Bicycle safety and Quest-for-Zero

The mornings are cooler, the leaves are starting to change color in anticipation of winter, and it’s a grand time to enjoy some bicycle rides before the snow and ice beset us.

Collisions between motorists and bicycles have exponentially increased in recent years with both sides to blame. Legally speaking, in nearly every state a bicycle is considered to be a “vehicle” and therefore, like motorists, cyclists must follow the rules of the road.

According to Air Force Instruction 91-207 (traffic safety), all persons who ride a bicycle, tricycle, or other human powered vehicle, including motorized bicycles, on an Air Force installation roadway, to include flight lines, will wear a highly visible outer garment during the day and outer garment containing retro-reflective material at night.

The AFI further adds they will wear a properly fastened, approved (e.g., Consumer Product Safety Commission, ANSI, Snell Memorial Foundation or host nation equivalent) bicycle helmet, ensure bicycles are equipped with a white front light visible for 500 feet and red reflector or light clearly visible from the rear for 300 feet.

A closing statement says that the use of portable headphones, earphones, cellular phones, iPods, or other listening and entertainment devices (other than hearing aids) while walking, jogging, running, bicycling, skating or skateboarding on roadways is prohibited. Listening devices impair hearing emergency signals, alarms, announcements, approaching vehicles, human speech and outside noise in general.

One major issue involves our Tinker crosswalks. When vehicles are stopped for pedestrians who are legally crossing within the crosswalk, a bicyclist is not allowed to continue moving forward through the marked crosswalk. The bicyclist must stop to allow pedestrians safe passage.

Bicyclists must be situationally aware at all times and actively engaged. Let’s examine ways to avoid being struck by a vehicle.

1.      The right cross: Research has revealed that this is the most common way to get hit from a car pulling out of a side street, parking lot, or driveway to your right. This situation presents two possible types of collisions – either you’re in front of the vehicle and the vehicle hits you, or the vehicle pulls out in front of you and you slam into it.

How can you avoid this collision?

a. Use a bright and very visible headlight if you’re riding at dusk, dawn, or nighttime - flashing LEDs are perfect.

b. Use a loud air-horn such as the Air Zound.

c. If you cannot make eye contact with the driver, wave an arm.

d. Slow down or stop.

e. Ride further to the left. You might worry that moving left makes you more vulnerable to cars coming from behind, but the stats say you’re far more likely to get hit by a car at an intersection ahead of you that can’t see you, than from a car behind you which can see you clearly.

2. The door prize: a driver opens their door in front of you, and you run into the door if you can’t stop in time.

How can you avoid this collision?

a. Ride far enough to the left that you won’t run into a door that’s opened unexpectedly. You may be wary about riding so far into the lane that cars can’t pass you easily, but you’re more likely to get doored by a parked car if you ride too close to it than you are to get hit from behind by a car that can see you clearly.

3. The crosswalk slam: You’re riding on the sidewalk, you cross the street at a crosswalk, and a car makes a right turn – right into you. Drivers aren’t expecting bikes to be in the crosswalk, and it’s hard for them to see you because of the nature of turning from one street to another.

How can you avoid this collision?

a. Use a bright headlight.

b. Don’t ride on the sidewalk. Crossing between sidewalks is a fairly dangerous maneuver. Sidewalk riding also makes you vulnerable to cars pulling out of parking lots or driveways. And you’re threatening to pedestrians on the sidewalk. In addition, riding on the sidewalk is illegal in some places.

4. The wrong-way wreck: You’re riding the wrong way, against traffic flow. A car makes a right-turn from a side street, driveway, or parking lot, right into you. They didn’t see you because they had no reason to expect that someone would be coming towards them from the wrong direction.

Or you could be hit by a car on the same road coming at you from straight ahead. They have less time to see you and take evasive action because they’re approaching you faster than normal since you’re going towards them rather than away from them.

