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Cyclist vs. Car

A few days ago, I was almost hit by a car. That's a true statement. But that alone is not the real reason why I started writing this blog post. So let me give it another go: since I started cycling again a few months (at least 2 times per week a trip of around 45km), I have been almost hit by a car on a biweekly basis (i.e. roughly once every two weeks, English is confusing like that).

When cycling in a busy urban environment that is mostly designed around cars, a cyclist needs to be vigilant. Constantly. But despite constantly looking at every car (stationary or otherwise), sometimes a collision — or rather, a near-collision — is actually unavoidable. Let's go over some of the examples that I've encountered in the past few months.

These are just a few the examples where I either had to brake and/or had to move out of the way to avoid getting hit... But there also a ton of examples where I correctly anticipated a dangerous situation... But as I said in the beginning, a cyclist needs to be constantly vigilant. But sometimes being constantly vigilant is not enough, some situations are just too unpredictable.

In many of these listed examples, I always wondered what if I would be in a car, and the cycle lane would have been a regular car lane... How would that have changed the situation? Would it change the perspective of the car driver? E.g., in the scenario where the car entered a fuel station, would they have crossed a car lane, without checking that there was no car there? Or did they assume that the cycle lane was empty because usually there's no cyclist there. I think most drivers, except the one's that are really dangerous, wouldn't just turn that way... but as it is a cycle lane, it's different. Car drivers are used to drive around other cars and other motorised traffic. In a lot of urban environments (at least in Belgium) there are probably not that many cyclists (in comparison with the number of cars). This is perfectly shown in the last example. The attentive driver noticed the first cyclist, and stopped, but instincts kicked in to start accelerating after that cyclist had passed. If that driver would have more experience with more cyclists on the road, he would have had the experience to give at least a quick glance to the road before hitting the accelerator.

From my perspective, in the above scenarios, the car driver is usually the one to blame. From their perspective, probably I was at fault for not being visible enough, or whatever excuse they would have to not notice the cyclist. But the point of this article is not to direct blame to a specific person. In most cases, I personally think that the one to blame in a lot of these situations is not the car driver, and not the cyclist. It's the road owner (i.e. the local government) that designed the road, the infrastructure. But discussing that, that's something for another time. In this article, I want to focus on who has to worry. Let's ask ourselves the question: "what is the worst thing that can happen to a car if it hits a cyclist?" A dent perhaps? Maybe a broken side mirror? Maybe a light that's broken? At-worst, maybe a windshield that shatters? Now ask yourself the question: "what is the worst thing that can happen to a cyclist?". The answer that immediately comes to my mind: death. Maybe a harsh conclusion, but it's a risk that would not apply to the car driver. But there's also milder things that can happen, maybe a small concussion, a broken wrist/leg/arm... But the absolute worst-case scenario, that is — simply put — death. This is what a cyclist needs to worry about every time they are sharing the road with heavy vehicles (where heavy in the case does not mean trucks). This is especially the case when that road is been designed for cars.

A near-miss between a car driver and a cyclist serves as a nice reminder to both parties that they should be more cautious in the future. But, from the perspective of the cyclist, it will be another driver who needs their (first) reminder... Sure, a car driver can put the blame again on the cyclist. But dangerous situations still happen even if everyone is following the rules of the road. In practice, but I may be biased, the cyclist needs no reminder, an urban cyclist quickly learns to be vigilant, constantly. Nonetheless, a reminder to move safe will occur, again, and again, and again...

And even if the car driver does not blame the cyclist, the next time the cyclist encounters yet another dangerous situation, it will be a different car driver that needs a reminder. On average, in Belgium people take the car a lot more often than a bike. More than 70% of trips in Belgium are car trips (ignoring trips shorter than 5km), and less than 20% of those trips are done by bike. Yet, if we look at the number of deaths that involve either cars (both driver and passengers) or bikes, for every 10 killed car person, there is 5 killed cyclists.

Side note: some of these statistics also include old people falling from their bike. I was not able to find detailed statistics on bike-cyclist (near-)collisions. If you do find a source, do let me know.

All things considered, car-centric cycle infrastructure sucks. It's the car drivers that risk the least, and the cyclists that risk the most... at every repeat occurrence.

In my opinion, cycling in cities should become the default choice. Actually, I'm surprised it is not the default choice for many. There are some roads where a cyclist can easily be faster than a car, on average, in urban environments. E.g., in some situations, I'm able to keep up with trucks and cars for multiple kilometers as I can simply slip past them while they are stopped in a queue at an intersection, just to be overtaken at the next piece of road where I can then, at the next intersection, repeat the same pattern, again, and again. Taking a bike, should become the default option for simple trips and roads should be designed to accommodate this. Sure, some of the people that I overtake on this roads don't do a short trip, but as over 60% of people in Belgium already take their car for trips that are 1km long, a lot of trips in cities (and in more urbanised environments) could be replaced by a bike.

I'm not a traffic engineer, I don't have solutions. I would love to have some. Still, I wanted to take this opportunity to write down some of the incidents that I have encountered since I started biking again and I wanted to write my thoughts down on this.