A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads
portsmouthctc.org.uk
portsmouthctc.org.uk
When you have your phone in selfie mode, the latency is low enough that it can feel like a mirror. When you move, you see yourself in the camera app move. But if you do the above experiment, you can definitely catch your eyes moving. Then you can shut the screen off and do the above experiment using the screen as a mirror and you cannot. It's a neat demonstration of the latency.
As a driver, I found that using BGE setting of the side mirrors (it's wider out, slightly overlapping with rearview mirror), coupled with keeping an eye on the road gives me a much better situational awareness, and prevents the need to turn my head in many cases - "Nope, there's a car in my blind spot, not changing lanes yet". It's a minor convenience but really helps with fatigue of the neck muscles, and keep my eyes forward, so I can react if anything happens in front of me. I've been driving BGE for nearly 10 years now, and I feel a lot safer that way. It takes some getting used to not seeing the side of the car, so if you consider doing it, I'd recommend getting used to it on a chill road, before getting on the highway.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/blindzonegla...
"With this new setting, it is no longer necessary to turn and look into the blindzones."
... which is in contrast to what the original article quite emphatically says:
"... move your head or you're dead ..."
I like the novel mirror arrangement and will try it but I hope people will follow the advice of the fighter pilot, and not NHTSA, and continue to move their heads.
I found that my blind spots were reduced but not eliminated. It’s scary to think that somebody on the road might stop looking over after adjusting their mirrors.
One solution that I have more faith in is the little convex “blind-spot mirrors.” Those actually seem to cover everything in the blind spot and then some more (at least on the driver side).
I had the euro glass on my Golf, and the ability to see more than just a massive grille filling up your entire mirror glass on the driver's side is a godsend. I can actually see a car 2 lanes over moving into the same lane I'm trying to move into, using just my mirrors.
I've used this mirror adjustment method forever, and it really does eliminate blind spots, especially given correct mirrors. It depends on the car, though -- our Tesla 3 has pretty bad blind spots in the peripheral area because the glass doesn't adjust far enough out, and they haven't started selling the car in Europe yet, so you can't get the correct glass for it.
So if you prefer to drive with BGE mirrors, wouldn't you be better off leaving the outer mirrors so you can see along your side, and a bit to the rear, and install auxiliary outward-angled mirrors on the dashboard inside the car?
I know in one of our cars that the B-column is absolutely huge, and even swiveling my head is not enough to check the left blind spot, because that B-column is fat enough to hide a car. I have to check an auxiliary convex mirror before changing lanes left. That's mounted on the wing mirror, but I would have preferred it to be on the dash, because it eats up a lot of space on the regular mirror, and is still rather small in its own right.
I've taken so many risks like this when I was using a bike: dark grey coat: check, black pants: check, dark grey backpack: check, black shoes: check. And usually my light (only in the back) is barely visible because of using old batteries and forgetting to change them.
It feels wasteful to have to discard perfectly useful items, because they look worn out. We all know that black, dark items tend show the least amount of wear, and in the interest of efficient frugality, some of us gravitate toward that instinct.
You look at a white t-shirt, and you know it's going to show pit stains by the end of the year. A black t-shirt might show some white accumulation inside the armpits, but not outside, and you really are only going to have to trash it, once some holes show up. Same with socks.
So too with hi-viz stuff. You just don't want to buy something, and throw it out, the moment it gives a sense of unintended imperfection. It's more an equipment maintenance perspective, than a live, situational awareness point of view. The best equipment is the stuff you have, and the stuff you have is the stuff you keep.
Being a little OCD, but that's what's going on under the hood, from my own perspective.
Safety is no exception. It's all about management of risk. If you seek to mitigate all risk you'll find yourself with even more risk because your bank account is now empty. The internet is great at telling other people how to spend their money so of course everyone will tell you you need the "best" helmet and the "most" reflective jacket, etc, etc.
>https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/...
That part of the article blew my mind. That cyclist is practically invisible. I consider myself an extraordinarily safe driver and I know I would not see that cyclist.
Time to get a high viz vest for the motorcycle and bicycle rides.
BGE is great if you drive on big roads and mainly share it with other cars.
However if you drive in a city with tons of scooters, you know the ones that will swarm your car, then they will all be in your blind spot if you use this mirror arrangement.
