Paul Barnard

There were several warnings. The car very obviously slowed. I am assuming brake lights accompanied the slow. It slowed in a place a vehicle wouldn't normally slow and there didn't appear to be a vehicle in front of it to prompt the stop.

The 3 foot rule was put into place because there are hazards associated with high speed disparity and close proximity. The same applies here. That bike was zipping along at a good clip. There was significant speed disparity. The proximity was close.

If I am the rider, I don't do what this one did if I fully appraise the situation. That's the kind of environment where a rider has a lot to take in. It's possible our rider's attention was focused elsewhere in the few seconds he had to react.

Paul Barnard

I just looked for the link and couldn't find it in car/bicycle crashes. On a national level, the car driver is at fault slightly more often than the cyclist according to research.

mdarnton

Maybe it's just like when someone sticks his hand in the lion's cage they never blame the lion, even though he's the wild one. They blame the one stupid enough to get anywhere near him. :-) I rarely see Chicago drivers driving their cars down the wrong side of the street at night with no lights dressed all in black, for instance.

UniChris

That is not even remotely what the video shows.

What the full screen video further in shows is the SUV essentially stopped while the cyclist isn't even in the frame yet. The SUV then moves a couple of feet forward as the cyclists zooms into view from well well behind, with the fact that a vehicle ahead of him is stopped or at most creeping forward amply visible.

If that bike had been a car, they'd have smacked squarely into the SUV and there wouldn't be the slightest argument about fault. There was plenty of reaction time.

The only question then is, if passing a stopped or slowed vehicle on the right, at speed, is appropriate or not.

Forget the question if it's legal, it's sure not smart.

That's not to say the folks in the car are blameless, and leaving the scene is itself a crime.

But recognizing what is happening in clear view well in front of you is the key survival skill, in fairly basic form when driving, in what needs to be a far more insightful form when cycling.

When it's unclear what's going on, the thing to do is to slow down until it becomes clear.

There no such thing in practice, as riding next to a flow of vehicles and being independent of and immune to it. Not being aware is deadly. Hopefully the drivers are aware of us, but we absolutely have to be aware of them. Especially when they're effectively stopped before we get there, and we are the overtaking party.

Getting passed can be a passive and non-consensual activity, but at least when we are the ones passing a car, we get to choose that it happens, on which side it happens, and how fast it happens.

livedarklions

Never said that. I said all accidents are avoidable in hindsight, so that's meaningless. None of us were there, we're seeing this from a distant camera angle, and y'all are pretending like you know what it looked like from the cyclists view and claiming you know what you would do. Sorry, but I think that's a pretty arrogant, stupid and obnoxious thing to do.

livedarklions

So, you think stopping, then moving slowly because the car up ahead was moving slowly is a signal that a passenger side door is about to open?!?! Cool story, bro! I think virtually everyone would see that as a vehicle proceeding at the speed of traffic. And if you guys are claiming it's not normal to pass a car in traffic on the right while riding a bike in a city, I contend you're either lying or you don't get out much.


I just had a situation where my back wheel got rubbed by a front bumper at speed because I took the lane with a signal just as I was supposed to (road split, took middle lane, which was the rightward lane of the two going left). I checked and the nearest vehicle was a block behind me when I signalled and took the lane. Driver was obviously not paying attention to the road ahead and continued in that lane well over the speed limit. She could easily have slowed down or changed lanes with the distance between us, but apparently didn't get that was where I was until she was pretty much right behind me. Squealing brakes behind me and I can feel a slight bump and feel friction on my back wheel. Much to my surprise, I just kept rolling forward and actually didn't deviate from my lane in the slightest. The driver, of course, then changed lanes to pass me and swear at me.

Two reasons I tell this story--first is that I was basically riding as you all propose here, which is take the lane and hope the driver behind you is paying attention or even gives a crap. Second, this was an instance where if I had even touched the brake or slowed down, or try to scramble out of that vehicle's path, I likely would have been killed. I was doing better than 20 mph and my speed likely saved my life. A bunch of people who weren't there telling me how they would have handled the situation and asserting that their way would have had a better outcome rings pretty hollow. The reason hindsight is so useless is because your assertions never can get tested because you will never be in that exact same situation.
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kingston 

Cool story, bro! A car plowing into you from behind is the only accident I can think of that you can't do much of anything to avoid. Not sure what it has to do with the video we are discussing which we've just agreed was avoidable.

livedarklions

Well, if we're in agreement on the avoidability issue, you're agreeing with me that avoidability in hindsight is a meaningless statement, and therefore you just conceded that all of your arguments here have been completely nonconsequential. Thanks for that. Wanna play that twist my words game some more?

Actually, now that I reread what you actually wrote, you say that the video was avoidable. Not sure that's ever been an issue.