How can you avoid this collision?

a. Don’t ride against traffic. One study showed that riding the wrong way was three times as dangerous as riding with the flow of traffic. For children, the risk was calculated to be seven times greater.

5. The red light of death: You stop to the right of a car that’s already waiting at a red light or stop sign. They can’t see you. When the light turns green, you move forward, and then they turn right - directly into you.

How can you avoid this collision?

a. Don’t stop in the driver’s blind spot. Stop behind a car, instead of to the right of it. This makes you very visible to traffic on all sides.

b. Don’t count on drivers to signal. They don’t, so always assume that a car can turn right at any time, and never pass a car on the right.

6. The right hook: A car passes you and then tries to make a right turn directly in front of you, or right into you. They think you’re not going very fast just because you’re on a bicycle, so it doesn’t occur to them that they can’t pass you in time.

How can you avoid this collision?

a. Don’t ride on the sidewalk.

b. Ride more to the left. Taking up the whole lane makes it harder for drivers to pass you to cut you off or turn into you. Don’t feel bad about taking the lane: if motorists didn’t threaten your life by turning in front of or into you or passing you too closely, then you wouldn’t have to.       

c. Mount a mirror on your bicycle, and use it. Look in your mirror well before approaching an intersection, not while actually going through the intersection.

7. The rear ender: You innocently move a little to the left to go around a parked car or some other obstruction in the road, and you get struck by a car coming up from behind.

How can you avoid this collision?

a. Never move left without looking behind you first. Some motorists like to pass cyclists within mere inches, so moving even a tiny bit to the left unexpectedly could put you in the path of a car. Practice holding a straight line while looking over your shoulder until you can do it perfectly. Most new cyclists tend to move left when they look behind them, which can be disastrous.

b. Don’t swerve in and out of the parking lane if it contains any parked cars. You might be tempted to ride in the parking lane where there are no parked cars, dipping back into the traffic lane when you encounter a parked car. This puts you at risk for getting struck from behind. Instead, ride in the traffic lane.

c. Again – use your bicycle mirror.

d. Signal. Never move left without signaling. Put your left arm straight out. Be sure to check your mirror or look behind you before signaling (since a car passing too closely could take your arm off.)

8. The rear ender – part 2: A car runs into you from behind. This is what many cyclists fear the most, but it’s actually not very common, comprising only 3.8 percent of collisions. However, it’s one of the hardest collisions to avoid, since you’re not usually looking behind you. The best way to avoid getting rear-ended is to ride on very wide roads, in bike lanes, or on roads where the traffic moves slowly, and to use lights when biking at night.

How can you avoid this collision?

a. Get a rear light. If you’re riding at night, dusk, or dawn, you absolutely should use a flashing red rear light. In 1999, 39 percent of deaths on bicycles nationwide occurred between 6 p.m. and midnight.

b. Wear a reflective vest or a safety triangle. High quality reflective gear makes you more visible even in the daytime, not just at night. Also, when you hear a motorist approaching, straightening up into a vertical position will make your reflective gear more noticeable.

To minimize the risk of intersection and other crashes with cars, bicyclists need to maximize their visibility, understand the rules of the road, learn to recognize some of the most dangerous intersection hazards, and take safety precautions when approaching and riding through an intersection.

It also pays to learn the basic legal rules of liability for an accident. Bicyclists who don’t follow road rules or don’t keep a proper lookout might be deemed responsible for an accident. And bicyclists who do follow the rules of the road, but are nevertheless hit by a driver who doesn’t follow the rules of the road, may be surprised to find that the driver and police blame the cyclist for the crash.

To avoid liability for an accident after being hit by a car, bicyclists must understand and follow both the basic legal rules of liability and the rules of the road.

Remain aware of your surroundings as you ride your bicycle, focus on our Quest-for-Zero goals and think about the following: Around 33,000 people die in car crashes in the U.S. annually, and about 1 in 41 is a bicyclist.