My current car has convex mirrors built in, and I find them very distracting. The little $6 stick on is a superior product.
When reversing in perpendicular pedestrian/cycle traffic (such as coming out a driveway, or if you accidentally ended up over a pedestrian crossing when the red light got you and you want to go back a few feet) looking backwards is much safer.
The argument "it's the cyclist fault she got killed for not wearing bright colours" is practically the same as "it's the woman's fault she got raped for wearing a short skirt"
Maybe cyclists should be forced to wear high vis clothes so car drivers can drive around without awareness. Maybe schoolkids in the UK should wear bullet proof vests so gun owners don't accidentally shoot them. Maybe women should be forced to wear burkas so men don't get tempted. These arguments are very similar logic.
However if cyclists are to take some responsibility for their safety on the road, not riding at the edge of a lane is the first thing to do, not wearing a burka or a flak jacket.
They are also encouraging in-lane overtaking, which might just about work for a motorbike or another bike, but anything wider would be a problem
The yellow topped one is probably OK in lane position if the other cyclists weren't there (but why not another metre to the right). However he's very close to the blue one. The blue and stripy ones run the risk of being hemmed in by traffic from the rear
Note the park cars ahead (and probably also behind) make the lane to their left unusable.
I have an Air Zound air horn and I feel much less safe riding without it. I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. And it has probably saved me from some major crashes when I lay down the horn on someone. Many drivers seem to automatically brake when I honk.
The horn is also great for giving bad drivers feedback. Most people who drive poorly around cyclists seem oblivious.
Some drivers unfortunately see horn use as hostility. I have dealt with a few road raging drivers who were very angry that I honked at them. I am pretty certain most of these drivers would be angry with or without the horn, so it doesn't much matter to me. The safety benefits also are far too large even if these folks would not tend to be angry either way.
I assume that everyone is distracted and not paying attention to what they're doing, and that informs my "riding rules": Try to make eye contact, don't assume you've been seen. Never be in the blind spot. Never pass on the right. Cross on a red light to get ahead of the pack of cars.
If it's a close enough call with another vehicle, my voice has been enough of a 'horn' to alert drives. If there's a less close conflict, then there's probably positioning/visibility change that should have happened upstream.
For me, horns are a too frequent, rude disruption in the world.
I agree that horns can be rude and disruptive, and perhaps most honks are. But I stand by every time I've used mine. I don't use it frivolously. Whereas drivers seem to use their horns frequently because they are impatient, I use it only because I'm in danger.
- it's impossible to effectively use horn and brakes in emergencies;
- one starts to rely on the horn clearing the way instead of slowing down, which is suicidally dumb;
- horn is used after-the-fact, which needlessly raises the temperature.
The only sensible use is to alert far-away pedestrians that are obviously going to do something stupid.
I never had the second or third problems. I don't use the horn on pedestrians unless strictly necessary, nor do I honk at people as revenge.
The first point was a challenge at the beginning, but I think I've done fine using both the brakes and the horn at the same time. I can think of any least one instance where both were necessary to avoid a crash. I'm certain my worst case stopping time has increased at least a small amount, but it's a worthwhile trade-off in my view.
A) excuse me/I'm here/the light has changed
B) you are a fucking idiot
It's all the times you anticipated a problem and used it preemptively that are keeping you from getting a ride in my ambulance.
Perhaps. I try my best, and think I avoid the vast majority of potential conflicts that come my way. But I can't avoid them all. I can prepare for the common problems, e.g., drivers turning into the bike lane without looking or doing a right turn on red that hits me or goes directly into my path. But those don't cover all possibilities, and I'm continually surprised by the diversity of bad driving that I've seen.
You'll fit right at home biking in NYC since constant car honking is par for the course, although pedestrians will probably be pretty shocked when you let loose the Zound from the bike lane.
The one time I horned a pedestrian that comes to mind was like that. This guy was walking distracted and he decided to come off the sidewalk and directly into the bike lane without looking perhaps 20-30 feet in front of me. I was traveling around 15 to 20 mph. I hit the brakes hard but immediately knew I would still hit him unless he jumped out of the way. That's where the air horn came in. He jumped out of the way. No harm to him aside from perhaps some temporary tinnitus. Horn use was unavoidable in my view.
