Flashes of Panic

The new year of bike commuting is both encouraging and depressing. (Here, I should note, my “commute” is less than a mile and would be under five minutes if I didn’t have to wait to cross a busy street.)

There are mobs of bikes in the racks outside the CS building, and some of them are pretty fancy; some are probably older than their riders. I’m amused at how often I see someone patiently grinding along—up a hill, perhaps—in the bike’s absolute top gear; they’ve never bothered to figure out the gear system, and just planted it somewhere and leave it there forever. They’d be better off with a coaster, but sometime back in the 80s we balkanized bikes so much you can’t just get a simple one anymore.

One day last week I heard someone yelling at me after I crossed the street on my way home. Turns out I’d cut off another biker. I didn’t bother to stop; I had cut him off, but it was well after dark, and I had lights on (he’d seen me well enough to yell at me,) and he didn’t (so I hadn’t known he was there until he yelled.)

Later that week, I found two more depressing links. The first was research from the University of Bath suggesting that cyclists who wear helmets may be at greater risk than those who don’t.

Dr Walker, who was struck by a bus and a truck in the course of the experiment, spent half the time wearing a cycle helmet and half the time bare-headed. He was wearing the helmet both times he was struck.

He found that drivers were as much as twice as likely to get particularly close to the bicycle when he was wearing the helmet.

And, to top it off, Scoplaw noted this site, with the pleasant title, “How not to get hit by cars.” (While we’re at it, Ghostcycles is a bit chilling.)

The theme of the Bicycle Safe site is that wearing a helmet is not enough, and in reading through the ways cyclists get hit, I saw recurring themes: Don’t ride on the sidewalk. Right on the right side of the road (the “correct” side, with the flow of traffic, which in North America means the right.) Get lights on your bike. (I’m now seriously considering getting a LED headlight to go with my incandescent, which is getting old.) I see these simple things violated all the time.

That said, I learned some things, too. I haven’t been hit yet, though I was almost doored a few weeks ago and I’ve locked the brakes up more than once recently. I’m lucky; my commute is pretty short, and on low-traffic roads.

Now Playing: Turn You Inside-Out from Green by R.E.M.

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