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Change of focus, let's keep you alive on your bicycle
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Well for all my faithful readers, I'm back. There was a software glitch on my computer that took an act of Congress to get fixed, and now that it is fixed I'm going back to what got me this gig in the first place, writing about bicycle safety and how not to get in wrecks.
First up, I have developed two protocols to protect you while you ride, the hit-from-behind protocol and the intersection protocol. You use the hit-from-behind protocol whenever you are not approaching or in an intersection. You use intersection protocol whenever you are in or approaching an intersection.
Hit-from-behind is your primary toolkit to keep you alive on the street, the process you will use most of the time while you ride. The talking points for hit-from-behind are 1) mirror(s) 2) escape route and 3) be ready to bail.
First, mirror(s). Have at least one mirror on your helmet glasses or handlebars. I prefer 2 helmet mirrors, right and left to avoid having blind spots, but having just one will work, you have to compensate by turning your head more to see what is behind the other side of your head. Having mirrors you can adjust so that you can see both further behind you and what is right to your side also help. As an example you can adjust your helmet mirror to see directly behind you while your handle bar mirrors let you see cars pulling up beside you after they get too close to see in the helmet mirrors.
Second, escape route. Have someplace you can get away from cars that are going to hit you. If you can bunny hop the curb then that's your escape route, if you can tuck and roll off the bike that's your escape route. Whatever you can do or go to not get hit by a car is where you have to go.
Third, be ready to bail. That means be ready to use your escape route whenever you might need to. Better to look a little foolish than to be roadkill du jour. Also the seat tube of a cheap steel BSO from Wally World is strong enough to penetrate the floorboards of most American cars if it gets wedged in properly, which makes it your retaliation weapon when you are forced to abandon ship in heavy traffic. That's also about the only positive point about having a BSO from a discount house (BSO = Bicycle Shaped Object, what you find in the "bicycle" department at WalMart, Target, K-mart, and a number of other discount stores that don't sell bicycles as their main focus).
Intersection protocol protects you from the most common forms of conflict on the roads. The talking points for this protocol are 1) head on a swivel 2) escape route 3) be ready to bail. As you can see Intersection is just an elaboration of hit-from-behind.
First head on a swivel. When you approach an intersection you will have threats coming from both in front of you and behind you as in hit-from-behind, and also from each street in the intersection. You need to look and see what is coming behind, in front, and from every street in the intersection in both directions. drivers will oftentimes claim to not be able to see your bike or you riding it. This is because they are stupid, so you have to be smart.
Second, escape route. this is much like hit-from-behind except there are a couple of routes you need to be aware of first for 2 of the major modes of conflict, the left cross and the right hook. A left cross is a driver makes a left turn directly in front of you or into you, a right hook is a driver passes you and then makes a right turn into you or in front of you that cuts you off . The escape route for both of these types of conflicts is to make a sharp right turn and brake as hard as you can without falling. This reduces the angle of impact should you not actually avoid the wreck, reducing the amount of energy directed into your body by the wreck.
Third, be ready to bail. be ready to leave the bike or to use your escape route at any moment. remember, the worst that can happen if you bail is you get scuffed a little and maybe the bike takes out the car, and gets crunched. Better the bike than you getting crunched, bikes can be replaced, putting people back together is a painful, slow, and expensive process.
You might have noticed I never mentioned helmets. That's because wearing a helmet has never and will never prevent a wreck. What helmets will do is protect the stuff between your ears during the wreck. The aren't designed to protect very well but they are all you get. There are helmets designed to protect against a wreck with a motor vehicle, up to about 30 MPH. They are expensive, hard to find, and heavy. I have one, and people point and laugh when they see me riding with it, because it looks like a motorcycle helmet. I have survived a severe closed wound head injury from getting hit at 65 MPH with a standard bicycle helmet, that's not an experience I wish to repeat. Let people point and laugh.
Have fun riding your bike.
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