Bill Sweetman opinion on safety

[dkel]

@Bill Sweetman 184346 wrote:

I am truly sorry you were hit,

I accept that. You’re the only one here who is.

This type of unfair jumping to conclusions is why people find you difficult to tolerate.

[cvcalhoun]

There is no data because accidents involving bikes and no cars seldom get reported to police, and usually avoid the gaze of the insurance actuaries. So neither you nor I have a clue about the incidence of bike-caused injuries (which as I showed can have major costs, and could be life-altering), let alone whether these are more or less frequent on a per-trip basis than auto-related injuries.

Yes, we have way more than a clue, based on the laws of physics. In your own case, if you’d been hit by a car at speed, and it had run over your leg, you would be suffering far more costly and life-altering injuries than you did. And that is universally true: a cyclist does not have the same ability to inflict injuries or death as someone driving a couple of tons of steel.

So yes, I wish everyone — motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians — were more careful. I try to be careful myself, and I contribute to organizations that emphasize good cycling practices. But a) cyclists are actually slightly LESS likely to violate traffic laws than motorists are, and b) when cyclists violate the law, they are way less likely than motorists to kill or injure people. So acting as though cyclist carelessness is on a par with motorist carelessness is a major and dangerous distortion of the facts. And blaming “cyclists” for the damages done by one cyclist is as ridiculous as blaming you for the guy who decided to drive 90 miles an hour on city streets while drunk.

“Hey, you were both motorists, weren’t you? And I see motorists on lots of comment threads defending going faster than the speed limit.”

See how ridiculous that sounds?

[trailrunner]

Sweetman:

You wrote an inflammatory, biased article with half-truths in a major publication. That one incident, without reflection on the larger picture, does not make you knowledgeable about cycling policy or safety, and what we should or shouldn’t do. Frankly, your ideas don’t make sense.

If you want to understand this issue better, join me on my commute one morning.

[trailrunner]

@Bill Sweetman 184346 wrote:

I think Crickey may be a false-flag who works for the local Caddy dealer, by the way.

I don’t know Crickey or where he works, but after this statement, I know a lot about you.

[SarahBee]

@trailrunner 184355 wrote:

Sweetman:

You wrote an inflammatory, biased article with half-truths in a major publication. That one incident, without reflection on the larger picture, does not make you knowledgeable about cycling policy or safety, and what we should or shouldn’t do. Frankly, your ideas don’t make sense.

If you want to understand this issue better, join me on my commute one morning.

Could you even imagine implementation of what he suggests? Sorry little Suzy, no bike for you until you can read and pass the written exam. Don’t know left from right yet? Then you can’t use your turn signals effectively and you are a trail hazard. You better practice your counting so you can read your VA mandated speedometer. Oh, little Raul, you let your cycling insurance lapse. Better ask mommy and daddy for more allowance next month. People like Bill Sweetman just want to suck all the fun out of recreational activities with nonsensical over-regulation. Bah humbug!

[cvcalhoun]

I would also point out that he is upset that we can’t compare accidents per miles traveled. So apparently, we are to install odometers on our bicycles. Jimmy’s $15 bike just became a $115 bike.

[huskerdont]

@cvcalhoun 184363 wrote:

I would also point out that he is upset that we can’t compare accidents per miles traveled. So apparently, we are to install odometers on our bicycles. Jimmy’s $15 bike just became a $115 bike.

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) would be a problematic way to compare bicycle accident rates to automobile rates anyway because of the disparity that exists between how far each can go in a given amount of time. A car could have a VMT of 70 in the same amount of time that a bicycle’s VMT might be 15, thereby skewing the accident/VMT rate higher for cyclists. A better measure would be time spent in each mode, but that is more difficult information to get.

[cvcalhoun]

@huskerdont 184364 wrote:

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) would be a problematic way to compare bicycle accident rates to automobile rates anyway because of the disparity that exists between how far each can go in a given amount of time. A car could have a VMT of 70 in the same amount of time that a bicycle’s VMT might be 15, thereby skewing the accident/VMT rate higher for cyclists. A better measure would be time spent in each mode, but that is more difficult information to get.