Reason I put that story there is because I wouldn't have been in a position for the car plowing into me from behind if I wasn't in the lane. It's always a risk of being in the lane, and one of the other posters stated that the accident in the video wouldn't have happened to him if he had taken the lane. Again, that's not testable, so we have no idea whether taking the lane wouldn't have caused him to get rear-ended. Also, I was directly responding to another poster who said that slowing down is always the safe response. In my incident, if I had slowed, I'm quite sure I wouldn't be around to type this today.

You "Junior NTSB" guys, as usual, are missing my point. I have no idea whether or not the cyclist is in any way to blame, but neither do you. I'm objecting to this whole "He should have" or "I would have" nonsense that goes on here. I have no idea what you guys think qualifies you to assess "blame", but I really think people in A&S need to stop doing that. It's a bunch of self-appointed "experts" blathering on about universal rules nobody really agrees on in specific situations they really know next to nothing about. I think it's stupid, non-constructive, and incessant. The only thing I'm seeing different about this particular incident is you guys keep having to rewrite the SUV's actions because the video evidence doesn't support what any of you were initially asserting.

UniChris

FALSE

That is NOT what the video shows. The car moved a few feet at most. For all practical purposes, it was stopped before the cyclist was even in frame, and stopped at the time of collision - anyone who reads that as "proceeding at the speed of traffic" is not paying attention.

And not paying attention was precisely the issue.

It's dangerous to pass a stopped or slowing car on the wrong side at a much higher speed.

You've been around long enough to know that. I cannot believe you'd do what is shown in this video, zipping between a stopped car and a row of parked ones without reduction in speed.

If you're going to go through a gap like that, it needs to be at a slow speed of expecting the expectable. Cars that stop open doors. Cars that slow turn.

​​​​​​Good demonstration that indeed, road users are responsible for seeing and responding to what is ahead of them. In this thread, the road user who failed to do that was a cyclist, in your story it was a driver. But it was the same error by the later arriving road user.

Take the lane or don't take the lane depending on the circumstances. Going through the gap wasn't entirely out of the question if it were done at a walk with 100% concentration and habitual awareness of the likelihood of there being activity in that gap.

We don't like it when cars get too close to us, we have to keep that in mind when we *freely choose* to get too close to cars.

kingston 

First of all, before this gets out of hand. I'm just killing time bantering with you on the internet while I'm on boring WFH conference calls, so don't take anything I say too seriously, I'm sure we'd get along fine IRL.

The reason I take a different position from you on this is not the accident itself, but the question of what to do about it. My understanding is that you want the rideshare drivers/passengers to change their behavior, which I believe is an impossible waste of time. There's just no way the CPD is going to crack down on people getting out of rideshares on the side of the street, or more dangerously, trucks and busses turning right. Cars and trucks killed a lot of cyclists in Chicago, people complained about it, now we have bikes painted on the street everywhere.

Another option is is to figure out what cyclists can to change their behavior to avoid accidents. Yes some accidents are unavoidable, maybe this one was maybe it wasn't. I agree with you that's irrelevant. If it was avoidable, what could the cyclist have done to avoid the accident? Exploring that allows everyone to learn from this unfortunate cyclist's experience without having to spend time in the hospital ourselves. I believe we agree that riding in traffic is all about risk mitigation, taking the lane and riding in the door zone are both risky. Deciding which one to do at which time is how experienced cyclists avoid getting into accidents. For example, I crashed a lot more in my 20's than I do now in my 50's for two reasons. First, I knowingly took a lot more risks when I was younger, and second, I was less able to perceive risky situations. I don't think that accident would have happened to me and I doubt it would have happened to you either, given your significant experience riding in traffic. So I prefer to focus my attention on helping people with less experience than us understand how to avoid getting doored as opposed to complaining about what rideshare drivers/riders should do differently. They're not reading these posts.

livedarklions

I'm not going to debate whether people ever should pass on the right of a moving vehicle, but I think I see why you're getting the description of what happened wrong. There's actually two versions of the video on the linked TV report. The first is clearly slowed down erratically, and it does appear that the SUV stops then starts up again, I mistakenly made the error of referring to that version in my since-edited comments about the jerky video above.

The second version appears to be closer to real time, and makes very clear that there is a) no initial stop on the part of the SUV and b) that the vehicle was clearly moving forward at the time the cyclist was beginning his pass. In urban traffic, there is no such thing as ""essentially stopped", it's more common that if a vehicle is moving slowly, it's intending to keep going but something is ahead of it. I have no idea whether the cyclist could have detected slowing from his vantage point and neither do you. There is no way to determine that from the video as we can't tell how long that vehicle was travelling forward at that speed, or how that reduction in speed would have looked from the bicyclist's vantage point.

UniChris

False.

​​​​​​That car was slowing to stop before the cyclist was even visible.

