldn’t blame the cyclist at all, but I would hardly be surprised if I was hit while cycling at night in dark colors with even one headphone in.
Obviously, I would love to live in a utopia where cyclist can travel just as carefree as most car drivers, But we’re on two wheels and completely unprotected, so there is a certain level of additional caution that goes into traveling by bike. I just wish more people, cyclist and driver alike, used their common sense.
Speedy recovery to the victim.