I've been riding my bike to work the majority of the time lately. It's great for a lot of reasons, gas prices being not the least of them. I also enjoy the exercise and being more connected with my surroundings on my way to sitting in front of a screen all day.
Alicia Buxton wrote a sidebar to the cover story in this week's Flyer. She uses the statistics that there are far fewer biking deaths than auto deaths as evidence that biking is safer than driving.
I won't get into dissecting the stats comparison and belabor the fact that there are more auto deaths because, duh, more people are driving.
However, I do feel that biking is considerably more dangerous, especially in a city like Memphis.
I myself was nearly killed earlier this week by a driver not paying attention.
Riding a bike requires ten times the attentiveness of driving a car. You can't talk on the phone, both hands need to be on the bars. You have to be constantly aware of drivers entering the road that probably aren't watching for you.
In a city like Memphis, (more after the jump) cyclists bear the entire burden of watching out for their own safety. As progressive as our city can seem (South Main, Cooper-Young, I'm looking at you), the drivers here are simply not used to sharing the road with anything under 1,000 lbs (some pedestrians included, har).
Drivers just don't understand that cyclists have the right to be on the road as well. There aren't bike lanes, so bikes have to hug the right side and pray someone doesn't open the door of a parked car and knock them into oncoming traffic.
Here are a few tips for drivers that will help keep me and my fellow peddlers a little safer:
1. Move the FUCK over. If you see a bike on the right side and you have the option to merge one lane to the left, do it. When someone whizzes past you and you can feel the sideview mirror almost clip your handlebar, that's fucking scary.
2. Don't over-shoot intersections. I know you're just trying to pull forward to look both ways, but if you pull so far out that a bike has to swerve around you, that puts them in danger of being hit from behind by faster moving traffic.
3. Be patient. While it takes almost no time for you to push the gas and accelerate back to speed, a cyclist is doing that with their legs and the gears on their bike. A short ride becomes a huge pain in the ass when you have to gear down and get your momentum back every time a car is too impatient to let you pass.
4. And most important... WATCH for Godsakes. Just because an 18-wheeler isn't barreling toward you doesn't mean the road is clear for you to enter traffic. I can't tell you how many times a driver has nearly plowed into me, only to do a double-take and slam on their brakes just in time.
