Where is the risk (or where does it feel)?

wyadvd

Posted on a forum somewhere else stating my opinion that the greatest risk to my life in 3 years of 15 mile each way commuting has so far come from deliberate aggression from drivers (on three occasions I have feared for my life).

Got slated by one reply that said that he thought that plain careless and inattentive drivers were the biggest risk in his case.

Personally I don't agree with the above and feel that aggressive driving and psychopathy around cyclists on the road are all on a fearfully common spectrum of behaviours which present a grave risk to many of us. In my case I believe they represent around 80% of my risk of death on the road.

How do others feel that the risk balance weighs when considering the spectrum of aggressive driving as against the plain ole careless?

supersonic

Careless drivers. Have seen almost no cases of driver aggression in nearly 20 years of riding on the roads, but daily see careless drivers. I think is a huge difference.

bennett_346

If by biggest risk you mean most likely to happen, then careless drivers, because the frequency of them is much much greater. If by biggest risk you mean which can cause the most harm to an individual in one particular event then possibly aggresive anti cycling drivers but also maybe careless drivers.

In any eventuality 2 tonnes of steel moving towards you is going to hurt a lot.

bennett_346

oxoman wrote:

A colleague of mine at work took the decision on Saturday after 3 attempt from separate individuals in cars to knock him off his bike on an afternoon ride to give up road riding completely. Was this a main road no, it was a country road and through their stupidity driving recklessly they nearly deprived 2 kids of their father. Not aggressive just plain reckless and stupid.

A bit of an overreaction i'd say.

Mr Plum

It's about 50/50 in my experience. Aggressive drivers are easy to avoid (easy to spot), careless drivers get you by surprise...

bobbygloss

Where's the option for:
- Falling off into the ditch and freezing to death before the next person comes along.

I don't think I've ever seen psychopathic driving. Been beeped at a few times, once was told to get on the cycle path, but careless driving is much more common.

bails87

Both!

Not saying it's dangerous, but to say "pick one" is impossible. I get a lot of 'too close' passes and near pull outs from careless drivers. Then you get something from a deliberatly bad driver that is ten times scarier but happens much less often.

edhornby

I think there are 3 categories

dozy, poor skills, the likeliest
impatient, belligerent, less likely but you do get them
full on rage, very rare

however - the majority of drivers are decent....

jejv

supersonic wrote:

Careless drivers. Have seen almost no cases of driver aggression in nearly 20 years of riding on the roads, but daily see careless drivers. I think is a huge difference.

I think this may be one of these questions like:
User A: "Tyre X is wonderful - I haven't had a puncture in 10000 miles."
User B: "Tyre X is Crap - I get two punctures a week."

They could both be right, but they're on different roads.

If I commute by bike, I'd be prepared for being tailgated by Stagecoach busses, being spat on, having bottles or tools thrown at me, having peds jump out in front of me for a laugh. Having chav Granny in William Smith Close try to run me + 10YO off the road in her RangeRover, when she's 70m from her home. Somehow don't think she'd get out and square up.

I find that most drivers of most vehicles are far more considerate than I remember 20 years ago. Even some of the taxi drivers are going soft. But the considerate ones are not going to run me over, or attack me.

The crap drivers, I reckon I can mostly cope with.

You're on a bike. You're in the way of my motor vehicle. You're takin the p1ss. I can kill you in an instant. So get next to the car doors, or on the pavement, and show due deference.

Trouble is, this seems most likely to come out when I'm attempting to negoiate some blindingly obvious hazard, like an HGV parked near a blind bend on a narrow road.

Another one that does my head in is trundling along with the traffic at 25mph - too close to the vehicle in front, obviously, because of the Dilemma Of Cycling - and some pikey or "Acorn" Driving Instructor tries to undertake in the cycle lane, in spite of the parked vehicles ahead.

nation

The times when I've felt most at risk on the road have been when encountering aggression. Having said that, I don't encounter it very often (I can think of three instances off the top of my head - all deliberately close overtakes, two of them on otherwise empty urban dual carriageways).

I do think the times when I actually have been most at risk were carelessness or inattentiveness, although it's interesting that pretty much all of them have been near misses where the difference between said near miss and an actual accident was down to riding defensively. I'm thinking specifically here of a near-dooring where a car door was flung fully open into traffic - I barely missed it, the car behind me hit it. Had I been kerb-hugging rather than occupying the lane I would have hit it.

Generally I think if I'm going to be in an accident, chances are that it'll be something like that where some driver does something dozy and I don't see it in time to do anything about it (or don't have the opportunity to do anything about it in the first place).

nameinuse

In my experience there are certainly more absent-minded and distracted drivers than there are aggressive ones. Thing is, you can ride to mitigate the risks of the absent minded ones (staying out of the door-zone, avoiding risky filters, taking the lane to make yourself visible, maintaining a visible appearance, ensuring I have room to take avoiding action if necessary) and generally control the level of risk.

With aggressive drivers you can't do very much to mitigate the risk, other than keeping them in front of you or filtering way past them once they've been aggressive. To add to that, my most unpleasant encounters have been as a result of misinformed, angry commercial vehicle drivers who objected to the steps I was taking to protect myself from inattentive drivers... To deal with this threat retrospectively I use a helmet cam, partly because it might make a difference to future experiences with the same driver, partly because it makes commercial drivers think that all cyclists might have a camera and they should be careful, and partly because it makes me less likely to remonstrate with a driver about a dodgy manoeuvre as it doesn't feel like they've escaped without it being noted.

Given the fact that the majority of drivers are competent, and the vast majority of the incompetent aren't paying enough attention instead of being deliberately aggressive, for me the balance has to be to ride for visibility and handle the very occasional abuse.

shouldbeinbed

If by aggressive you mean swivel eyed frothy mouthed ranting loons then never in 20+ years. Inattentive dozy pricks, a fair few.
The 2 'big' crashes I've had I can both put down to simple selfishness on the part of A) a van driver pushing into flowing traffic, forcing the car I was following to emergency stop just as I was shoulder checking ready for a right turn. *bang* nothing to do with me or hating bikes but I was the one getting a face full of rear window & going to casualty. A left hook that had the driver behind who stopped to help me up more incensed than I was that hooker had sped up to try to beat me to the bend.

wyadvd

one of my aggressive encounters was a guy in a metro that for some reason spotted me using the rounda out (like ya do!) and was hooting at me while he was waiting to get on it and gesticulting wildly while doing so. he followed me round the roundabot, hooting all the way and shouting out of his door window. when I took the primary on a pinch point by an island next to a junction he revved and hooted more and more and was extremely close to me. after the pinch point he wound down both windos, and shouted something at me about not using the cycle lane. and then shouted 'you are lucky I don't run you off the road' and proceeded to do so. I bumped into the curb but stayed upright. he then turned around that the next roundabout ( he was not intending to follow the path that he did other than to abuse me!). All totally unprovoked.