livedarklions

You're making the same mistake JoeyBike makes--I don't care who is to "blame" for why I got hit, I just don't want to get hit and I don't want to limit my riding to conditions of perfect safety when those really don't exist anywhere on a bike that actually travels through space. If I ride with the assumption that drivers are all-knowing about sun angles, all properly prepared, and have no eye defects that might make glare an especially bad problem for them, I am doing a piss-poor job of evaluating my probabilities of encountering a driver who is going to do something stupid. It's not a matter of giving the driver a "pass" and no one said it was. I don't know who you think you're arguing with and frankly what it is you think we should do about the problem as we perceive it.

I'm sorry, but I just don't believe you've made yourself completely immune from the effects of glare, but even if you have, eyes are not standard issue and I have some idea that people's corrections, defects, etc. may make them differently suited to handle the effects of glare.

Paul Barnard

It might serve us both better if we looked at this as having a discussion rather than an argument. Once I believe a discussion has devolved into an argument, I tap out.

I will restate what I think we should do about the problem of sun glare. As motorists we need to be prepared for it and mitigate it as previously discussed. As cyclists, we should have a conversation about mitigation strategies and not give careless motorists a free pass for driving irresponsibly.

How do you think we should approach the topic of low sun angles form a safety and advocacy standpoint?

livedarklions

Post 12--from the cyclist's perspective, it's really more a matter of situational awareness than preparation.

I still don't get your point on several posts concerning the risks--post 18 especially. I think you stepped on your relatively reasonable points in the last couple posts with some smart alecky stuff there and in the one about calculating sun angles. If those weren't meant to be argumentative, I think you miscalculated, especially when you couple those with rhetoric about giving drivers passes, etc., which didn't really address anything in the OP or anything anyone actually said otherwise.

I asked you to recommend a visor extender as I see a lot of ones online with terrible reviews. I meant that sincerely. I think the tips are a good idea, but I still don't buy that they completely eliminate the problem for everyone. Very few mitigation strategies are 100% effective, that's not a reason not to implement them if they're reasonably effective.

FBinNY 

A reminder of a specific hazard has value in and of itself. And yes, more discussion of specific tactics could be useful, but simply being aware is already a good start.

I give people credit for sorting some things on their own, ie. avoiding certain roads at certain times. Unfortunately, there aren't any simple rules to apply, it's all specific to the situation.

However, you chose to focus on not giving drivers a pass, which prompted a response, and off it went.

I tried not to make it personal, my post was simply an observation of how quickly threads here get derailed.

Part of the issue is that to many here equate being pro bike with being anti car. Also, many don't differentiate between explanations and excuses.

Pointing out that low sun blinds drivers isn't giving them an out. That's for lawyers to ponder if/when it's necessary. However, we as cyclists don't need to debate what drivers should do. We only need to consider the odds that they will, and what, if anything, we can do to protect ourselves in case they don't.

Hope for the best PREPARE for the worst.

Paul Barnard

Let me see if I can do justice to your comments. I am going to kinda go from the bottom up. I hope that I didn't give the impression that I believe the problem of glare can be completely eliminated. It can however be reduced to an acceptable level. A level for me that gives me the confidence to say that I will never hit a law abiding cyclist on account of glare.

My visor works without an extender, as does my wife's, so I cannot recommend one. I can recommend trying extenders until you find one that works for you, because they make a huge difference.

Post 18. That was a sincere question. If we look at your response, we can identify that the sun isn't the problem until we couple it with yet another problem. The other problems that you identified can and should be remedied. If 50 people manage to see a cyclist and respond appropriately to them, we have to ask why the 51st didn't. Why wouldn't we? I am not content with letting "hard to see because of the sun" pass as an excuse when the cyclist wasn't "hard to see" to the rest of the motorists. Granted it could be that a motorist hit the windshield washer hoping to remove some of the grime that the sun amplifies, then realized that the sun amplified the moisture in a manner that was truly blinding. If that's the case, I kinda get it. You mentioned rounding a bend and being smacked in the eyes by the, I get that too. To restate my position, I believe we should be curious about why a cyclist who wasn't hard to see to many motorists was hard to see to another.

The post about at what angles the sun is problematic obviously can't be answered definitively, but if we as cyclists are to be aware of the problem of sun angles and take any kind of mitigating action then we need to have a ball park idea of when the problem exists. Right here on these very pages I have seen members give motorists the sun excuse when the sun was approximately 30 degrees right of center and 30 degrees above the horizon. That's total BS. If the sun in those circumstance would keep you from seeing a group of cyclists, it's time to turn in your driver's license.