(Context: I bicycle in Boston, so I know what the roads are like, although I'm sure it's somewhat different for motorcycles.)
There's enough power to assert high speeds, and take the lead with quick acceleration, but due to the amount of surface area in contact with the ground, motorcycles have lower agility than bicycles, based on the weight that gets thrown around.
With most motorcycles weighing well over 200 pounds, depending on speeds, the usual turning radius cuts a pretty wide arc (not very maneuverable, ultimately), and stopping too short will throw you off the bike. You just lock up the tires, or peel out if you don't finesse the amount of force in play.
They can do more than a car, in terms of turning and stopping, but it requires agility, dexterity and practice. Whereas with a car you can just slam the brakes, and toss it in any gear, do whatever, and not even think about balance.
So, in a situation where you gain a feel for the attitude of some random car, and the driver is radiating the demeanor of a total dickwad, there are three choices. A. Stop, reroute, and go anywhere that fucker isn't. (the best, and most common decision, more than you might ever know) B. Clutch the transmission and rev loudly, to see if they know you exist, which often doesn't work because people listen to music and mostly try to ignore the world around them. C. When they inevitably don't respond to options A & B, release the clutch, and rev the engine to launch in front of that prick and blast off. Fuck the world.
People just really don't like to give other people choices, so you wind up doing a burnout in front of them, because they keep stepping on your toes. Hurts me more than it hurts them. Such is life.
Ultimately, though, on a city street my gut says that motorcycles are in pretty much the same situation as bicycles, or better. Not sure how the stopping distance compares, but what a motorcycle lacks in being able to swerve, it should make up for in power. (Different benefits in different situations.) I believe part of why drivers don't see bicycles is that bicycles are usually ridden on the right side of the right lane. But I have never ridden a motorcycle, so my gut could well be wrong. :-)
(Highway, that's a different beast. I care less about how loud motorcycles are out there.)
So I guess here's a question: Should bicycles be equipped with constant noisemaking devices?
I ride and don't like relying on annoyance for survival: it only makes things worse. Better idea: assume you're invisible and ride with always at least 1 escape route.
It’s one of the clearest signs of selfishly telling others “fuck you” that I know.
Also I wish that road vehicles had radios so drivers and riders could communicate intention like we do when flying. All you have for communication in a car is turn signals, high beams, and a horn, and many drivers take severe umbrage if you use them because they willfully or accidentally misunderstand what you're trying to say.
NO! Dear god no! Most people suck at communicating and could you imagine to road rage? Even though as a pilot you aren't supposed to chit chat on the radio I'm positive you've heard it.
Also you couldn't realistically set up something like ATC so you could have flight following. Not only would tracking that many vehicles be extremely difficult, but setting up all the transponders and receivers would be near impossible. You may notice you have a hard time talking to ATC below 1kft AGL. Plus everyone is in such close proximity at all times what are they going to do? "November 1234 Whisky, you have a Chevy incoming from your 6 oh clock passing on the left. Stay course." Or (in general channel) "Traffic at 6th and main, there is a cyclist approaching from the East on 6th, please use caution" and everyone that isn't at 6th and main tunes out, learning to tune things out.
Flight works because even at a busy airport the communication is still relatively small.
I find the sentiment in your first paragraph to be baffling, though common. The problem isn't that horns (or high viz, helmets, or flashing lights) are a bad idea, or that you're wishing that more people would use them - I agree that more should use them. My issue is that the sentiment displaces responsibility on to the cyclist, from the person operating the dangerous machine. It's up to the cyclist to decide what gear works for them, and the burden of responsibility is firmly on the driver to not hit other people using the road.
It seems like every couple weeks, our local paper runs an article on another driver running in to a cyclist, and it nearly always frames the event as "cyclist hit by car" (notice we're already biased - "other-class-of-person hit by machine"), then proceeds to answer the "was the cyclist wearing high viz?". This creates a situation where it's more acceptable to drive carelessly, so long as the victim isn't following your locale's particular safety checklist.
Remember that there are a bunch of reasons people bike, and a lot of them are counter to some of these recommended safety products; people don't want to mess up their hair for work, have to wear a dark school uniform, can't afford lights, haven't considered any of this stuff, don't have a safe cycle lane to use...
