SLazz

Sad story but it's a plain fact, distracted drivers are harmful to cyclists' health.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former...194841213.html

Slackerprince

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former...194841213.html

Scary out there.
I'm always a little relieved when I get home safe.
My heart goes out to her friends and family.

S

stilltooslow

Indeed.

Freaking horrible news.

Stay safe everyone.

Leukybear 

I heard about the fatal accident yesterday involving a minivan. But this is out of the blue.

merlinextraligh

That is terrible news. It's terrible news when anyone dies. It's worse when it's a relatively young, gifted person, and the parent of a small child

No more scary than riding in a car, by risk by hour of participation, and way less scary than motorcycling, boating, swimming, sitting on your couch etc.

Are you relieved when you get out of the car, out of the pool.

No problem with the sympathy for her and her family, but the fear mongering is misguided and counterproductive.

cafzali

The only thing that I would distinguish in your comments is that in cases where there's a vehicle-bike collision, it's going to be more common for a cyclist to be injured than your typical single or two-car accident because other than your head, you have no protection whatsoever. Whether or not you know someone who has been seriously injured (or killed) biking will largely depend on how popular a sport it is near you.

genec

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former...194841213.html


Anyone know any details...

Here is yet another story of a cyclist that wasn't "some bum" as some motorists might think.

jmX

There's a bit of innumeracy going on here.

The odds of a cyclist dying in a car are much less than the odds of a cyclist dying on a bike. A road cyclist is in much much more danger per vehicle mile than a car. Car deaths are something like 1 in every 100 million vehicle miles these days, and only getting lower each year. The reason more people die in cars than on bikes is because "everybody" drives a car, and they drive it a lot, whereas maybe 1-2% of the population spends any time on a bicycle on public roadways.

So yes, breathe a sigh of relief when you come home from a road ride. It's a fairly dangerous activity.

Chaco

I was so sorry to hear this. She was a gifted business leader.

From what I understand, she was coming down a hill and someone made a left turn right in front of her, leaving her nowhere to go but into the side of the vehicle.
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago (I missed the truck by 6 inches). I caught up to the driver at the light and he had the usual excuse - SIDSY (Sorry, I didn't see you). That night, I got a bright flashing light to put on the front of my bike, and I use it every ride now.

seeker333

Appears she was left-hooked on a downhill run, in the middle of the day:

https://www.almanacnews.com/news/show_story.php?id=14460

"Covey was traveling northbound on a downhill section of Skyline at about 1:30 p.m. Sept. 18 when a white Mazda minivan turned left onto Elk Tree Road "directly in front of the bicycle," the California Highway Patrol said.

The bike collided with the right side of the van, the CHP said. A 22-year-old man from Fremont was driving the van, the CHP said."

Chaco

The problem with this is that there is absolutely no reliable way to compare deaths per mile, since there are no figure for bicyclists. In terms of the ratio of deaths per thousand accidents, however, there are comparable statistics, and it turns out that riding a bicycle from that point of view is no more dangerous than riding a car. In 2010, there were about 24,000 fatalities in vehicles, vs. 618 for bicycles. Both car deaths and bicycle deaths have declined, and at about the same rate.

Personally, I think if you are a knowledgeable cyclist, the danger is about the same. And if you add in the health benefits of cycling, driving is actually a much more dangerous activity.

Slackerprince

It's not fearmongering, dude. I'm passed by countless numbers of cars out on my rides, and trusting that they don't hit me or bump me off into a tree, or something.
Yes, I'm grateful EVERY time I get home safe, and don't take anything for granted.
It's ridiculous to equate riding a road bike with "sitting on a couch."
Ultimately, I'm just a guy wearing spandex, riding a twenty pound bike, sharing the road with people driving multi-ton vehicles.

S

merlinextraligh

Actually, its not, Close to a million people die from sedentary lifestyle related diseases each year. Fewer than 1000 cyclists die in accidents, and the majority of those are drunk, ninja salmons or child dart outs.

It's just not as dangerous as many people make out.

Everything in life has risk; cycling is relatively low on the order of risk.

TrojanHorse

None of that obviates the need to be careful or smart about your riding, of course.

You can't live scared, though.

I haven't been up there in a while but skyline blvd was the preferred weekend rip-it-up road for sport bikes. I'm not sure I'd want to ride on a road where all the drivers think they're mario andretti (of course, I guess that's how people might describe Glendora Mountain Rd too, which is extremely popular in SoCal).

Regardless, RIP to a remarkable woman.

Nachoman

I would love to see some persuasive stats on that.
Personally I feel like every time I'm out there I almost get hit. But I pedal a lot of annual miles (as I'm sure you do too).

merlinextraligh

The ken Kieffer link I posted is a bit dated but does a good job on the stats. ( and yes I know Ken was killed by a drunk driver)

Obey the rules of the road, don't ride in the dark without lights, and use some common sense as to when and where you ride, and the risk is pretty low. Not non existant, but acceptably low.

The risk goes down, the more prevalent cyclists are on the roads. Thus we should be promoting safe cycling, rather than hand wringing about how unsafe it is, and discouraging, rather than promoting cycling.

That's my problem with all these threads posting deaths, because they create a false perception of the risk.

Velo Vol 

*Former

DoninIN

Nevermind the inherent danger in swooping down some hill at forty miles an hour on this ridiculous twenty pound aluminum contraption with tires less than 7/8" wide wearing ridiculous clothes, it's not just fear of death, it's fear of the shame of being found dead in lycra and a dayglo orange jersey.

(You're both sort of right, it not that dangerous in an absolute sense, but you should thank your God/stars/providence/random chance/quantum causality kiss your partner, kick the dog and take out the trash every time you make it back from a day of doing anything at all, life is a finite and wonderful gift, don't take it for granted.)

Velo Vol 

This is the big problem with bicycle statistics.

merlinextraligh

If you crunch the numbers, by miles riding in a car is safer. By hours of participation, it flips to bike being safer. And that's before you factor in the compensating effect of the health benefit of cycling.
Look at the link I posted.

And my point really isn't that cycling is safer than riding in a car. My point is that cycling, done prudently, is not an unreasonably dangerous activity. And that fear mongering about it increases the risk.

We should be proseltyzing about how great it is, and that it is reasonably safe, in order to increase participation, secure our place on the road, and in the process decrease risk.

merlinextraligh

No doubt. Tomorrow is not promised, and everything has risk.

I'm just ranting against the BF distortion of risk balancing that comes from virtually every bicycle fatality in the world being reported here.

Dahon.Steve

Did anyone read the comments section on Yahoo? Incredible.

I was this looking at the road through Google. It was very narrow with blind corners and no shoulder. I would have avoided that road but then again, its just me. My sincere condolences.

It's accidents like these that really make you fear the road. She had everything in life.

jjjj

I just wish the news would report it as a car-bike collision not a bike "accident". In my experience on the road, cars are 10 times more careless to bikes than bike riders are to cars. So an educated guess is that a car driver being careless caused a tragic death.

I wish the media would at least indicate thus possibility in their headline.

My prayers go out to this persons family.

jjjj

I just wish the news would report it as a car-bike collision not a bike "accident". In my experience on the road, cars are 10 times more careless to bikes than bike riders are to cars. So an educated guess is that a car driver being careless caused a tragic death.

I wish the media would at least indicate this possibility in their headline.

My prayers go out to this persons family.

Hermes

My condolences to the family. It is a horrendous loss and locally we all feel bad about this tragedy. Since I cycle the section of road where the accident happened, one gets the feeling like it could have been any of us that ride that route. One tries to learn from these tragedies and for me it is more of expect the unexpected. RIP.