Cycle safety: ur doin it rong

Visibility is incidental to cycle safety.

   - J Edgar Whoever

Much has been written and spoken about safe cycling. Most of it, in recent years, has centred on helmets and visibility. In my opinion, neither of these has much to do with being safe on the roads. Helmets don't keep you safe; all they can do is mitigate head injuries. Far better not to crash in the first place. It's much easier to not crash in the first place and furthermore it's something that's entirely under your own control. Any collisions you have are your own responsibility. There's no point in being extra-visible if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, you're still gonna get nailed. And I'd like to observe that they don't collide with you; you collide with them, regardless of which direction they're coming from.

So this is what I do. It's unorthodox, perhaps, but it's always worked for me. I've been learning these techniques since I was ten years old, riding to school. 30 years later, I ride to work every day and do open-road touring and I still use these techniques.

The most important thing to understand is the mental attitude which makes you safe. Cycling is the safest thing in the world. It's as safe as sitting in an armchair in your lounge. As long as you don't collide with anything or fall off - and that goes for armchairs too - you're essentially invulnerable, at least when viewed on a moment-by-moment basis, which is how things work when your state of awareness is what it is while cycling. You need to be alert in order to take whatever action may be necessary to Avoid Collisions.

Expecting other people - eg motorists - to be partly responsible for your own safety (and advertising it by wearing special hi vis clothing in broad daylight) might seem like a sensible idea, but it's only addressing secondary considerations. Being visible has little to do with avoiding collisions. You don't want to be colliding with anything - cars, other cyclists, gutters, lamp posts, anything at all. And who has the final say in what you collide with? You do. You're in control. If you take 100% responsibility for your own safety, you're half way to being genuinely safe on the road.

Consider the so-called mountain biker. The notion that "the tree jumped out and knocked me off my bike" is as ludicrous as it is childish, yet people say almost the same thing about urban car/bike crashes as if the car (or driver) is at fault for running into you. You could have avoided the collision, but you didn't. 


It's you and your bike, moving together through a landscape of predominantly inanimate objects, be they trees, parked cars or anything in between. You're in control. When riding, everything is moving relative to your frame of reference. You don't want to hit a parked car any more than you want to hit a moving car. 

If you are involved in a collision, you did something wrong. 


I have never had a bike crash that wasn't entirely my own fault. For the record, I averaged one crash which involved being knocked off my bike every year when at high school. The the following decade, I fell over a few times when trackstanding at lights and I once hit a gutter (at low speed, but I still fell off) which I couldn't see because I didn't have any lights. 


I've never been clipped from behind and until recently had never been doored. (The dooring occurred at 5:30 pm on Courtenay Place; an SUV discharged a front seat passenger while stopped at a pedestrian crossing. In retrospect it was pretty obvious that this was likely to happen, with people picking up and dropping off at that place and time quite frequently, and rearward visibility in the car being poor due to the rain. In the event the door just clipped the edge of my mudguard bolt, which pinged off. I was lucky I didn't catch my knee). How could I have avoided this? Simply by avoiding that stretch of road and going a different route, with more space.

Sometimes, motorists will open car doors in the path of oncoming cyclists without realising that the cyclist is there. This can be fatally dangerous. I've read numerous tales of the rider swerving out into the traffic to avoid the door, then getting run down by a truck or bus that they didn't seem to notice was in the process of overtaking them at the time. I expect that if these unfortunate dead cyclists could run through the scenario again, they'd probably have opted for just crashing into the door, sacrificing a front wheel and quite possibly the frame and fork, but probably walking away without broken bones or head impacts.

The cylists was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not in a general sense - only at that precise second where the space they has been moving into was already taken by something else. They should have taken the hit on the door and not swerved out into the traffic; or they should have been riding in the middle of the lane where the door wouldn't reach them. 

The second half of cycle safety is when you realise that taking 100% responsibility for your own safety isn't enough. I will explain. My policy is that no only am I responsible for my own actions, I am also responsible for everyone else's actions as well. 

Adopting this attitude automatically makes you more communicative to the rest of the traffic. As I am not separate from the traffic - in this sense meaning all the other vehicles and pedestrians within visibility or earshot - I move with it, a distinct unit yet a part of an undifferentiated whole. Traffic. Consider. It's difficult to judge at what rate a cyclist is decelerating when coming to a stop. Pedestrians need to eyeball you for a couple of seconds to gauge where you'll be on the road when they walk out to cross. I demonstrate to the peds that I'm slowing down and intend to stop by not only braking, but by unclipping one foot and sliding forward on my saddle, pedal leg straight, soon about to put a foot down, can't possibly accelerate in that posture - therefore safe. The pedestrians can confidently step out, knowing that the guy on the bike is under control.

By doing this, I control the behaviour of the pedestrians, at that moment, because I am responsible for the pedestrians, at that moment.

Consider taxis. The pull out on you unexpectedly, they don't indicate, they block a lane of traffic outside a hotel and you have to look over your shoulder to see if anything's coming to wipe you out when you overtake it... The first and most important thing to know about taxi drivers is that they work really long hours and make really low incomes. If you enjoy the luxury of being able to ride your bike to work, you are almost certainly on a higher hourly rate than all the taxi drivers you saw this morning. Taxi drivers need our love. 