I find yelling effective, but this might just be of my location where music is played at a reasonable level. Don't need to move my hands to activate and easy to modulate from "passing through" to "I'm here, don't back into me!".
Another effective item is a 1,400 lumen lamp. Set to strobe as needed.
You know, I would pay for something that integrates a two stage horn (announce or loud) and push to strobe lamp; remotely switched by buttons in the handlebar wrap on the brifter. (think electronic shifting buttons and remote shifting buttons).
When are you doing this? When you go through a green light?
Or is this when there's a chance for cross-traffic, say going through a yellow or red light?
The only reason I ask is because whenever I'm in SF, at least half the bicyclists I see, if not more, run all the lights and stop signs.
I never run red lights or stop signs, and don't appreciate being associated with bad cyclists any more than you would probably appreciate being associated with bad drivers.
Sorry you got that impression, but I was simply asking. Nothing wrong with getting more context, is there?
In principle, no. But you didn't need to add the part about cyclists breaking the law. Many if not most cyclists would find that offensive.
Over the years I've heard many drivers suggest that the reason I don't get respect on the road is that I probably break the law. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be suggesting that I might be using my air horn so frequently because I run red lights and stop signs and want to stop traffic that has the right of way. When stated that way, the suggestion seems ridiculous. If a driver said that they needed to use their horn frequently, I wouldn't suggest that they might be road raging at everyone or something similar, even if I thought that were likely or true. I'd just ask for context without any assumptions.
I hope an electronic proximity based system with a bigger vocabulary than "HONK!" appears in the next decade.
How many times per trip do you have to recharge it?
Are you also stopping at the intersection?
Meh, I say your life and safety is of higher priority. but do not be surprised if somebody snaps, I've watched too many /r/publicfreakouts to know what the emotional threshold of an adult commuter is these days.
I cannot emphasis this enough. It's terrible the amount of drivers who think "I can see fine, I don't need to put on my headlights". Whenever I'm driving on open roads (100 km/h areas) I'll always turn my headlights on. Like aeroplanes, I think that anything on the road should have lights on it for visibility.
However, this advice is a bit questionable:
"Flashing LEDs (front and rear) are especially effective for cyclists as they create contrast and the on-off flashing attracts the peripheral vision in the same manner that movement does."
Flashing LEDs as your only light is really bad, because it's impossible to judge distance and speed from a flashing light in darkness.
Having a flashing light on your helmet or handlebars in addition to a normal light may be beneficial but only if you have otherwise decent lighting on your bike.
In fact, in my country there are regulations that require a non-blinking white light on the front, a non-blinking red light on the back and reflectors on the pedals and wheels. There are actually quite strict rules where and how the lights should be placed.
Unfortunately not everyone complies with these regulations, and the worst offenders I see are children. I've seen kids riding bikes dangerously on the roads (and had closer calls than I'd like to) on otherwise affluent neighborhoods. Their parents (and themselves!) had completely neglected to put lights on their bikes (or check that they work, have batteries, etc).
("perhaps" because mudguards are pretty useful too). b&m lights, sensible ones that have a backreflector so you don't get horrible specular lights shining in everyone's eyes.
I don't care if you need your lights on or not. If >50% of traffic have their lights on, I need your lights on too.
Most of it was on the lines of if every vehicle had lights on you would no longer stand out, you are just another light which is also harder to judge distance in the mirror. Where as if yo have lights on but cars don't you are more likely to stand out for thr fact there's less motorcycles so not as many lights to blend in to the background.
In the AU everyone genrally has full beams on regardless, horrible experince driving at night.
Just as much as you shouldn't be driving into a motorcycle you should probably not drive into a car.
All in all: you're saying is a horrible experience, but you're not giving any better solutions.
Some countries force their car drivers to always have their lights on.
The fact that some idiots think it's the same as driving with the high beams on all the time is absolutely different.
From reading this article I don't think that applies. It's typically only one car or bicycle that needs contrast against the background so that you don't miss them. It's not about trying to pick out one car amongst a sea of other cars.
Even then as long as you're aware there's something there you can avoid the psychological problem of assuming nothing is there.
