Ride on, Andrei
Andrei Kivilev died today. You probably never heard of him; he was an impressive fourth in the 2001 Tour de France, an attacking climber and a surprise challenger to Lance Armstrong during the three-week stage race. He was riding this year’s Paris-Nice race and apparently got tangled with another cyclist and endo’ed. Fractured skull, coma, death.
Cycling is an inherently dangerous activity. Risks include cyclists’ errors in judgement, oblivious or aggressive auto drivers, poor road conditions, mechanical failure, animals and pedestrians, other cyclists, and poor facilities design. While you might think of cycling as a relaxing, pleasant recreational activity, a wise cyclist’s mind is often more preoccupied with mitigating these risks than with enjoying the scenery.
Every couple months I see an article about a professional cyclist who has been injured on the road, usually on training rides. Bear in mind that these are paid professionals at the height of their mental and physical prowess, who spend four to eight hours a day, every day, on the road. Furthermore, they are usually riding in places where drivers and the whole culture are much more bicycle-aware than here in the US. If it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone.
Also every so often I hear about cyclists killed here on the streets of Boston and our surrounding communities. It happens, and in virtually all cases it happens unnecessarily.
Why does it happen? Lots of reasons. One of the biggest is that most cyclists and most auto drivers are dangerously ignorant of the law and safe cycling practices. This leads to unnecessary road use conflicts and fosters a confrontational attitude where drivers view cyclists as unpredictable scofflaws and cyclists view drivers as willing to use their 3000-pound vehicles as weapons to assert their “right to the road”.
This is exacerbated by the complementary problems that a majority of cyclists disregard traffic laws as they apply to bicycles, and the complete lack of enforcement of those laws. Last summer I made an informal study of cyclist behavior at the intersection outside my window. I counted 1039 cyclists. Although it is illegal to run a red light, 93% of the riders who came to a red light went through it. Although it is illegal to ride on the sidewalk, 22% of all riders rode there. Although it is illegal to ride the wrong way down a one-way street, 16% of all riders did it. Fully 60% of all riders were riding illegally at the time I observed them! And these behaviors have a direct impact on safety. Riding against traffic and running lights doesn’t just endanger the rider who does it, but it also puts them in conflict with other cyclists, as well. Here in Boston, being hit by another cyclist who ran a light or who is riding against traffic is a common problem.
As if that weren’t enough, cycling advocates must wage a constant two-front war to ensure that our public ways are designed to be safe for cyclists. On one side are the cash-conscious bureaucracies who design and build roads. Generally, they consider automobiles to be their only clients, and aren’t the least bit concerned with accomodating cycling traffic.
Also a problem are the many well-intentioned roadway designers who want to accomodate bicycle traffic, but who aren’t the least bit familiar with the lessons learned and best practices for designing safe and effective cycling facilities. From these people we get facilities like the bike lanes on Highland Street in Brookline that encourage cyclists to ride in the door zone of parked cars. However well-intentioned, these people create the most ludicrously dangerous facilities, then make them doubly dangerous by marking them as officially-sanctioned bicycle facilities. The danger of promoting this false sense of security was sadly illustrated last year, when Dana Laird rode down a marked bike lane in Central Square that put her into the most dangerous part of the road: the door zone of parked cars. When the door of a parked Honda CRV opened, she clipped it, swerved into traffic, and was crushed to death under the wheels of an MBTA bus.
That same false sense of security also applies to helmet use. Many novices think that wearing a helmet is the single best way to ensure your safety on a bicycle, and many people would no doubt assert that Andrei Kivilev’s death might have been prevented had he been wearing one. However, helmets are only useful in reducing the likelihood of one rather infrequent type of injury, and they’re not guaranteed to even do that. In fact, the overwhelming majority of riders wear helmets improperly, such that they wouldn’t effectively protect them even in the event of an impact to the head! While theoretically any protection may be better than none, a singleminded attachment to helmets as the primary safety precaution just isn’t consistent with the facts.
There’s also an insidious assuption behind people’s attachment to helmets. The underlying presumption is that accidents are an inevitable part of cycling, and that the best way to respond isn’t prevention of accidents, but to accept accidents as part of life and ensure that accidents are “survivable”. Instead of blythely venturing into traffic basing his sense of security on an inert piece of foam, a wise cyclist will put thought and effort into the myriad ways that he can mitigate the risks inherent in riding on the public ways. Prevention will serve any rider a lot better than a $60 piece of foam that they don’t know how to use properly.
That’s the ultimate message here. I don’t mean to be alarmist, but cycling really is beset with risks. People who fail to manage those risks appropriately live in constant fear and often find themselves in accidents. However, the wise cyclist acknowledges those risks, and while riding is constantly assessing them and managing them. By taking appropriate action to minimize those risks, a cyclist is less likely to be involved in accidents. Not only that, but he will enjoy his cycling more, becuase he will have fewer conflicts with other road users, and can ride without fear. The wise cyclist also does his part to mitigate those risks when he’s not on the bike by promoting informed facilities design, cyclist and driver and police education, and enforcement of the traffic laws.
I’ve ridden over 6000 miles and 425 hours in the past 30 months, without a single accident. Yes there are risks, but they’re manageable. Cycling is one of the most rewarding and pleasant activities you can undertake, and it can also be done safely, if you take the time to develop the necessary insights and road skills.
Still, it’s always jarring to hear of a cyclist’s death. Stuff like that always underscores the dangers of cycling, and that no matter how much you try, you can’t completely eliminate the risks.