Bylaws for Skateboarder with head phones and texting as well as no helmet should receive penalty as well

People often forget bicycles are also considered a motor vehicle and are subject to all the laws that apply to vehicles however people rarely pay attention until something like this happens it’s fortunate the rider was not killed in this instance

The RCMP need to start enforcing these laws for cyclists. Too often I see them turning a blind eye to these infractions.

STOP- ….no, no….that’s not it
LOOK-….no, no….that’s not it
LISTEN-….no, no that can’t be it

Yesterday, Ataloss was all over this incident, condemning the truck driver, but praising Merrick for her ridiculous bike lane proposals, and so on and so on and so on!

Looks like Ataloss had this story completely wrong. The bike rider appears to be both the one at fault and a bit of an idiot! I’m not sure how Jillian Merrick and her bike lands can “fix stupid” but maybe she or her #1 fan, Ataloss can provide an answer!

Funny how Ataloss has yet to post on this thread! Must be busy wiping egg off of his face!

I wonder how many of the collisions between bicycles and motorized vehicles are the fault of the bicyclist. That information must be in the hands of someone.

I would think that would be important information to have in order to try to make riding a bicycle safer.

The link is to the “Cross Study of Car-Bike Collisions”, presented to the California Statewide Bicycle Committee, June 19, 1974.
johnforester.com/Articles/Safety/Cross01.htm

The sample included traffic accident reports for all accidents involving a bicycle and motor vehicle that occurred in Southern Santa Barbara County between January 1971 and December 1973. The selected sample size was of 384 incidents over the three year period which works out to about 10 incidents a month.

The following is a table presenting the relative contribution of the major incident categories. There were a total of 10 categories established. The minor categories not listed totalled 8.60% of the sample.

Cyclist caused incident categories

Cyclist Rode on Wrong Side of Street 14.32%
Cyclist Made Improper Left Turn 11.20%
Cyclist Exited Driveway Into Motorist’s Path 8.59%
Cyclist Failed to Stop/Yield at Controlled Intersection 8.33%
total cyclist caused incidents 42.44%

Motorist caused incident categories

Motorist Made Improper Left Turn 12.76%
Motorist Made Improper Right Turn 11.20%
Motorist Failed to Stop/Yield at Controlled Intersection 7.81%
Motorist Opened Car Door into Cyclist’s Path 7.29%
Motorist Exited Driveway Into Cyclist’s Path 5.73%
Motorist Collided With Rear of Cyclist 4.17%
total motorist caused incidents 48.96%

It is worthwhile reading the report and looking at the diagrams which show the incident details. Such information is, in my opinion, extremely important if one were to seriously attack the challenge of making bicycling safer for all.

Adding bicycle lanes to streets makes it look like we are doing something when we really are just touching the tip of the iceberg. Bike lanes will not have a major impact on the above incident categories and frequencies of incidents caused by them.

Case-in-point would be the incident on Upland, where there are bike lanes.

We have not moved far in addressing the real issues identified in the 1974 report. 40 years, and no real change.

There’s been a couple of studies down south and aprox 45% it’s the cyclist fault. As for enforcing the helmet law – how. Only a cop on a bike can catch a bike. If they decide to run you can’t catch them. And from what I’ve observed the ones without helmets are the ones who ride on sidewalks and ignore traffic rules. They’re the ones that will run. Maybe it’s the Darwin principle at work accidents like this.

hartguy. i was thinking the same while reading this. ataloss, as usual was spouting off about the whole scene and, hmm, completely wrong. imagine that.
“it is better to keep your mouth closed and have people think you are a fool, rather than open it and confirm all doubts’.

Why not post 2015 Vancouver’s bicycle study, be a lot more relevant than a 1973 California one I would think.

I just couldn’t imagine that anyone could be that stupid even though I already know how stupid the majority of Canadians really are . Like the rollover guy with no seat belt on , is another perfect example of it . You guys are right . Ms. Merrick is wrong . PG should ban bicycles from the road . No oil burner should have to share the road with bicyclists because they are all stupid ,right?

We started out when the bypass was put in and a service street was built adjacent to that on each side with the original few side streets adjacent to those service streets to the west with narrow arterials punched in at 5th and 15th . They remain that way to this day.