In the summary section it says the conspicuity of motorcycles is improved with daytime lights although may be less if cars have daytime lights.
It’s been a long time since I read that report but it has lots of real data and research.
Cars are easier to spot regardless of lights due to them being much larger than a motorcycle or cyclist and the reports being biased towards protecting the most vulnerable road users.
Your comments don't seem to answer the question of cars having their lights on making it harder to spot motorcycles.
At night time cars will have lights on anyway, so I think it comes down to if cars having their lights on makes it harder to spot a motorcyclist in traffic.
Doesn't it also apply the other way though? Motorcyclists are more likely to spot cars with lights in their periphery? I don't know how much of a non-issue it would be given how restricted the view is from a motorcycle helmet.
"Motorcycle Conspicuity and the Effect of Fleet Daytime Running Lights"
> The annual number of motorcycle rider fatalities in the United States has more than doubled from 2294 in 1998 to 5290 in 2008 (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2009). Many multi-vehicle motorcycle crashes involve right-of-way violations where another vehicle turns in front of, or crosses the path of an on-coming motorcycle. Improving the frontal conspicuity of motorcycles with forward lighting may reduce these types of crashes. On the other hand, widespread use of DRL on passenger vehicles may reduce the safety effectiveness of daytime headlamp use by motorcyclists. Research is needed to address these questions. This study involved testing the Fleet DRL Hypothesis that widespread use of daytime running lights (DRL) among the motor vehicle fleet is associated with an increased risk for certain types of multi-vehicle motorcycle crashes. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that the conspicuity of motorcycles (which normally run with their headlamp illuminated all the time) is effectively reduced during the daytime when a high proportion of other vehicles have DRL illuminated. To test the hypothesis, crash data from Canada where DRL use is mandatory were compared to crash data from the northern United States where DRL use is not mandatory and fleet penetration of DRL has been modest. Based on several specific assumptions, we developed a set of ten testable predictions that follow from the hypothesis. We compared crash data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) for 24 northern United States for the period of 2001 – 2007 to fatal crash data from the Canadian National Collision Data Base (NCDB) provided by Transport Canada for the same years. Crash scenarios that were plausibly relevant to frontal conspicuity of the involved vehicles were defined as DRL-relevant. The proportion of DRL-relevant crashes was modeled by country, year, and whether the crash involved a motorcycle. We fit separate models for crash data that occurred in four groups defined by time of day (Day, Night) and location (Rural, Urban) of the crash. The results supported seven of ten predictions indicating that the Fleet DRL Hypothesis may be true for urban roadways (but may not true for rural roadways). These results suggest that there could be negative consequences for motorcycle riders of widespread DRL use in the vehicle fleet. For urban roadways especially, the proportion of two-vehicle fatal motorcycle crashes that are relevant to frontal conspicuity of the vehicles (DRL relevant) is higher in Canada than in the USA. This result and other related predictions verified by the modeling results support the Fleet DRL Hypothesis for urban roadways, that widespread use of DRL in the vehicle fleet increases the relative risk for certain types of multi-vehicle motorcycle crashes. This conclusion should be interpreted cautiously in light of some limitations of the analysis approach.
"The Effects of Motor Vehicle Fleet Daytime Running Lights (DRL) on Motorcycle Conspicuity"
> As a group, motorcyclists experience a high fatality rate, a significant number of which are attributable to right- of-way violations by other drivers. One factor behind the high crash rate is insufficient conspicuity of motorcycles, which is now of greater concern because of the increasing use of Daytime Running Lights (DRL) in the vehicle fleet. The hypothesis is that the additional lights on all vehicles will degrade the conspicuity of the previously unique DRL signal used by motorcycles. The main goal of the current study was to evaluate the effects of motorcycle conspicuity treatments on other drivers’ left turn gap acceptance. This study was comprised of three phases. In Phase 1, a test track study measured participants’ left turn gap judgment as a function of motorcycle DRL treatments. This study was designed to determine which treatments yielded the largest gaps, thereby making that treatment a good candidate for the on-road portion. No treatment was clearly better, so lighting systems currently in use on motorcycles were selected for the on-road study. In Phase 2, an on-road study measured gap acceptance, then followed up with intercept surveys of observed drivers. This phase included data collection in the United States (low fleet DRL use) and Canada (high fleet DRL use) in order to evaluate the effect of DRL use in the vehicle fleet. However, due to concerns about the comparability of the U.S. and Canadian data, the results are inconclusive, and additional research is suggested. In Phase 3, motorcycle side conspicuity treatments (retro-reflectors and marker lamp) were compared. Results indicated that there were no differences in detection distance between the treatments.
