Originally Posted by
philbob57
I was tooling along on the Green Bay Trail in Winnetka (Illinois) yesterday at maybe 12-13 MPH. Coming up on a bench, the rider ahead of me moved to the right and slowed down. I moved left. I expected the rider was stopping, but rather hung a U-turn without signaling and without looking back. The rider saw me and panicked but did not stop. I panicked and braked, but we collided and both of us went down.
I got road rash, but my bike was fine. I had to do first aid because I'm on a blood thinner, and blood was flowing, but the first aid was effective. I also lost a hearing aid, which is annoying, but I'm insured against loss - one of the benefits of a Costco HA.
The other rider kept saying, 'You didn't say 'On your left'!'
Very few people around here give any warning at all. I'm usually one of them. I'd bet a lot the 2 guys who passed this rider 200 yards ahead of me didn't give any warning, because they didn't give me warning. I know the rider didn't signal or look back before turning.
Obviously I'd be better off if I had trusted the other rider and/or my assumptions less than I did, but how much of a beef do I have against a rider who apparently assumed it's OK to do a U-turn on a MUP without checking the environment?
TIA.
I've had something very similar happen - except we were both moving a little faster, shortly after a traffic light. I was close enough that I had to swerve left to avoid when he hit the brakes hard, then he swung left (wasn't u-turn, but taking a turn off the path to some unmarked shortcut) - we didn't go down, I hit brakes, turned so we hit shoulder to shoulder, and both ended up off the left of the path. He pulled kind of the same thing - "you didn't say you were on the left" - I said - "I wasn't passing until you braked and pulled right"....... I was probably following a little too close, but I was thinking about passing, we'd just pulled away from the road crossing a couple hundred meters before. Had basically just decided not to unless he slowed down, he had sped up to very close to the speed I wanted to go.
I'd say that in my case, I
- Was probably following a little too close (wasn't right on his wheel, but probably less than 2m back),
- Reacted pretty well to the two movements independently - first the unannounced sharp brake and pull to the right (moved to the left) and then the sharp left turn into me (hit brake and turn sharp left). When he made the first move I didn't actually brake, but covered the brake (hands on levers) so was able to brake quickly.
And luckily, both of us had good enough bike handling skill that neither of us went down.
I'd say the other rider did more wrong than my just following a little close, in
- Not signaling anything.
- Swinging way right before going left
- Not looking back (not necessary to my mind if he'd signaled left and moved to the left of the lane before turning, leaving a space to the right for me to pass, though I would probably have slowed when he signalled.)
Sounds like you had a bit more space than my scenario, but that just let the other rider get turned further so you had trouble clearing them. I think that moving behind them if you can is always the best bet if you can - the problem with that is, though, that if they see you and panic they'll often turn back into you. I think he did a lot more wrong than you did, and if you both had liability insurance companies that were going at it yours would probably win - but I think you probably could have avoided or mitigated better based on your description of the incident.