Yesterday we met an Australian TV news reporter who survived a brush with death when a cyclist rode past him in a bike lane at a reasonable speed:
No doubt it was a terrifying ordeal, but I’m guessing he wouldn’t want to trade place with these two riders in Texas:
No doubt you’ve heard about this by now since it’s the biggest cycling-related story in the non-cycling media since that whole thing with the chef–not because people are particularly concerned about cyclists getting run over, but because there’s a horrific video of the incident, which I’m not going to post here. In any case, here’s what happened:
Love. It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru:
It certainly looks intentional in the video. Whether this was in fact the case is unclear, but being a Subaru driver he did attempt to apologize afterwards:
Mercifully and incredibly, both riders seem to have fared much better than you’d possibly imagine after watching the video. Once was treated on the scene, and the other seems at least be well enough to talk to reporters–and in a twist, credits his bike for saving his life:
Here’s why:
I’m assuming that’s a carbon fiber bicycle, and that due to its inherent lateral stiffness and vertical compliance it acted as a spring as per Jan Heine’s theory of planing.
Whatever the case, hopefully both riders make full recoveries, and continue to ride for many years to come–though certainly experiencing something like this would cause even the most dedicated rider to question the wisdom of doing so. When I’m riding on the road I often think about how much trust (or rather blind faith) we place in the drivers behind us. As they overtake me I imagine what might be going on inside the car at that moment to take their attention away from the road–usually I see a hand groping around in a console for a phone or something, causing them to drift into the shoulder–and it always seems like a small miracle when this does not happen and they pass me without incident. Then there are the times when the do pass closely enough for me to feel it in my arm hairs, and I never know for sure whether they did it to make a point, or they were simply oblivious to my presence as they succumbed to any one of the gazillions of petty distractions that can turn out to be matters of life and death.
As cyclists we often feel uniquely vulnerable, and in many ways we are. However, you don’t need to be out on the open road for something like this to happen to you, nor do you even need to be on a bike. Your life is similarly subject to the whims of the strangers behind you when you’re doing something as mundane as waiting for the subway:
“Only” 17 people were hit by subway trains last year as a result of being pushed into the tracks. Whether you’re on a bike or a platform, statistically the odds are well in your favor, and you’d be out a lot of money if you were to keep placing wagers on your own demise. Cyclist or a straphanger, you’ve had a million people on your tail without incident. However, this doesn’t make the prospect of one of them hitting or pushing you any less real, regardless of whether they do it out of malice, negligence, or derangement. All we can do is take the usual precautions, and bear in mind the wisdom of Frank Drebin:
I meditate on those words pretty much every day.
