The Internet is full of advice about bicycle safety. There is advice about equipment maintenance, what to wear, and how to ride. Some of the advice is sound, but some is biased and arbitrary.
New cyclists, whom the information is usually geared towards, have no way to judge the quality of the information. So they may, unwittingly, follow bad or unproven advice.
For example, a popular article, which many sites link to, explains how not to get hit by a car. Much of the advice provided is common sense (at least to those of us with experience riding in traffic). The descriptions of scenarios where a cyclist can get hit by a car are accurate. Yet, certain recommended actions are contrary to the idea of improving existing roads with the goal of allowing bicycles to be used as transportation.
The article’s recommended actions are designed to keep bicycles on some roads and off of others. For instance, the article says:
“Choose wide streets. Ride on streets whose outside lane is so wide that it can easily fit a car and a bike side by side. That way a car may zoom by you and avoid hitting you, even if they didn’t see you!”
This is misleading. A cyclist traveling from point A to point B often has few streets to choose from. Such a suggestion depends upon the availability of multiple streets, of different widths, leading to the same destination. In the real world, this is rarely the case.
The recommendation also gives cyclists a false sense of security. Cars zooming by may well hit you if they don’t see you, regardless of the width of the road. Every day, I see cars driving on the shoulder of the road, even when there’s plenty of room in the lane. Clearly, a cyclist’s visibility is the key here, not the width of the road.
After this misleading advice is delivered, a piece of surprising advice is given:
“Choose slow streets. The slower a car is going, the more time the driver has to see you. I navigate the city by going through neighborhoods. Learn how to do this.”
This may be fine in Austin, Texas, where the author is from. But, in Boston, streets with slow drivers are few and far between. Drivers speed everywhere.
Better advice to new cyclists might be to try to avoid streets with high speed limits, especially during times of high traffic. Cars driving over 40 MPH have less time to react and may not expect to see bicycles on such a road.
If a street with a high speed limit is the only way to reach a destination, then it should be approached with caution, not avoided altogether. Ideally, a cyclist should attempt to ride on the shoulder to increase the distance between him/herself and the cars. But, at all times, cyclists should be conscious of approaching cars and not assume that cars will automatically zoom past them.
As if these two questionable recommendations weren’t enough, an assertion is presented as fact, with no data to support it:
“Use back streets on weekends. The risk of riding on Friday or Saturday night is much greater than riding on other nights because all the drunks are out driving around. If you do ride on a weekend night, make sure to take neighborhood streets rather than arterials.”
Really? Alcohol abusers only drive on Friday and Saturday nights? And, everyone who goes out partying over the weekend drives drunk – even with the decade long push to get people to use a designated driver? Is this what we want to tell novice cyclists?
First of all, drunks drive every day and night of the week. An encounter with a drunk is not a function of the day of the week, but rather of bad luck. It’s a question of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Second, I ride seven days a week – day and night – and always have. I’ve seen erratic drivers at all times of the day. Erratic drivers (drunk or otherwise) are just as likely to drive on neighborhood streets as arterials. Don’t drunks have to drive in “neighborhoods” (residential areas) to get home?
This type of advice discourages new cyclists from riding on certain days of the week – thus restricting their use of a bicycle for transportation. And, it makes them believe that they won’t come across drunks at times other than Friday and Saturday night.
After outlining these recommendations, the author elaborates upon this idea:
“One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they start biking is to take the exact same routes they used when they were driving. It’s usually better to take different streets with fewer and slower cars. Sure, cyclists have a right to the road, but that’s a small consolation when you’re dead. Consider how far you can take this strategy: If you learn your routes well, you’ll find that in many cities you can travel through neighborhoods to get to most places, only crossing the busiest streets rather than traveling on them.”
The problem with advising cyclists to always take circuitous neighborhood routes is that it defeats the purpose of creating bicycle infrastructure. Essentially, cyclists are being told to stay off of main roads because those roads are for cars. And, bicycles are, therefore, relegated to second class status.
Much of the content on the site where this article appears was written in the 1990s or early 2000s. Maybe a decade or two ago, this was pertinent advice. But, today, cyclists are trying to gain bicycling accommodations on main roads to facilitate travel by bicycle.
Outdated or erroneous advice, meant to make cyclists safer, serves as a basis for denying bicycle infrastructure. Claims that bicycles and cars can’t share busy streets, coming from “experts” in the cycling community, give opponents the ammunition they need to refuse to build bike lanes and other bicycle accommodations.
No doubt, learning to ride in traffic requires knowledge and practice. But who will impart this knowledge and how?
After reading a number of bicycling safety articles, what has become apparent is their inconsistency. One article recommends one thing; another recommends the opposite. To combat this problem, and improve bicycle and car compatibility, standardization of safety information is necessary.
What’s needed to promote more cycling is the creation of universal safe riding information with a view to including bicycles on all American roads – and a way to disseminate such information to a broad audience.