"Effects of 24-Hour Headlight Use on Traffic Safety"
> Effect of Automobile DRLs on Motorcycle Safety Minnesota law requires motorcyclists to use their headlights during daylight hours, and opponents of DRLs have argued that requiring headlight use for all vehicles could make motorcycles less conspicuous. A NHTSA study on this topic, Motorcycle Conspicuity and the Effect of Fleet Daytime Running Lights, is expected to be complete by the end of 2010.
> The findings of the 2008 NHTSA study regarding motorcycles were not statistically significant, and the 2004 NHTSA study found that DRLs reduced daytime opposite direction fatal crashes of a passenger vehicle with a motorcycle by 23 percent.
I failed to slow down adequately to a T-junction and almost drove straight in front of a truck, despite having looked in that direction twice before entering the intersection.
I'm pretty sure my vision was (partially) occluded by the corner pillar and/or a snow pile on the side of the road and therefore tricking my brain exactly as the article describes.
All it takes is a change in speed to avoid this accident. I now take extra caution in these situations, especially T-junctions or 4-way intersections without traffic lights.
On certain left-curving roads it's possible to drive 10 - 15 seconds being unable to see anything directly in front of you.
I compensate by bobbing and weaving to look around the A-pillar at every intersection or when passing. Maybe it even makes me a safer driver because there's no illusion - I know there's a lot I can't see so drive accordingly.
I'm so much more comfortable when I drive my vintage car. The greenhouse is massive, so you can see everything without even turning your head. I also drive that car much more consciously since it requires real effort. The trade off is if I ever run into anything I'm under no illusions about the safety it provides (which is none)
I can't wait for A pillars that are screens so they become invisible.
Together with moving your head slightly both ways to try to look from additional angles around both sides of the pillar.
Although rarer, CBDR can occur even when reducing speed if the other vehicle also happens to reduce his speed at the same time, which can be surprisingly common on intersections where priority is unclear or there's a curve leading to it. Happened to me on a T junction on a mountain road, luckily we were at low speed and (surprise!) stopped face to face. As the article suggests: "Move your head — or you’re dead". The other vehicle speed can't vary as fast as you peeking left and right around the pillar.
“[As a cyclist], look at the head of the driver that is approaching or has stopped. The head of the driver will naturally stop and centre upon you if you have been seen.“
Please, please do not rely on this. Correlation is not causation, a driver’s head might face your direction for lots of reasons (focusing on something behind/in front of you, spacing out, looking at their phone, etc). Friends and family have been bitten by this ‘trick’ before, thankfully not with deadly consequences. When someone’s head is facing you, it does not mean they see you.
A little surprising to see this advice in an article that’s mostly about the eye being fallible.
But also as they say in the article it's about judging risk. If the face is towards you you're very unlikely to be in the peripheral vision, so there is a good chance the driver saw you.
I do the same. It failed me once though: a young woman in a SUV was looking me in the eye and drove forward; I managed to stop in the last moment.
Managed to not get into many an accident by watching the heads and front wheels of cars. Also, look for signs of them being on a phone, if so remove yourself from their area asap.
Still, my ultimate judgement is based on their vehicle’s position and movement.
Example: Parking lots, of all places, are some of the most dangerous places a cyclist can ride into.
One would think a parking lot is relatively safe because of the slow speeds and lack of intersections, but actually, they're peppered with distracted people going backwards trying to avoid hitting other cars and slow-moving pedestrians. They're not expecting to dodge cyclists and aren't "looking" for them and thus cyclists aren't seen even when in plain view.
The only time I've made contact with a moving car as a cyclist was when I was going past an off-ramp.
The weird thing was that I thought the driver "saw me". It was late morning, no problem with visibility. From my POV, she was looking right at me. In fact, she was looking "through" me. She simply was expecting other cars and a person on a bike was not what she was looking for.
