A Bicycle Bump

Orginally  submitted to National Geographic Magazine, January 2009

A Bicycle Bump

You let the reader to assume that being rear ended on a bicycle is common and worthy enough to stop cycling.  It is a myth that the most common bike-car crash is being hit from the rear. This is known as "fear from the rear".  Several studies show that over ninety-five out of 100 crashes are caused by things coming towards you in front  or sides.  The well trained bicyclist using "Effective Cycling" techniques knows this and focuses on what coming up in front, with awareness of what's behind.  Those cyclists have an accident rate of about 80% less than others. 

You didn't mention cycling education.  In its most basic form is the learning of new behaviors and with adults the unlearning of outdated and harmful habits.  Unfortunately, eliminating bad habits is the most difficult to do and comes mostly with education followed by repetition and coaching over many weeks.  The alternative is to learn through trial and error which takes years to achieve and guarantees painful lessons through crashing and falling.  There is only one cyclist education program that meets this goal--the League of American Bicyclists' Smart Cycling program. The public thinks that if one learns how to balance and operate the brakes and gears, that's all they need to cycle safely.  Few people are even willing to spend an hour to learn even the fundamentals of cycling.  They think that there is nothing to learn and that they are all "above average bicyclists". 

There is no shortage of faulty bicycle facilities due mostly to lack of bicycle transportation engineering knowledge and direct cycling experience by the designers of these facilities.  You and I pay for these inadequately designed systems in the form of deaths, injuries, delays getting to your destination, higher emergency service expense, higher medical insurance premiums, and lost wages.  The big problem is that the best solutions are counterintuitive and contrary to what many of us are taught. One step in the right direction perhaps is to classify bicycles as a "Design Vehicle" in the street engineering reference books such as the "Green Book".

The concept of separation produces a superior and inferior class of transportation, with cyclists being treated as inferior.  The photograph in the article illustrates that.  There are severe adverse side effects of this as proven in Europe and parts of the US including Portland that have tried it: pedestrian methods resulting in cyclists being in unexpected and dangerous places, encouraging unpredictable movements on the roadway, and discouraging safe road skills.  It encourages violation of traffic laws.  Some bike lanes encourage hazardous passing on right, and filtering (by moving up on the right side of a line of stopped or slow-moving motor vehicles).  Even more dangerous are the multi-use paths where no traffic rules exist, and the crash rates are the highest per mile of travel. 

Transportation in the U.S. has historically been based upon integration, meaning motorists and cyclists share the same road, follow the same rules, and have the same rights.  This is the law in all fifty states.  I remember this as "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles" by John Forester the author of Effective Cycling and can be found at www.johnforester.com.

For the last 120 years knowledgeable cyclists have been using the Roadway Integration Principle because it works.  It gets them to their destination in the most direct route, it gives you the right to use those roads to travel, and you follow the same traffic rules which provides safe predictable movements.  The basic rules of the road in all states  are consistent with Roadway Integration Principle.

Wynn Kageyama
League Cycling Instructor