Well, it depends on your perspective. If you’re commuting and have a choice between biking and driving, miles traveled is a better comparison. But it is also true that those who commute by bike tend to choose to live closer to work because of the time required. And if cyclists therefore tend to go fewer miles, then they would cause fewer accidents total, even if they caused the same number of accidents per mile.

[TwoWheelsDC]

This incident sucks and I’m sorry. The guy on a bike in the story sounds like a serious dipshit.

It also happens that your take is a steaming pile of garbage.

[Brendan von Buckingham]

That article was a masterpiece of obfuscation. If the accident happened in Long Bridge Park, say that it happened in Long Bridge Park. If it happened in a park, why are you afraid of Mount Vernon Trail? Why not all sidewalks? If it didn’t happen on a right-of-way or highway, why bring up Virginia traffic law. Clarifying that it happened in Long Bridge Park doesn’t help enough since the park is almost a mile long. It’s still not clear where or how the accident happened, but it sounds like an event more like an unleashed dog jumping on a stranger in a park than the life-and-death situations we deal with every time we bike to work.

Your incident is a trifle to the things we have all gone through a hundred times. Your article is confusing fuel on a fire of tribal slurs and rage that we need to survive on a daily basis. I don’t care about what happened to you as much as I care about the incendiary effect of your article and what it does to motivate aggressive drivers.

I’m sorry you got knocked over. HTFU. Welcome to the skinned knee club. Let me know when you join my ran-over-by-a-car-club (with oak leaf clusters).

And to my fellow cyclists, get the h— off the sidewalk.

[Subby]

Sorry you got hit buddy, but it doesn’t give you the right to be an a-hole (googling your name and looking for fights on message boards = being an a-hole).

[SarahBee]

Public Service Announcement:
On WABA’s donation page, note that you can make a donation in honor of someone, say Bill Sweetman, for example. Additionally, I believe if you put in an address say “c/o Northrop Grumman Corporate / 2980 Fairview Park Dr. / Falls Church, VA 22042”, a nice card is sent from WABA. Again, this is just an example. Feel free to donate and also take all of Judd’s money!

[Subby]

@Bill Sweetman 184328 wrote:

What part of “when I walk the bike trails, I’m careful to the point of paranoia about hugging the right side of the path so bicycles and joggers can pass…. I was walking in a park within sight of the Washington Monument, using a footpath that didn’t seem likely to have many bicycles on it” seems to have overmatched your reading skills?

If you are hugging the right side of the trail why would someone try to pass on your right? There’s no room. This makes zero sense.

[cvcalhoun]

@Subby 184379 wrote:

If you are hugging the right side of the trail why would someone try to pass on your right? There’s no room. This makes zero sense.

At the time of the accident, he says he wasn’t on a bike trail. He was “using a footpath that didn’t seem likely to have many bicycles on it,” and presumably not hugging the right side of the footpath. (Emphasis his.) At those times when he is on a bike trail, he says he hugs the right side of the trail.

That doesn’t excuse his refusal to recognize that cars are far more dangerous than bikes, of course. And I would question his characterization of what he was on as a “footpath”; presumably the cyclist on it did not agree. But he is at least internally consistent.

[Bill Sweetman]

Three pages into the thread:

I’m accused of “looking for a fight” when my initial post was responding to a snide, demeaning mis-reading of what I had written.

Two contributors here concede that the biker may have been at fault, although one goes on to accuse me of writing garbage.

(In fact, I’m now convinced he was 100% at fault. He was not on a dedicated bike trail; well marked bike lanes were available to his destination; and consequently he should have been prepared to concede right of way to any pedestrian. He should no more have expected bike-trail rules to apply than if we was on a sidewalk.)

Pretty much everyone else seems to think bikers can do no wrong and are maligned martyrs to the cause of Mother Earth. Brendan von Buckingham doesn’t care that I got knocked over as much as he cares about The Cause.

I have no intention of shutting down biking. I still think it’s fair to ask why an experienced bike commuter has no sense of how long he’s going to take to stop, doesn’t carry insurance and/or doesn’t acknowledge legal responsibility. I think it’s fair to suggest that if you are riding a machine that can injure someone, you ensure that you can deal with the consequences of any accident you cause.

[Author]

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