If someone were driving the way that cyclist rode, they'd have squarely hit the stopped car and been blamed. The only reason we're debating it at all is because it was a cyclist - but when there's a vehicle stopped in the exact lane you are using, there's a vehicle stopped in the exact lane you are using, and you can't just be ignorant of that fact.

work4bike

Two examples of what was very avoidable in this scenario.
1. Easily avoidable: Maintaining the cyclist's speed while at the same time rapidly closing ground between the cyclist and the car -- that's what brakes are for. I know I would have slowed down once I noticed that I was quickly approaching the rear of that vehicle.

2. Easily avoidable: NOT get between the parked car and the stopped car. As I said before, if I were to get in between those cars, I'd be at a crawling speed.

We cyclists want at least 3-ft separation between ourselves and vehicles, yet this guy put himself well within that distance.


.

UniChris

Exactly.

The thing we can individually do is be aware of why these situations that are under control of our own decisions are dangerous, and chose to avoid them or if we do pass, to do so with full awareness and ability to respond to the frequency that cars which slow turn or stop, and those that stop open doors.

livedarklions

Maybe this is more a question of tone than substance, but I think the whole concept of making subjective moral judgments about the cyclist's blame totally distracts from any rational discussion of the issues we're supposed to care about here. The fact is that sharrows are a fairly new feature of urban riding and people, both cyclists and drivers, are still learning what they are and what they're supposed to mean. We're all at various stages of learning how to deal with them as riders.

I'm perfectly ok with asking and attempting to answer the question of what we as riders and/or advocates can learn from that video. I would even say that we might use that to illustrate how you think someone SHOULD, with the benefit of this example, approach a vehicle in this situation where the driver's intentions are unclear. That's a completely different question than blame because you really can't get inside the situation to know what the cyclist did or didn't know or could reasonably be expected to anticipate. And frankly, I tend to think that anyone who tells me that they as a bicyclist, never pass a slow-moving motor vehicle on the right is either lying or they don't really ride in a city much. I agree I need some minimal clearance to the right of the vehicle, but I don't agree we can actually judge how much the cyclist had from the vantage point of the video, nor whether that estimate should include any serious probability of a vehicle in a traffic lane suddenly swinging open a passenger-side door.

Frankly, all due respect to UniChris , I don't know what is normal safety procedure on a unicycle or if bicycles are oranges to unicycles as apples. I do know my speed, posture and control mechanisms on a bike are somewhat different from those of unicycles, but I don't know anything about the handling characteristics of unicycles to know what constitutes a safe distance or safe speed to pass on the right and how it compares to those of a bike.

So, to be clear, I'm really objecting to people making the "throw some blame" and "this would never happen to me" statements. These are real injured people we're talking about (in a lot of theses threads, they're actually dead), and I don't see any reason anyone should care about how we view their responsibility for their own injury or demise. It's also not fair because they're not on here to defend themselves, and even if they were, they probably can't say anything for legal reasons. I see no reason for people on BF to be taking the role of their ersatz prosecutor and/or counsel for the person they're likely to be suing.

I like your posts, and I think we've had some civil disagreements before, so I agree we shouldn't let this get out of hand. I just think the blame stuff always changes the tenor of these threads to "team cyclist" vs. "team motorist". BTW, if you want to know the magic words around here to get accused of being "team motorist", it's "maybe it wasn't a cell phone". I got accused of being a biased cyclist in this thread, I get accused of being biased pro-motorist in those threads. Not sure if that makes me balanced.

UniChris

The norm in an urban environment is that road users slow each other down. It's utterly characteristic and a fundamental price of using roads.

One of the reasons indeed that people may use a bike to try to get around a city is the sense of immunity to traffic. But that's a false sense. If traffic is stopped, the safest thing to do is to also be stopped.

Please step away from the computer and don't read further until that's sunk in: when the road is clogged with traffic, vehicles aren't able to proceed. There's literally no right to passage.

------

Ok, with that understood, are there ways a bicycle could safely proceed when other traffic is stopped or stopping?

Maybe, but their safety starts by understanding that it's abnormal to be moving when other traffic is stopped, and abnormal to be passing in the right.

If you're going to do something abnormal, you have to do it in a way informed by it's abnormality.

Eg in both my past two wheel life and my more current cycling, I do "filter forward" past stopped traffic, but I do it at a slow speed because of the high probability of things happening there.

What I don't do is keep moving at full speed under some kind of deadly misconception that congestion, slowing, or stopping inches away is irrelevant to me. Roads are not limited access highways, instead their users are intimately linked.

It would be dangerous to pass a stopped vehicle on the right at speed even if it were centered in the lane, but it wasn't. As others already observed, we can see from the huge gap between the left wheels and the line that the vehicle is "pulled over" and leaving only enough space for it's own curbside operations (offset by the parked cars) rather than creating a passage for anyone.

