Cat Daddy

Yesterday afternoon I did my first significant road ride of the year, along a number of rural roads. I came close to being taken out by a driver who wasn't paying attention. So you know, I was wearing a bright yellow jersey and had a flashing tail light. There is no bike lane. There is a solid white line with about 8" of pavement to the right of it. A guy comes out of a driveway on the opposite side of the road from me and turns left on the country road, just after I pass the driveway where he is emerging from. I look over to see that, suddenly, there is a car within a foot of me and the distance is closing as they go by me. I was lucky. I had no chance to react, other than to say in my mind, "Hmmm...I almost got injured or killed just now." I wasn't traumatized by the near miss, as apparently I just didn't have enough time for my brain to attach an emotional response to the incident (I guess?) Anyway, just a year and a-half ago, a local dentist in our area was killed while cycling on a country road by a drug-intoxicated driver. That driver was sentenced earlier this year to 12 years in prison.

Be safe out there, folks.

Rick

You need a boat horn. As you pass the driveway were the automobile is preparing to leave you give them a three second burst. You inadvertently timed it so you were never were they were looking for traffic. This is easy to do when they are distracted with there cell phone, coffee and tobacco. I use my very loud voice to say hello. I have had to yell as I approach a side road or driveway and they are starting to roll into the road. For a flashing taillight to work it has to be in there line of sight. The same with a bright or flashing headlight for daytime use. I frankly believe that high viz clothing has very little effect. There wasn't a bike lane. A painted line in the road wouldn't make it safer.

JW Fas

This horn seems to be fairly effective:

genec

Boat horn would work... Airzound is designed for your bike... and you can fill it with your pump.

Your scenario is EXACTLY what I have used it for. Motorists that assume the road is clear... with the shortest of glance.

Rick

I am currently looking into getting a cargo bicycle and am considering this horn for the cargo bicycle. I am hopping they come out with there droid horn.

Leisesturm

I don't know ... lived in NYC all my life. Have heard all kinds of horns. Doesn't seem to keep anyone any safer! Moved to the West Coast (Oregon) and had to drive to Southern California to get my wife to an appointment with a specialist doctor. Had never heard of the 405 but hit it right at 8:00 a.m. on a weekday. I still have PTSD from that one encounter with L.A. traffic. One thing stands out from the experience that morning: the total absence of any horns!! I mean people were driving sideways ... motorcycles were splitting lanes at 45 mph! I used to read biker magazines, I had heard of lane splitting but had never actually seen it done ... OMG ...

Horn use (or non use) is mainly cultural. Its actual effectiveness as a defensive option is in question. First Responders use obnoxiously loud horns offensively. There is some evidence this has merit but in some jurisdictions (NYC) there is a growing backlash against noise pollution and in my own jurisdiction First Responders in hospital zones have to use caution at intersections rather than obnoxiously loud signalling. A driveway to me implies a homestead. Three seconds is a long time. A mouth-breather habituated to signalling their presence at every active driveway they encounter with three second Airzound blasts is IMO a menace. But that's me. The real question is: is it defensive or offensive at that point? I sold a car once that I had owned for five years. A guy that was checking it out beeped the horn and I was like ... wow that's what my horn sounds like? I had never heard it! I am living proof that be it car, bike, bicycle and possibly boat, there is no real need to even have a horn on the thing, but the DOT would certainly have your six if you didn't have a working horn at inspection time. Some localities even mandate dingy bells on bicycles. Mine does. Never horns. Bells, but never horns can be mandated for bicycle use. Hmm. Wonder why that is. I have dingy bells on some (not all) of my bikes, its really not enforced. Do I use them? Never. FWIW.

bakerjw

Feel good story of the day due to it's rarity.

Glad that you're okay. As anyone with a lot of time on the road will attest, we have to develop a 6th sense as to what drivers are going to do and what is happening around us. Complacency will get us in bad situations if we're not careful.

ttusomeone

Maybe I mis-read the OPs post, but it reads to me like the car pulling out of the driveway wasn't in the wrong - it was the car coming up behind the OP that tried to pass and didn't see until almost too late that there was a car coming out of a driveway (forcing the driver to not leave the lane to pass). A horn in this instance would have been useless.

Rick

It sounds to me like the driver pulled out without taking a proper look and the bicyclist was unaware of the impending danger as she passed the drive just before the motorist careened into a road. Yelling or the use of a horn can save you from being crushed by a distracted driver.

