When Professionals Disappoint
Last week the late cold front caught me by surprise. My neon yellow jacket was in the hamper, heading for the washer; I figured I wouldn’t need it again until November. So I grabbed my dark green shell to keep the chill off. Not exactly the most conspicuous thing one can wear, but I don’t ride any high-speed roads on my way to work.
As I rode through the intersection of Mills and Anderson, an off-duty Orange County sheriff pulled up along side of me to say that I needed lights because I could barely be seen. Now it’s true that Mills has quite a bit of canopy, so it’s a little dark in the morning; but this was ten minutes past sun-up.
Let’s stop and think for a moment about what he was saying: That an adult bicyclist wearing a dark green jacket is not conspicuous enough to be seen after sunrise on a neighborhood collector street. Law enforcement officers usually have some understanding of stopping distance; it’s important to know when righting up citations and crash reports.
I was riding at about 15 mph. The posted speed for Mills Ave. is 30 mph; so overtaking motorists are approaching me at 15 mph (20 if they’re busting the speed limit by 5 mph). Two-and-a-half seconds of perception and reaction time is the standard used by engineers. At 15 mph that works out to about 53 feet. Braking distance at that speed is about 30 feet. So a motorist doing 30 mph should easily be able to see, react to and slow for a bicyclist going 15 mph after seeing the cyclist only 85 feet away. For the motorist exceeding the posted speed at 35 mph, the total distance is about 110 feet.
Does the officer really think a competent motorist can’t see any cyclist in daylight from only 85 to 110 feet?
When it comes to bicycling it seems, professional training and reason often go out the window.
Posted in SafetyTags: being visible, conspicuity, law enforcement, lights, overtaking, police
21. April 2009 at 8:56 pm :
Apparently, he could see you well enough to notice that he could barely see you.
Does Florida require rear lights or just reflectors? If it’s dark enough to barely see the color green, then he should have had his lights on, which would have illuminated your reflectors.
22. April 2009 at 11:20 am :
Excellent observation MikeOnBike.
Florida requires both a red taillight and a red rear reflector.
But dawn and dusk are tough seeing conditions. The minimum bicycle lighting requirements often won’t be effective during those periods (though the lights I have would be). A neon jacket or shirt is more effective.
22. April 2009 at 2:24 pm :
I suspect cops are more acutely aware of inattentive drivers than the rest of us, since they probably dominate the crash reports. But I find it increasingly annoying that the rest of us are expected to compensate for distracted, inattentive and incompetent motorists.
While I think it’s foolish to ride in the pitch dark with black clothes and no lights, I have passed many a ninja on 30mph roads and seen them well enough to avoid them without a last-minute panic, because I was paying attention. I’m quit sure anyone paying attention to the roadway could have seen you in a dark green jacket after sunrise.
We need to resurrect “Due Care” as the foundation of traffic justice and put the legal onus and social expectation back on motorists to pay attention and drive safely. Bicycle drivers should be able to drive competently, according to the rules of the road, and expect to be safe without also having to dress up like a psychedelic Easter egg or the Electric Horseman.
22. April 2009 at 4:53 pm :
Inattentiveness is certainly an issue on faster and rural roads, but on residential collectors and most arterials in built-up areas one simply cannot take one’s attention away from the roadway for long before you end up on the curb, hitting a tree, into the on-coming lane…
A cyclist traveling on the roadway is nothing like, for example, a pedestrian entering a roadway. He or she has been there for quite a while, so the following motorist has more than enough time to see and react.
If attentiveness were as big a problem for cyclists that some make out, we’d be getting hit from behind far, far more frequently. It would be the MOST common crash type, not the LEAST common.
22. April 2009 at 10:12 pm :
Oh, I agree that it’s not nearly as much of a threat to us in the built-up areas as is perceived. The problem is the perception, though. That cop’s attitude is an indicator of the cultural attitude. That’s the jury of the incompetent motorist’s peers that lets him skate when he kills a pedestrian or a cyclist. It’s a problem that our culture apologizes for inattentive driving rather than insisting on holding heavy-vehicle drivers to a higher standard of due care. It’s a fundamental difference between our culture and European countries with high bicycle mode share.
In saying that, I’m not suggesting—as some bike advocates do—that cyclists shouldn’t be held accountable for being competent, too. It just seems like in everything from road design to law enforcement, we’re accommodating the lowest common denominator of bad decision-makers.
23. April 2009 at 7:47 pm :
Mighk, you’re discouraged that a police officer points out that you’re difficult to be seen in the dawn (dusk and dawn are the most dangerous times of the day visually) when the attitude of riding without a good light and visible clothing is not much different from a truck & trailer passing a cyclist too closely. The attitude is how close can I cut it, rather than let me be as safe as humanly possible.
The nature of a bike with its low visibility and easy destructibility is that the cyclist needs to be more proactive when sharing the road with a car.
26. April 2009 at 9:40 am :
I’ve been living on Mills Ave. since 1988 and cycling it on an almost daily basis. I think I’ve got a good handle on what it takes to been safe on my own street by now.
I also have over 150,000 miles of overall cycling experience under my belt. Somehow, about a million motorists have managed to pass me without hitting me. Some might say that’s magic, but I tend to think it’s just normal human behavior.
26. April 2009 at 3:30 pm :
Don’t forget that there is a God…of close calls. I’ve had enough close calls in my limited cycling experiences to know to put as little of my life in the other person’s hand (car and truck driver and others) as possible.
26. April 2009 at 5:52 pm :
Since taking the more assertive strategy of lane control, I have far fewer close calls. They were routine back when I was a gutter bunny.
26. April 2009 at 5:56 pm :
I was going to say the same. I used to have a lot of close calls when I rode on the edge, trying to stay out of the way. Not so much anymore.
I can’t recall any close calls in the last few years. I had one guy turn left in front of me on Virginia last summer, but I had time to adjust. It was more annoying and disrespectful than alarming.
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