It is west of Ahbou, for instance, that we have the super wide arterials with 4 lanes plus a shoulder on each side intended for the multiple uses that road shoulders have.

We now have some people come along suggesting that those be turned into bike lanes, when in fact it would be safer in many of those location to put both a bike path as well as the walking path further from the curb of the motor way. In most places there is about a 50 foot boulevard on each side, sometimes only on one side, to build the best possible bike path and pedestrian path one can get. Foothills is another such street with a continuous wide boulevard on each side.

Then we have such projects as the recent building of the safe pathway along Tyner going on for several kilometres but not wide enough to handle two way bike and walking traffic. As they say, one cannot fix stupid.

The bike path standards in this city needs a major review. To go any further by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to put signage in and take existing signage down is a total waste of money. We already have too much money wasting activities in PG.

I am for bike paths. I am for sidewalks. I want to make them as safe as possible while we still have a chance to prevent putting good money after bad. I am unsure why people such as Merrick do not get that. I thought she was smarter than that.

The Santa Barbara study was one of the earliest. It was apparently very controversial because of the thinking at the time that the greatest hazard to cyclists came from same-direction motor traffic. The report showed otherwise and was apparently suppressed by the California DOT.

Vancouver report is
1. long,
2. it is protected (cannot cut and paste and use to drill down to explore relationships the report has not done, etc.)
3. it uses 85 instead of 10 classifications. For instance, an opening door classification resulting in a collision is described as opening door in mid block which leads one to wonder why mid block and not beginning or end of the block.
4. On the other hand, when one looks at it they only have 6 with 4 being major (most collisions) classifications – left turn, right turn, straight, mid block, parking lot and other.
vancouver.ca/files/cov/cycling-safety-study-final-report.pdf

The part which addresses the key issues similar to the Cross study of 40 years ago in Santa Barbara begins on page 6 (es-iii)
• Doorings – 15.2% of reported cycling collisions
• Left Crosses (left turning vehicles) – 14.9%
• Two way stops – 13%
• Right hooks (right turning vehicles) – 12.6%
• Conflict zones (mid block entrances to parking lots, etc.) – 10.7%
• Sidewalk cycling – 6%
Non-motor vehicle collisions (bicycle users and pedestrians, debris) – It never does provide a definitive percentage for that.

After that it goes to other issues dealing with external circumstances such as high collision corridors, locations, designated bikeways, peak hours, adverse weather and low light.

On page 28 it states: “another limitation with the data is the lack of ability to assign fault as per the ICBC source data provided for this study.” The Santa Barbara study used police files, not insurance files. Vancouver City has police files. Not sure why they were not used. Fault is a major piece of information required when wishing to design an awareness program. In my view that is a major weakness of a 176 page study.

In either case, since the Vancouver bike safety report of January 22, 2015 does not assign fault to the key collision issues, the only way to attempt to compare the two studies is to aggregate the Cross percentages.

• Doorings – 15.2% : 7.29%
• Left crosses – 14.9% : 23.96%
• Two way stops – 13.0 % : 16.14%
• Right hooks – 12.6% : 11.2%
• Conflict zones – 16.7% : 14.32%
• Total of key issues – 72.4% : 72.91%

I have added sidewalk cycling with the Vancouver “conflict zones” category since it was done that way with the Cross study.

Comparing the two studies which are 40 years apart, it is amazing that the key issues remain the same and the relative importance of them remains virtually the same issues remain the same. Where the two are significantly different are in the doorings which is predominately a dense inner city problem and the complexity of the left cross maneuver which is exaggerated in a high traffic volume inner city district. In my view, those are key indicators signifying a major City such as Vancouver from a small city such as Santa Barbara (population 90,000).

Santa Barbara in 1971-1973 likely had few if any bike lanes other than the walkway along the ocean. Vancouver has one of the higher densities of bike lanes in Canada and the USA.

I have not figures to compare the total incident count per 1 million km of bike travel between the two cities. All I am trying to point out is that the issues remain the same ones. Thus, to reduce those types of issues in any significant way, there has to be an improvement of separating bike lanes physically (not by a painted line) from the motorized travel lane and/or creating designated bike routes along quieter streets parallel to major desire paths.