Cat Daddy

To clarify: I had already passed the driveway (which was on the other side of the street), and at the time of my passing, there was no car there. The car came down the driveway after I passed by. I wasn't going very fast (maybe 10mph) as I had just climbed a hill and was on a semi-flat section of road, slow-pedaling to give my legs some recovery time. I'm not in shape yet. Thus, I was not very far past the driveway when the motorist emerged onto the road, turned left, and almost drifted right into me. As someone else touched on up-thread, it was all in the timing.

BobbyG

Been there, done that. Airzound Airhorn FTW.

BobbyG

And done that again...

Leisesturm

What if that driver had the stereo cranked? What if that driver had earbuds in? What if ... what if that driver was/is deaf? Do you want to put everything on the driver when its your precious six on the line? I don't. But what makes you think that driver didn't see you? Chances are the driver isn't also blind. I don't see any movement of that vehicle to indicate that they weren't aware of your presence. What I would do (and do) in this exact situation and ... seriously ... this happens nearly daily in any neighborhood of urban or suburban density ... what I do is swing around the rear of the car wide enough so they can't hit me even if they try. I'm pretty sure they aren't trying. It's important to give the driver some credit for basic humanity otherwise this doesn't work. A driver backing up HAS to be looking backwards, even if they don't see you right away, they will. Stack the deck in favor of their seeing you before they hit you by swinging wide. Or stop and wait? What a concept! No need to wake up or annoy their neighbors, frighten (or annoy) them ... just swing wide behind them and continue on your way. It really isn't their fault that they happen to be pulling out of their driveway just as you arrived. And as the person who saw them before they saw you it is actually on YOU to take some defensive action. Not every state just hands over a drivers insurance company if they hit you. Some states are actually going to proportion out responsibility. You may find yourself 40% or even 50% at fault in a crash. Then what?

Leisesturm

This was a non-event that IMO was not even worthy of the time it took to type it up and post it here. All you did was inflame the passions of those with the usual fear responses surrounding vehicular cycling. You were not hit. That is the takeaway here. Motorcyclists and scooter riders are just as exposed to impact as any cyclist but as a motorcyclist I have been passed by cars at the same kinds of toe curling passing distances as cars might pass another car with. Motorcycling forums are not obsessed with what others do. Motorcyclist forums are obsessed with what YOU the motorcyclist does or does not do. You say nothing about your road position. Were you FRAP? I don't know what you want us to say. This will happen again if you are doing it right. Then what? Just get out there and follow cycling best practices and leave the rest to ... to nothing. Just leave it. I'm living proof that if you hold up your end it all works out in the end.

79pmooney

Cat Daddy, where were you riding prior to this happening? You say the white line was ~8" in from the pavement edge. Were you riding close to that line or to the right of it? I ask because it is my experience that when drivers survey the road for traffic, they look at and see the centers of the traffic lanes. In other words, where the vehicles that could take them out would be coming from. Nothing on the far right is going to hurt them. Also eyes "see" speed, especially in the peripheral vision. You may well not have been going fast enough relative to them to register.

I find my best defense is to not right close to the road edge when I do not have to, that the further I ride into the vehicle lane, the better motorists notice me. (This is where I see a good mirror as an important tool, making it easy to ride that far out and pull back to the right as following cars get close.) I don't think much re: drivers pulling out of far side driveways but I think althe time re: drivers pulling out of nearside driveways and sidestreets and the same rule applies. If I am on the far right, I am exactly where those drivers are not looking but several feet into the lane, there is both a good chance they notice me and I have far more options to maneuver if they don't.

My near-death experience cane passing a left turning truck stopped at his stop sign. Truck pulled in behind me, started to pass then pulled into the gravel parking lot I was about to pass. Only reason I didn't go under the truck wheels is I had an angel sitting in the passenger seat who saw me and yelled. I didn't follow the rule of staying out in the car lane and nearly paid dearly. (Later that year, two local cyclists died in the same situations with trucks. They didn't have angels.)

Ben

Leisesturm

Did you read the o.p. clarification of the incident? They posted it hours before this response from you. This is not the same kind of situation at all.Hon They did not even see the car. It was also on the other side of the road. Even if they had seen it, using a horn to send a warning to a vehicle on the other side of a real or implied centerline would be confusing at best. Honestly, if more of us just concentrated on what WE need to do vs what the texting, fornicating, murderous or otherways distracted drivers were doing we would be much better off. Sometimes simply slowing speed or stopping altogether is the best practice. Regardless of how well lit you are or how many decibels your horn can output if it comes down to a car vs bicycle collision the bicycle will come out the worse for wear. Do not fall into the TRAP of thinking "my horn did that". It did not. No ... I'll walk that back. It might have. Now what. Now you think your horn is magic. You think it will always protect you. That it is the right response to an impending collision. It is not. The scant microseconds you spend going for the horn might be better used getting your speed down to zero if possible, or to a speed that minimizes injury. It does no harm to think a horn is of limited usefulness because it will force a cyclist to think more defensively. That really cannot be a bad thing IMO.