Human attention is very much selective. Check out this shocking video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
After that, I ride with a bright flashing headlight at all times, even daylight. It gives some measure of protection, I think.
FWIW it was here..https://www.google.com/maps/@39.2686291,-76.6312124,3a,75y,1...
Yes, it's possible that they're using language wrong. But there are almost always more charitable interpretations.
Also, in my state at least, bicycles are completely legal to ride on the shoulder of the interstate and similar divided highways with the exception of about 20 miles of urban highway. Very few cyclists do so since it is still a dangerous and unpleasant experience. Personally, I have done so once when I made a couple of wrong turns on unfamiliar backroads. A 2 mile ride along the highway got me back to a spot I knew rather than risk getting even more lost farther from home.
I've often griped about how hard it is to see out of modern cars with thick airbag-equipped pillars, but still wondered how I managed to "miss" something that clearly cannot completely hide in an A-pillar. (eg, because the pillar is diagonal, the pedestrian's head or feet or both will still be visible even if their midsection is obscured.
I used to commute through an area with an endless sea of stop signs, which almost NEVER had cross traffic. My car had a rearview mirror that came down too far and tended to block part of my view forward and to the right, and sometimes pedestrians or cross traffic would 'hide' in the pillars. It's one of those things where, if there had been no stop signs, I would have been much more likely to notice cross traffic, but having to look at the sign and stop line takes your focus for that last 2-3 seconds as you slow to a stop, so even if you're "sure" you scanned for peds/cross traffic, maybe once every 6 months I would begin to proceed and then suddenly see the movement of a vehicle or person in my peripheral vision.
Those pillars and the rearview mirror didn't block what i was looking for, but they must have cued my eyes to not look 'too close' to them. Interesting.
Some other tips I carried over from training:
- Don't look at bright lights at night, look slightly off, for two reasons. First retina persistence will occur somewhere in your (larger) peripheral vision, rather than in the small hi-res patch of your retina that is critical to conscious sight. Second we are naturally driving towards where we look, and lights are especially alluring. This is also valid for obstacles (static or moving), don't look at them, look past or next to them, ideally away from the direction of their movement (which is, as hunters, counterintuitive and unnatural). This can save your life (and has for me).
- Always perform pre-flight checklists, both metric, visual and tactile. This is about checking the usual fluid levels (brakes are obviously key) and tire pressure (don't be fooled, a slightly deflated tire can be invisible to the naked eye or touch yet still be dangerous) but also inspection of wipers, tires (tread and sidewalls) and wheels, brake discs, car underside, pedal feel, turning wheel behaviour. Look for evidence of leaking fluids, wiggles, wear, uneven surfaces. Don't hesitate to use touch. Pilots routinely manipulate parts of their planes such as flaps to check they're in no obvious non-working order.
- Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. A properly maintained car emits basically no unusual noise. I can't count the number of people who have undue noise in their cars. At the very least a noisy car is an inefficient one! Plus even if the noise is due to a harmless cause, it can cover other noises that hint at more serious problems.
- Respect the flow. It is critical to act as if traffic is a fluid, and anything that disrupts the flow creates perturbations, which means more chaos (hence less predictability) and increased risk of collisions. Think of those beautiful fluid dynamics simulations and what happens visually when you disrupt the flow at the edge, in the middle, introduce a narrow point or a second inlet mid-stream.
- Be humble: don't text (you're not looking at the road), don't phone (you're context-switching to a virtual space with the person you're talking to, not in the car, driving), don't drink (even a slight drink slashes reaction time by serious amounts, possibly by orders of magnitude).
- If at all possible, take extra classes on a track to experience vehicle behaviour near, at, and above its limit in various situations. This will help you in recognising when you're approaching the limits outside of controlled conditions and backing off in the safe zone. Don't be fooled by the fact that taking such a class makes you magically able to recover from, say, an uncontrolled spin though: again, be humble.
- Your body is constantly lying to you. As mentioned in the article, visual perception is a tricky thing, and other senses can be deceptively abused[0]. Some may appear with reduced frequency due to the vastly reduced amplitude of degrees of freedom in a car as well as visible cues compared to an airplane, but situations may happen where those axes are involved (cars do tilt along all axes!) or visual cues are lost (heavy rain, fog, night). Be aware of that, and combat that with failsafe cues and training.