More than this, taxis are Good Practice. Being professional full-time drivers, they are much safer on the roads than you might think. Sure, they often spend much of their time edging around at very low speeds, attention on potential fares, with their indicators in various states of display. And sure, that's a bit of a hassle and something you need to deal with. So deal with it: taxis are like that, so give them the room they need. Expect the taxi to do its taxi business, maybe hang back a little in the middle of the lane so the driver can see you clearly through the centre rear view mirror. He'll be looking for you and you can indicate, through body language, which side you're hoping to pass him on, or that you're turning and not overtaking, or whatever it is. In this way you control the taxis, because the taxis need you to show them where you're going.

Buses are long, wide and have engines in the back, which makes them difficult to hear. Fortunately, they are easy to see and have predictable habits. Also, the driver has great forward visibility and big mirrors to see behind with. 

You need to get into the habit of looking over your shoulders (both sides equally well). Do it every few seconds; in dense, fast traffic you'll be doing it constantly. On a seemingly empty country road with good visibility, every 30 seconds or so. This gives you snapshots of the road conditions behind you. Some people like mirrors, but I prefer to see the scene directly; also the regular spine twist is good exercise, especially in the long term.

You should be able to tell a riding companion, real or imagined, what is happening behind you at all times. <glance> there's a bus... <glance> can hear it now... <glance> about 10 seconds away... <glance> ah, bus stop coming up - it'll overtake me then pull over to the left and stop <glance> the bus driver knows I'm aware of the bus - stop pedalling so he/she knows I expect the bus to pass me <bus overtakes> looking ahead, I can see the driver in the bus's left mirror, driver is looking at me, all good <glance> hmm, another bus coming up behind me and a third coming the other way - not much room there; I'll hang back and let the buses pass, then overtake the one at the stop.

Another hypothetical example. You're on your bike at an intersection and there's a bus. You're on different streets and you are both stopped at red lights. You and the bus driver can see one another. The bus has right of way, but the driver, based on her experience in the job, wouldn't be surprised if you, the cyclist, takes off early before your green light, in order to beat the traffic behind you.

In this situation, I do one of two things. Generally I will anticipate a green light by watching the lights on the other streets in the intersection. If it's an intersection I know well, I'll generally ride through the red a couple of seconds before the cars get their green. There's a very important reason why I do this. 

Cars and bikes accelerate differently. A bike can take off quicker than a car and will maintain a lead for about 1-2 seconds. After that, the speed of the car has matched the speed of the bike, which at this point would be about 5 Km/h. If the cyclist is able to get into a higher gear and push really hard for a couple of pedal revolutions, he can still lead the car for perhaps another second, but not longer if the car is accelerating to a speed above which the cyclist can easily match.

In city traffic, from a standing start, a bike has perhaps 5 seconds to get as far away as possible from all moving and non-moving objects. You can only collide with something if you're touching it. If it's nor near you, you can't collide with it. If it's on a course which won't intersect with your course, you can't collide with it. If you start off a couple of seconds before the cars do, no only are you placing yourself as far away from all possible collision objects, you are also making yourself maximally visible to all the cars in the intersection, who will be easily able to see which way you're going. 

The main problem with the strategy of anticipating green lights and taking off a second or two before the cars behind you do, is that there is a small but non-zero chance of colliding, in the middle of the intersection, with another cyclist who is using the same strategy. 

Conversely, if I don't want to anticipate the light, I will indicate this to the bus driver and anyone else who's looking at me by Not Doing a Trackstand. Sometimes you won't need to do much at all to indicate that you're giving someone else the right of way at a red light, or even on a side street or driveway. Try these techniques, in order:

• look the driver in the eyes, then look away
• keep one foot on the ground
• get off your saddle
• take your hands off the handlebars
• fold your arms
• look away while keeping your head straight and turning your shoulders

If that sounds like the Horse Whisperer, it should. If you want the driver to take the lead, there should be no ambiguity about it. There's nothing less classy than a cyclist doing a trackstand in front of an Alfa Romeo, both hesitating, neither prepared to take control. You, the cyclist, are in control. Lead, follow or get out of the way.

A few other observations. 

Cycling in groups is risky. Racing is dangerous, even if you're just pretending. If you're in the middle of a group, you must match the speed and direction of the people around you: no other course is possible. Your forward visibility is restricted. So when a car crosses the centreline and ploughs into your bunch, there's really not much you can do about it except pray. I've read too many stories about cyclist losing lives and limbs to this sort of accident. So what can be done? Although riding it groups can be fun, you have to realise that in a emergency you don't have many options. I almost always ride alone, or at least well separated from any companions with the same destination. I maintain good visibility of the road ahead by not tailgating trucks and buses. And I try to stick to wide roads. 


For example, one sad story from a few years back in Wellington involved a lady going under the wheels of a vehicle rounding the corner in John St, which connects Taranaki St to Newtown. I very seldom ever take John St, as it involves climbing a hill just as the road narrows to one lane in each direction. Cars are wanting to accelerate past you up the hill while you are going increasingly slow due to the gradient. There's no room for error. Being visible is all very well, but if you're on a collision course and you have nowhere else to go, you're going to collide with something and that is what you should be avoiding. Better to go through the Basin Reserve and up Adelaide Rd, it's flat and much wider.

Don't put yourself in a position on the road where somebody can hit you. And if somebody is actually trying to run you down, then it's up to you to be aware of it well before it happens, because you know what's happening behind you because a few seconds ago you looked over your shoulder and saw what's happening behind you and you can hear what's happening behind you. Awareness and responsibility. Maintain awareness of the entire situation you are riding in and you will be able to take 100% responsibility for everything within that situation, as it happens.

And finally, to say something about dress - who do you think gets more appreciation on the road? This lady?

Or this one?

Keep looking over your shoulders - both of them. You'll never know what you'll see there unless you look.