On Thursday, May 18th KTAU — an ABC station in the Portland area — posted an article titled “Bicyclists parade past ‘ghost bikes’ to honor the fallen.” The article included a poll which asked “Who [was] responsible in accidents involving bicycles and automobiles?” and included the following choices: the cyclist, the driver, some of each, and unknown. I’m paraphrasing the choices and the question as I can not find them now, however, I believe them to be close to what was presented. The preliminary results were typical and I would be interested in the finally results.
I got a message from the critical-mass list shortly after 3PM which brought the matter to my attention. It seems that cyclists were getting 67% of the blame vote in the poll — though by the time that I cast my vote the number had dropped down to around 40% — and votes for driver responsibility were being encouraged by other cyclists. As I was casting my vote, I wondered how I would justify it. The point seemed important as I hovered over the submit button; as a cyclist and a daily commuter, I’ve seen plenty of poor decisions made in traffic by all kinds of transportation methods. I’ve made my fair share of poor decisions which resulted in generally angry drivers, and I’ve been involved in situations where other people made decisions that put me at risk. I’ve also been involved in situations where unprovoked drivers get hostile and dangerous including being threatened by a particularly nasty sociopath who offered to, “get out of [his] car and kick [my] ass.” I did have a vested interest as a cyclist, but I felt justification for placing blame on the automobile driver was important.
It only took a second or two to find justification. Mentally, I reflected back to when I was going through drivers education in high school, the instructor of the course once said, “The best thing about driving a VW bus is that you are always the first person to arrive at an accident.” As cyclists, we know that isn’t the case. I eventually landed on the simple fact that automobiles, being large objects moving at dangerously fast speeds, are responsible for taking pedestrians into account on roadways. Cyclists seem to fall into the same category of protection, so I clicked my vote.
A typical driver will object to this argument believing the roadway to be their personal domain which they, from time to time, tolerate cyclists to intrude upon. Typically, they don’t fall into the “I’ll kick you ass” group; they just think of themselves as people with places to go who can not afford to wait behind a cyclist “all day” and feel that cyclists should get on the sidewalk where they, “so obviously belong.” A surprisingly large number of drivers fall into this group.
Today — Sunday, May 21st — I had the TV on and was letting the TIVO run around and record what it thinks I want to watch. It ended up on Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh which was showing an interview program with the Bucco’s hall of fame inductee Bill Mazeroski. While watching, a commercial containing the following was on:
When people come to us who have been injured in a motorcycle accident, there is still the prejudice on the part of the insurance companies and the public who think that if you were driving a motorcycle, you must be the one who’s at fault.
We have to work extra hard to investigate these cases and prove what happens in a motorcycle accident because of the bias and prejudice that still exist today.
Attorney Edgar Snyder
Edgar Snyder & Associates
It’s a commercial, so it is a bit repetitive from a, “get the message across” standpoint; however, I think it’s important to point out that other transportation modes which are further up the “food chain” suffer from the same issues as cyclists. It is interesting to note that drivers generally do not suffer from similar persecution from larger objects on roadways such as delivery trucks, buses, and tractor trailers. Each of the larger vehicles are frequently considered at fault in accidents and held responsible for the safety of other vehicles. However larger automobiles, such as SUVs, do not suffer additional responsibility regardless of heightened injury risk in the case of an accident; nor do the responsibilities extend down from typical automobiles to smaller cars, motorcycles, scooters, or bicycles. It would benefit multiple groups if larger transportation devices were held responsible for their smaller brethren.
Anyone who rides in traffic knows that they are taking their chances — potentially even their lives — in their own hands. While cyclist have legal rights to be on the road and movements such as Critical Mass attempt to exercise those rights; cyclists are threatened, explicitly or implicitly, daily by automobiles. At the end of the day, rights have nothing to do with what happens when a 2000 pound automobile strikes or is stuck by a roughly 200 pound cyclist and that is why drivers will always be responsible in my mind.