- The OODA loop[1] is a thing that works well when driving, leading to anticipation, but needs practice to be leveraged in emergency situations. So, practice it regularly in safe situations, and neural plasticity will carve the required neural pathways to operate efficiently under more stressful conditions.
As with the helmet example, the ultimate goal is to avoid collisions altogether. You're driving several metric tons of metal at unnatural speeds. Unnatural as in: as low as 50km/h a brutal shock has a non-trivial chance of outright ripping your aorta to shreds, and driving an armor-clad, comfortable wheeled machine can't change that. As with most catastrophes, many dramatic events on the road are not due to a single root cause but death by a thousand cuts, some more aggravating than others.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_illusions_in_aviation
I'm not talking about mechanical accidents such as a tyre popping though. I'm pointing out that the guy on a B road entered a curve, failed to account for the clues that grip was closing in to limit due to underinflated tires, looked into the approaching headlights which were blown up by its dirty windshield, blinding him, pushed the brakes which further reduced grip both front (due to wheels being turned) and rear (due to weight relief), misinterpreted the car reaction due to loss of visual information and overcorrected, throwing his car into a spin, and crashed into the incoming car.
Change "car" to "plane" and you get a thorough investigation pointing at the chain of events that led to the crash, but somehow with cars society accept it as normal, the go-to explanation generally being "he drove too fast", skipping all manners of root cause analysis. But hey, it's more efficient to lay out speed traps and reduce speed limits (both having proved to be inefficient long-term) to satisfy lobbies of crying families hit by careless people and looking for an easy scapegoat. Plus it rakes in cash like nothing else. Speed† being a byproduct of movement, as long as you have movement you have a risk of collisions, so the rhetoric can be recursively applied until we reach perfect standstill; interestingly enough, some other means of travel proceed at much higher speeds yet are statistically much less dangerous, because training, procedures, infrastructure design, and maintenance.
† Speed does have consequences, due to simple enough energetic calculations. Nonetheless "speed" is not a cause, it's an effect.
Are these measures ineffective or is reduced speed ineffective? (When the goal is to reduce fatal or serious accidents.)
But even the slightest thing out of order or hitting a kerb or something like that and I'll definitely inspect to ensure nothing funny happens at speed. Even a blow-out on a tire can completely ruin your - or someone else's - day.
The focus on being seen is also something to think about. Google "target fixation". At night, drunks tend to drive towards bright shiny things. Airstrips amd cockpits use this to hold a pilots attention. There is something to be said for staying hidden, or at least not relying totally upon cars seeing you. Better to stay where you cannot be hit in the first place, and actively avoid cars. That might mean not riding with traffic approaching from behind, or not trusting that if they see you they will avoid you.
I have to admit I don't remember the explanation I was given then but it made sense, and as far as I know everyone's taught to do that here.
In a car or on a bike, it doesn't matter. You also do that at pedestrian crossings.
That doesn't really work any more with the steeply sloped windows of contemporary aerodynamic vehicles. All you see is a reflection of the sky. If the vehicle has tinted rear windows you don't even have a chance to see a silhouette...
Does it get worse with age?
is this some reset for labour day or other deeply cunning ranking algorithm? Or maybe i fat fingered it ...
I suspect it's probably some mix of re-submitting affecting timestamps - I am not sure, which was why I asked. it's not terribly important.
I think the problem to be solved however is hard, and i don't know of any obvious solutions, so perhaps "shit" is probably too harsh.
Oftentimes you see submissions for an interesting article languish in the 'new' section, but then a user re-submits the exact same thing ('duplicate detection' algo at work, lol) and it's on the front page in minutes. Whether that user is a 'power user', besties with dang, lucky, or ???..
The algos is presumably a straight up string compare with some url decoding, but any amount of idiotic GET key value pairs can screw that up.
I find Occam's razor the best explanation for these kind of things - I suggest not taking it to heart too much.
Well, except it fails in some cases to straight up compare two strings that are identical, so there must be some other 'secret sauce' in the algorithm that makes it unnecessarily complicated and error-prone.
Perhaps page body edit-distance would work better?