Dave, Thanks for posting on the issues surrounding the safety of riding a bike at night. I am interested to hear what others think about this.
I am also wondering if I read this post too quickly and am having a knee-jerk response, because my initial reaction to your linked post is that the way that it was laid out, it actually seemed to fall right into the trap of the fear-based reporting that you recently articulated and argued against so well in your other recent post. While I know that you ride at night and are not trying to argue that others shouldn't, I am letting you to know how this post came across to me. It's actually odd to me that you used the fatal crash in Racine to bring up the question of the safety of biking at night, since the the reported variables that contributed to the crash in Racine don't appear to be light-dependent. A cyclist was hit by a driver who was dually negligent for both being on the phone and having their eyes closed. There is a theme throughout this post that riding at night *must* be more dangerous because it *feels* more dangerous and *seems* more dangerous. As you note, the major stat that you cite says that >83% of bike crashes happen during the day doesn't help support this assumption (although I agree that maybe it would if they were adjusted for percent of riding that happens during the night/day- but let's not speculate until the numbers are in). Then, the questions that you go on to pose, "is riding at night a risky behavior?" and "But is safe to ride, even with lights?" are a set-up that can't help but lead us by the nose toward unfortunate conclusions. What I would contend is that IF cycling at night IS more dangerous than riding during the day (and let's remember that even though our "common sense" tells us that it is, the jury is still out on this one. One counter-argument I could make is that auto traffic at night tends to be much lighter, so the chance of a bike-car collision may actually go down) then the question we should be asking is not, 'should we ride our bikes at night?' but explicitly, 'how do we make it *less* dangerous to ride our bikes at night?'. For all of us who use our bikes for transportation it is not reasonable to be limited to daytime trips because of safety concerns. Should we make adjustments to our clothing, safety gear, and route as needed? Of course- you discuss all of this in the post. But to give an ounce of credence to the assumption that people shouldn't bike at night, well I find it downright irksome. The police are quoted as saying "While the details of the crash are under investigation, Ruffolo says an important lesson could be learned by this tragic death." But what can we learn? Only that sometimes, no matter what safety precautions we take, there could still be a driver on the road that we can't protect ourselves from. In my opinion, as a cyclist you can learn as much from this type of crash as you can from happening to bike into any other random and fatal circumstance, i.e. not much. In response to this particular fatal crash that happened in Racine- the cyclist could have been wearing a full reflective suit and outfitted with state-of the art lights; it wouldn't have mattered in this case, since the driver is reported to have been answering her phone while *her eyes were closed*. Maybe the driver fell asleep at the wheel and was awakened by her cell phone, or was so engrossed in a conversation that she forgot that she was driving and closed her eyes. I can only speculate as to why her eyes were closed. But what I do contend is that the events leading to this particular crash and fatality really has *nothing to do with the safety of biking at night*. A driver that closes their eyes can't see you no matter what the external lighting conditions are. -India On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 9:57 AM, Dave Schlabowske <[email protected]>wrote: > > http://overthebarsinmilwaukee.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/fatal-crash-in-racine-is-it-safe-to-ride-a-bike-at-night/ > > -- > Dave Schlabowske > Dir. of Communications > Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin > 414-271-9685 > www.bfw.org > > > _______________________________________________ > Bikies mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org > >
_______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