Leisesturm

It is my experience that drivers do not normally ride on the fog stripe and certainly not to the right of the fog stripe. Based on only that, that's where I ride. I really don't see how your singular near death incident informs a 'take the lane' paradigm. Drivers have a marked propensity to hit what is right in front of them. Especially when they are distracted. You should want to be where they are not! You really should. I'm just saying ... the VAST majority of cyclists ride FRAP out of pure instinct for survival. When it comes right down to it not all that many cyclists are killed or seriously injured compared to the number of cyclists on the road. I think if you study what data exists you will find it contradicts your experience. More cyclists are hit IN the vehicle lane than are hit out of it. I'm not counting those hit in intersections. That is another thread.

livedarklions

I had a very similar experience to the OP this last Saturday, except that I was going about twice as fast. The SUV was directly across a two lane state highway as I passed through the opposite side of the three way intersection (no intersecting road on my side) I was FRAP on a very wide breakdown lane, and was directly in front of the SUV as the SUV started to cross the road to take a left turn. I was wearing bright yellow and visibility conditions were excellent. Instead of just turning into the traffic lane, the SUV turned into the breakdown lane mere inches in front of me, and I was screaming at the top of my lungs to make myself heard while the vehicle continued to drift further to the left. This all happened way too fast for me to stop or swerve into the roadside ditch, so please spare me the second-guessing. I'm also quite certain that even if I did have a horn, I would not have had time to actually operate it and keep control of the bike. Apparently the driver finally registered my presence because the vehicle suddenly jerked away from me, went fast for a few feet, then ducked back into the breakdown lane to use it illegally as a right turn lane about 100 feet down the road,which apparently was the intent all along.

All the strategy in the world is't going to anticipate how to react when a driver acts in such a lawless manner, I really have no way of knowing whether my screaming alerted the driver or if he/she just finally bothered to glance into a mirror at that point to see if anyone else was in the lane.

Have to say, it did not help my mood much when a third of a mile later a car honked at me after passing me to signal their displeasure for taking the right hand turn lane to go straight (expressly consistent with state law). About half an hour later, a car with the right of way waved me through a left turn in front of them, and probably thought I was nuts when I sincerely expressed my gratitude with a smile, wave, salute and mouthing "thank you". You never know when a small gesture can restore a person's faith in humanity.

BobbyG

I understand what you are saying. Rest assured, I do not assume drivers hear my horn, or will heed it if they do. But it's nice when they do. I would honk in the same situation while driving.

I've been bike commuting seriously for 27 years and do not assume anything will go in my favor. I constantly look for an out and make sure I can brake before trouble.

There are those who say "ride as if you are invisible." I say "ride like you ARE visible, and everybody out there is trying to kill you."

79pmooney

I did not say I stay in the vehicle lane while vehicles are passing me. I said I ride out there to be noticed AND that I use a mirror so I know when to move back. When the vehicle operator the OP was talking about was making his/her decision as to whether to go, the OP had not yet arrived at the driveway and was in no danger whatsoever of being hit by that vehicle. Likewise the truck I was talking about. Had I been well into the lane when he was looking for traffic, he might have noticed me.

At least where I ride, staying out of the vehicle lanes in not always possible. I have found over the years that being in the vehicle lane isn't the huge danger, it is moving into the vehicle lane to avoid something that a following driver is not aware that I need to miss. Car doors for example. I start my move to clear a potential car door long before I get to the car with a very small direction change. I am well to the left of the edge of the car long before I get to it. I've gotten thank you's from truck drivers because I made it clear what I was doing and kept their job simple.

And yes, a negligent driver may kill me. They will have to live with that.

Ben

Cat Daddy

I guess it's a good thing for me that your opinion isn't the deciding factor as to what is posted or who gets to post. If someone gets inflamed, that isn't my problem. Actually, it seems the only one "inflamed" is you (against me, apparently). Truthfully, I don't really care. I was posting an experience. What you or others do with that is up to you. Have a nice day.

livedarklions

He just likes to rant. It's pretty incoherent stuff, and seems to think that FRAP is always the answer.

Digger Goreman

Airzound is my choice!

Bluesfrog

Airzound I believe is my horn. It startles people. Be Well. Bluesfrog

Spaghetti

damn glad you're okay.