-Slideshow below-
(Photos © J. Maus)
TriMet’s Be Seen Be Safe event last Friday was a good success. There was a healthy turnout and being in Pioneer Square helped it attract even more attention (which is, after all, the whole point). I was happy to see two local TV stations show up with cameras (thanks KGW and KATU).
The mood was festive and the message was made: If you’re going to use our roads, you should make sure you are visible to other road users.
While we can’t let public agencies (like TriMet, PBOT and ODOT) forget that they share a vital responsibility in making our roads safe through driving and engineering practices, I think increasing awareness of light use and “being seen” in general is an important part of the puzzle.
Friday’s event featured a high-visibility fashion show, a well-lit bike contest, and a group ride. See more photos below:
Thanks for reading.
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While there are so many factors you can’t control, as least you can eliminate the “I didn’t see them” problem … which is huge.
Hi-vis is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to raise your safety index considerably.
Thanks for sharing this Jonathan.
Howdy–
Sadly, it’s not that easy to eliminate the problem of the invisible cyclist. Quite often when somene says, “I didn’t see them,” after a collision, what they really mean was “I didn’t see them as something that was big enough or fast enough to keep me from stomping on the accelerator.”
Often cyclists just don’t make it past drivers’ filters; they don’t perceive us as part of the equation, so they don’t perceive us at all. There was an excellent little psychological experiment that made the rounds of all the bike blogs a while back, where you were instructed to watch a video and pay attention for certain things. Something else happened during the video, outside the expectations of the intruction, and most people never see it. The same thing happens with drivers–they don’t believe cyclists should be on the road, so they don’t see us.
Just the other day I was watching a rider coming up the road in a hideous lime jacket. “At least she’s visible,” I thought to myself, just moments before a driver, looking in the direction of the rider, cut her off by inches.
I really don’t want to acquiesce to the notion that I have to dress in garish clothing to leave the house by foot or bicycle. I can’t believe it’s too much to ask that drivers be expected to notice anything as large as a cyclist of any age. Sure, we need lights at night, but cyclists in the light of day should be more well-protected by the law than by neon clothing. In most European countries, “the sun was in my eyes” wouldn’t be considered a defense for vehicular manslaughter.
You can also wear regular clothes in most of those countries. In fact, I’m respectfully asking the rest of you to wear regular clothes. I don’t want to become the unexpected element in the picture just because drivers have been trained see cyclists as little blown pixels, forever bright green.
Happy Trails,
Ron Georg
Corvallis
The driver’s test should have a virtual reality, audio-visual test component to it where little kids run out from parked cars, black dressed fixie hipsters and/or can-collectors swerve in & out of traffic after dark, etc. The test should be annual, and whenever one gets a ticket.
I agree one should not have to be a neo-neon nightmare on the streets. I got rear-ended at a stoplight by a young lady who was texting or talking on her mobile. This was while I was driving a car. Doubtful if lights and neon garb would’ve helped in that situation. OTOH, it might help in some other non-expected situation. So who knows.
As far as I’m concerned, it is the drivers’ responsibility to be awake and alert, and the state really needs to educate them that it is so. Intensely.
A big floppy, really busy, dress and Aretha Franklin hat never fails for me.
Sorry, Ron, (comment #2) I’m not going to stop wearing “hideous” clothing under the supposition that doing so makes other cyclists less visible to motorists. While I appreciate your point about the psychology of sight, you seem more troubled by the fashion faux pas of high visibility than its reliability as a safety measure.
As a cyclist I know that SOME drivers out there are drunk or stupid or obnoxious or distracted, and there’s probably nothing I can do to protect myself from them. After 1 1/2 years of commuting day and night, winter and summer, I’ve had 2 encounters where this was an issue and I got lucky and wasn’t hit. Cars run into cars often enough, even when they’re visible and have their lights on.
I do believe that most of the drivers out there behave with integrity. If I dress so I can be seen and use appropriate lighting after dark, I’m safer.
It would be nice if the world would change and all drivers would have a clue, and some day that’ll be the new normal. Until then defensive cycling combined with good visibility is the way I’m dealing with it. I can’t ask the world or the people in it to be perfect, I need to deal with the situation now.
I’ve always joked to people that I could light myself on fire and drivers STILL would not see me.
My response to that is this.
There are really only two alternatives
A) You were not paying attention, or
B) I wasn’t there.
Given that I am physically here, I think it’s pretty obvious that you cannot choose Option B.
My townie bike is literally covered in reflective tape. I especially like to use disc brakes so I can cover the (sides of) rims, which show motion when I am moving. Bright blinky lights plus a Minewt help too. And I just put one of those LED pattern things in my front wheel, we’ll see how that goes.
If somebody hits me during the day they were not paying attention; if someone hits me at night they were aiming.
I’ve seen construction workers with orange safety vests with a lot of LED’s in them, those are quite visable
@Evan – It would be nice if we could get LEDs that trump the SEP (Someone Else’s Problem) Fields that seem to surround cyclists.
I was hit two weeks ago by a driver of a car who “did not see” the stop sign and “did not see” me (with my minewt duo head lights on handle bars and minewt headlight on my helmet. This combination has been remarked on by strangers in mid-summer daylight, “your lights are really bright”).
She tried to tell the police she couldn’t see me because I was wearing dark clothing (in the middle of the day). Was the stop sign also not wearing bright enough clothing?
While I agree with making myself visible is ideal (this is why I ride with my lights on all the time), I could have been wearing a flashing neon marching band and she still wouldn’t have seen me because she was too busy looking at directions or texting to look up at the road she was driving on.
Why is it that it is not perceived to be a car drivers fault in an accident if he or she is driving a dark car?