Or simply put the shoe on the other foot - that would be an unacceptable close pass if it had been the driver who created that proximity to a cyclist.

That we don't want to be squeezed should extend to not squeezing ourselves, at least unless we're moving at a walk and prepared for anything.

That's exactly what a stopped car means, and you know it in your instincts even if you're currently walling it off from your thoughts.

work4bike

This is just something I'm posting, because it gives slightly better view of the accident vs. the news article in the OP. You can actually stop the video (without the screen going dark) and you can get about 4-5 views per second, by simply pressing the mouse on the red dot, with an ever slight movement of the mouse on the video timeline.

The cyclist seems to get hit in the 19-second point. Also, he doesn't seem to run into the door, rather he seems to be pushed off line by the door, meaning that the door probably wasn't fully open when he made contact with the door.

I'm not trying to prove any point with this Youtube video, just a little better perspective than the video in the OP.

livedarklions

You can bold false and tell me the video shows that all you want, but that evidence just isn't on the video..
The car is still going forward as the cyclist reaches the rear of the vehicle.

Bikes typically pass standing traffic on the right. I agree that if it had been attempted in a car, it would have been both unreasonable and illegal. It wasn't.

Enough already. See my response above.

UniChris

I am 100% certain you are not that ignorant of what is happening in front of you when you are riding , so I really don't see what you gain by playing at such ignorance here.


If you do so at speed, you take your life into your hands.

We rightly call out operation unsafe for conditions when drivers do it, both survival and basic honesty demand we apply the same concern to our own actions as well.

livedarklions

Whatevs, I'm not reading anymore at this point. This is just repetitious. He would have been just fine if the person hadn't opened the door simultaneously with a stop. His speed wasn't that great, and he would have cleared it. I get that you think there's a level of caution you think accounts for all unpredictability, but at this point, we're just haggling about where that line is. Frankly, I don't see that you're espousing any principles worth reading here, you do x but at the right speed is just not something I'm buying. Every position and every speed has its own risks, you may think your method has no unforeseen hazards, and that's fine. I don't care if you want to argue for your methods, be my guest. Just stop trying to argue that this particular cyclist was or wasn't to blame. You can pretend you know what his perspective was and what he should or shouldn't have seen, but you weren't him and you weren't there, and the video most definitely does not tell us what he could or couldn't see regarding the driver's intentions.

Genug, I'm out. .

UniChris

...he'd responded to the fact that there was a vehicle pulled over in his lane and stopping in front of him.

Pretending we're exempt from basic principles of traffic is deadly.

kingston 

I just watched the video again. The guy's on a Divvy ebike. People who don't even own a bike are zipping around full-throttle at 20 mph. It won't be the last face-plant we see on one of those.

flangehead

This is where BF A&S can be valuable.This is not victim-blaming.. it is victim-avoidance.

I’ve not had success finding CarPassengerForums.com. (An opportunity for Internet Brands, perhaps?)

billridesbikes

Very hard to tell how fast he is going, maybe almost 2 parking spots per second? Chicago.gov says the standard length of city parking spots are 18 feet. So (36*3600)/5280=24mph?

Car in your lane moves to the right hand side and comes to a stop in a big city you just know what’s coming next: they’re ‘parking’ there, and someone is about to pop out. It happens all the time and all day long. Is it illegal, yup. But I’ll stop and wait until I can use the other lane to pass far on the left, rather than say ‘but mah rights’ from a hospital bed. You would see me pass in that narrow gap on the right about as often as you would find a cold glass of water in Hades.

livedarklions

This thread absolutely degenerated into victim-blaming. The word "blame" was explicitly specified.

If this subforum is supposed to be about advocacy, I don't think it's unreasonable to discuss what can be done to pressure the cities and the ride share companies to stop the drop offs in traffic lanes.

I had a really weird experience in Nashua on a 4 lane road with a right lane sharrow. It was a hot day and I was riding in the middle of the sharrow lane, and a city bus driver in the left lane decided while moving that this would be a good time to open his passenger door, apparently for ventilation. The bus was empty and we were nowhere near a bus stop. I found out two things that day--the door can be opened while moving, and on that particular model of bus, when opened, the doors swing surprisingly far into the next lane. He barely missed me (inches, not feet) and slammed it shut as soon as he saw and heard me, I yelled.

Point I'm making with this story is that for all of the talk on bf about it being our job to stay out of the door zone, if there's no enforced rule about opening the passenger side door, there's literally no part of the road that isn't a door zone. It's pretty obvious that the most effective way to stop this would be to make Uber and Lyft liable. If they have skin in the game, they're going to get their drivers under control, pronto.

Or the guys on this thread can keep making the defense case for them.