I think I am pretty consistent in my participation here. I believe strongly in motorists being held accountable to a standard of excellence, but I do my best to be prepared for them falling way short. I believe strongly in educating cyclists on the best reasonable mitigation strategies for whatever the threat. I believe in the value of mishap analysis, even when we have to fill in some informational blanks. I know that one drives you crazy...lol. Whether driving or riding, I believe in taking a cooperative approach. I try approach all of the conversations here from the perspective of a motorist and cyclist. I believe that invoking the rule of gross tonnage is beyond useless and actually counter productive. We all know that we are especially vulnerable riding with 4000 pound vehicles going much faster than we are. We don't need to be reminded that we can be killed. Our conversation should be focused on how to reduce our risks.

Post 12-Situational awareness. When I read those words, I ask what, if anything, we do with that awareness.

Paul Barnard

I have always been a fan of yours and openly expressed my disappointment that you left us for a while. You are smart, thoughtful, kind and experienced. We are approaching this conversation from a different place though.

It may help to understand that I am a safety professional by trade. If you have ever read an NTSB report on an accident, you'll understand how my mind works...or perhaps better phrased, how I am thinking. There is NOTHING that they don't consider and explore. When you mention the value of simply being aware of something, I am thinking that if we don't do anything with that awareness, what value does it have?

I disagree that as cyclists we shouldn't discuss motorist's responsibility. Most of us drive. There's a reason that all of us here who drive and have encountered cyclists when glare was a problem, haven't hit them. Why is that? How do we effectively advocate when we can't put ourselves in the seat of a motorist? I am pro bike and pro auto and think these topics deserve exploration from both perspectives. It may also be worth mentioning that I participate in bicycling discussions on outdoors, hunting and boating forums pretty regularly. What I see offered as excuses there is shocking. That likely shapes my belief that we need to hold motorists accountable for responsible behavior.

Let's revisit the comment on advocacy above. If cyclists are incurious about motorists and law enforcement is incurious, who is going to advocate for people like this? https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...eep-south.html

livedarklions

Because as a cyclist, I don't really have any use for that information. It just isn't relevant beyond knowing that it is likely that someone will have a problem with it, and gathering the knowledge will take a huge effort on my part. It's obviously a question designed to be unanswerable in any given case without investigation. I don't see how that's relevant to my real-time riding or driving decisions.


There's the rather obvious "I know it when I see it" approach which is a hell of a lot more practical than breaking out the sextant or whatever. And here's where you're losing the audience--you've shifted into the issue of whether or not something is a valid "excuse". That's not what the OP was about, and it just is a complete distraction. If you want to have a discussion on the allocation of blame, start a new thread, your insertion of it here is confusing at best.

See post 12.

zandoval 

Yep!!!

john m flores 

Sound advice. Thanks.

FBinNY 

Thanks for that. However, it's not so much that I got it wrong (I did) but my world view vis a vis cycling. On the road, I take responsibility for everything in my field of view. I don't worry whether drivers can see me, or will avoid me ----- I assume they don't and won't, and prepare to react if/when they do their worst. So, I don't need on my shadow to remind me of risks I'm always conscious of.

It's a very different story related to drivers coming up from the rear. I have no idea who's driving those cars, and other than doing what I can to be visible, I have no way to react to what I don't see coming. Unlike many here, I consider road cycling to be safe within the context of my other daily risks, but have to be fatalistic about passing cars. I know that somewhere out there is a car with my name on it, I just it's in the shop when I'm out.

JoeyBike

There are so many factors. I had a 1966 Ford Econline van for many years. The windshield was nearly flat and huge. I do not recall having any real issues with sun blinding me in that vehicle. I now have a 2003 Toyota Camry. There were two days last year where I had to drive a street in a local park, 20 mph limit, with my head out the drivers window for about 1/8 mile directly into the rising sun on a day with ground fog that kept my windscreen soaking wet. Wipers just smeared the moisture around as it accumulated in milliseconds. Also the posts between front doors and windshield are TERRIBLY positioned.

