fishboat

Glad you're ok.

While understandable why a cyclist might want front and rear flashers, less enlightened cave-dweller types(the country is cocked full of them) might get pissed off by really bright front flashers. I use a rear flasher when it's needed, but not on the front..I don't see the purpose(..but that's just me..I find the really bright car headlights these days annoying too).

Inusuit

Never happened to me when riding. When I was a runner, before the knees went, I had a pickup swerve towards me where there was no shoulder and fence right up to the street.

Given the wild west attitudes where I ride, I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of drivers who give me a wide pass. Some don't. It's adding insult to injury when the vehicle that doesn't has bikes on a rack.

Bald Paul

Didn't we just have this discussion YESTERDAY?

mschwett 

not to mention the tens of millions who safely use their phones while riding trains, buses, planes, ferries… or just as passengers in cars. definitely not the solution.

Daniel4

This just goes to show you how yesterday's discussions are relevant to today's and incidences.

rsbob 

yikes!

rsbob 

Yeah, you caught me. I hadn’t drank from my water bottle in 20 minutes. Oh the shame.

icemilkcoffee 

On a bright sunny day pretty much no bike light is bright enough. The main problem is the tiny size. The human eye is used to ignoring tiny bright points of light like the sun glinting off of a chrome bumper or water.
On a bright day there is no substitute for bright colored helmet, clothes and socks.

rsbob 

I am hyper careful at crossing intersections when my light turns green. Have seen way too many people running lights. Besides giving a long look both ways, I usually wait until a car first pulls away so I don’t get hooked.

rsbob 

Very true, but I was riding in a heavily forested area with very filtered light so my light should have been visible. Maybe too visible since it provided an ideal target.

delbiker1 

It seems to just keep getting worse on the roads. Not just for cyclists. I have had many incidents in the last 2 years. One last week with a driver cutting short on his left turn, west to south, and looked like he was texting. He wound up in the turn lane I was in, going north to turn west, heading straight for me. Just as I started to swerve to my right, his head came up and he saw me, then swerved sharply to his right, missing me by maybe 2 feet. Not sure I could have gotten out of danger if he had not seen me in that last moment, or if I had not been paying attention. It shook me up a bit.

Pinelander

Locally, a truck hit a horse and rider (12 yo girl) hard enough to kill the horse and send the girl to the hospital. Unfortunately, there are not-so-rare idiots out there that will cause havoc no matter how many lights we have or how big our ass is. Don't get me wrong, I use lights, bright colors, radar and even upgraded to bright socks. I just have to keep vigilant. RSBOB, you were vigilant and lived to tell the story. That's as good as it gets some days.

Koyote

I think that poor driving is much more common than active malevolence, but you are free to hold a darker view of humanity.Since the OP provides no evidence that it was intentional (unless I missed it), I’m not sure that anyone can know.

zandoval 

That guy didn't see ship! Not the road, not the curve, not the flashing light. Just his cell phone message for his next toke...

I am so glad you are OK...

livedarklions

I think the difference between deliberately crossing the center line and drifting over it is pretty obvious when you see it, and since he was there to see it, I'm going with his estimate of the probabilities. I agree that malevolent drivers are not typical, but it's not rare, close passing to roll coal being a very common example of this. This really has little or nothing to do with my view of humanity generally, that's a huge stretch. A small percentage of people are malevolent jerks, and they drive accordingly.

Clyde1820

In the U.S., at least, many states hold that DUI, DWI or DWD manslaughter equates to a criminal murder charge. And so it should, if deliberately choosing to so wantonly disregard one's responsibilities on the road. Shouldn't actually require deliberate malevolence. Thankfully, a few states do indeed stiffly hold such miscreants accountable for their disregard.

Wouldn't call that a dark view of humanity. I'd call it legitimate accountability for wanton disregard of life and limb, through one's awful choices, irrespective of what those choices might be.

It's only those who behave without any such regard that are the targets, here. Certainly not everyone, let alone "humanity" as a whole.

Accountability needs to be harsh, particularly when lives are destroyed.

wolfchild

A lot of drivers don't like bicycles with bright flashing front lights and find them very annoying and distracting. Maybe he was one of those people who hates flashing lights on bikes. There is really no way of knowing if this was intentional or not and what caused him to drift into an opposite lane.

Gear_Admiral 

FYI on cameras that OP mentioned briefly.

Higher rez = more graininess and/or need better memory and better lens and better software encoding

Higher frame rate = less blur, but poor performance in lower light

I wish cameras were a silver bullet. Enforcement aside, getting clear video of the incident (front and/or behind) AND plate numbers AND clear leading up footage AND undistorted view of main activity AND other objects in view to give sense of scale and speed is hard.

I am in the camp of just have a dummy camera as a deterrent. It is too much work to have a device charged and calibrated and all that when it does not work necessarily. Besides, the camera will not make riding next to 45 mph traffic pleasant

Daniel4

That's all you needed to write.

shelbyfv

Please send your RWGPS or Strava route to Larry, along with a bus ticket.

Daniel4

I have used my barely adequate camera to post pictures here on Bike Forums. I have learned basic editting skills to save sections of videos which I have used to study a mistake I had made almost running into a pedestrian I couldn't see in the sun. And then for videos that just aren't adequate to provide to the police, I can one day compile and upload to youtube.

Maelochs

of the thousands of drivers you have interviewed, which number--precisely--told you this?

rsbob 

I can’t provide any evidence you exist other than virtually but I have had enough bad s intentionally occur to me over the last 40+ years (including being shot at, air horn blared into my ear, being strafed by the same car 4 times as he kept turning around and coming back at me, a truck pulling off in front of me and wait until I approached and then spin their wheels to throw gravel at me, beer cars thrown, cherry bombs, intentional close passes when they had two full lanes, etc) the odds are extremely good it was intentional. If it was a late model vehicle, yeah I would tend to agree with you about the mobile phone, but the majority of these events occurred by beater vehicles. This was a beater too. Can I prove it? No. Can you prove it wasn’t? No. Looks like a stand off. I don’t think you really exist, but I do think you exist in a highly contrary universe.

Polaris OBark

I know where you mean. That part is hard enough without anyone doing anything stupid.

holytrousers

You would have to prove all these incidents were related.
Bad Karma ?