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