My point is: So many variables exist. Eyesight, uncorrected astigmatism, eye "floaters", windshield angle and size, dirt on the windshield, worn wiper blades, motorist height and seat positioning, polarized vs. non polarized sunglasses - my Camry could not be safe for me without polarized sunglasses. My van was never an issue. Must be other factors I'm just not thinking of.

Apparently at least one person here on A&S has a perfect car and perfect eyesight and therefore no point of reference.

Paul Barnard

Bingo! When the sun becomes an issue you don't continue charging headlong into it. You take remedial action. Failing that, you stop. I believe that is something that we are all capable of doing.

BTW RainEx washer fluid helps immensely.

jon c. 

Holding motorists accountable is not within my purview. I know that absent being under the influence the most that will happen is the driver will receive a traffic citation. That level of accountability doesn't matter much to me as a cyclist.

JoeyBike

I use Rain-X. I don't know if it's all the petrochemical refineries etc., around here but sometimes the low hanging ground fog seems like oily water. At higher speeds it stops accumulating in a minute or two. At 25-30 mph it sticks around much longer.

You and I might stop and wait for the weather to change but of 7 billion people we're the only two.

FBinNY 

We're not really not miles apart, but there's definitely a difference in perspective.

You're highly focused (no,not exclusively so) on driver responsibility. I'm much less so because I don't see how what we say here can ever change that. I also maintain a distinction between explanation and excuse, so some of your posts grate a bit.

As a side note, knowing your occupation, I find your focus on blame a bit surprising, since NTSB's mission isn't assigning blame, but understanding causality with an eye to prevention of future occurrences. Where there might be blame, they forward their findings to those who deal with that. In short, they seek explanations without making excuses.

So, instead of blaming drivers, I focus on what we can do to stay safe despite them.

jon c. 

We get summer thunderstorms here where the rain is so hard you can't see 50 yards in front of you. I know you do as well. Completely unsafe to drive in those conditions and no one should do it. But everyone does, myself included.

JoeyBike

I've been caught out on Interstate highways in blinding rain on motorcycles. I sold my last MC when I turned 30. Yeah, sometimes it's seems safer to keep going than to stop. Then the hindsight hits later on.

I have taken the nearest exit due to weather in cars but never stopped on the shoulder.

Paul Barnard

In those conditions I don't out-drive my line of sight. That line of sight is based on my ability to see vehicles withOUT taillights on.

DirePenguin

I was nearly killed in Nov. ‘21 when a driver making a left-hand turn across traffic broad-sided me. Broken shoulder, 5 ribs, ankle and 4 vertebrae, in the hospital for 8 days and surgery to repair the ankle, in a rehab hospital for 10 and *still* recovering more than a year later!

His excuse for not seeing me in a bright red jersey and with a front blinking light, “The sun was in my eyes.” The policeman on the scene cited him for making an illegal left turn … the most he could be “charged,“ with.

The danger is VERY real!

FBinNY 

I consider left crosses the #1 hazard for suburban cyclists. I've had roughly 10 close calls this way, though have never been hit.

Paul Barnard

I am very sorry for your misfortune and am glad you are on the mend. I wonder if the cop was curious enough to ask the driver how the sun managed to stay in his eyes for the entire turn.

JoeyBike

Once the driver "saw" the coast was clear to turn - he stopped looking. My theory. Who keeps looking in a direction where they are NOT going? After NOT seeing the cyclist, his eyes went to the direction he would be going next - down the cross street and averting his eyes from the blinding sun.

FBinNY 

Understand that I'm not excusing the driver, but that isn't necessarily a relevant question.

When making a left turn drivers look up the road to see if approaching traffic is far enough that they have the time. Then, once they decide its OK, they shift their eyes to where they're going as they proceed.

Even in ideal conditions, there's an excellent chance that a bike (or even a car) would be in the saccade and missed.

Among my cross near misses, a few did spot me after starting their turn, but it was always JUST as they were starting.

Again, this is strictly by way of explaining, not excusing. Like with so much in life, responsibility attaches when you roll the dice, not where they end up.

flangehead

That hurts, and thank you for posting. Even with caution, a crash can happen. Hearing stories like yours remind me that I'm not bulletproof and I need to do all I can to improve my odds.

This reminds me of a motorcycle safety practice that I'm still trying to implant: Look through the turn before and during. It may come naturally to some, but I'm still struggling to get it automatic.

Thank you for leading me to some vision knowledge I'd never seen (ahem...)

FBinNY 

Here's more, which I believe is required viewing for everyone on two wheels