Street smart: Bicycle safety is for everyone

Marin Independent Journal
November 6, 2003

By Rick Polito, IJ feature writer

THE WAY John Ciccarelli sees it, whoever taught you to ride a bike left the job unfinished.

Whether it was mom or dad or a big brother who ran alongside your banana-seat Stingray until the training wheels came off, they probably gave you the physics of staying upright, maybe offered some tips on taking a corner and stopping safely.

But they probably didn't teach you how to tackle a traffic sensor-triggered intersection with dedicated right turn lanes and a lagging left arrow. And they certainly didn't warn you about the soccer mom on a cell phone beelining it for Starbucks in her battleship-class SUV.

The Marin County Bicycle Coalition and Marin General Hospital are teaming up to help Ciccarelli give you the rest of the lesson. Three classes were scheduled to help adult cyclists learn the tricks of traffic survival and on-the-street cooperation with the motoring class. We took the first class.

There's still room in the next two.

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It wasn't a sea of lycra or a squad of lean elite racers staring back at Ciccarelli from the almost crowded hospital conference room. It was moms, retirees, a computer programmer recovering from a bike crash and an assortment of very not-so-cycling-centric grown-ups looking for a way to ride with confidence in conditions that can be rattling for people who want to leave the car in the garage but feel too vulnerable on two wheels.

Ciccarelli started with the basics.

Cyclists have a right to the road. Unless it's a freeway or a toll bridge, bikes have a right to be there.

"You can't be banned by a sign on the side of the road," Ciccarelli says.

"You can't be forced to ride on the sidewalk."

Cyclists don't even have to hug the right shoulder. A lot of the time it's the last thing they should do.

Ciccarelli calls the perception that "being safe means being as far from cars as possible" one of the most dangerous misconceptions in the bike world.

To stay safe in many situations, cyclists have to "claim the lane," he says. "My road position really keeps me safe."

Indeed, as Ciccarelli points out, the California Vehicle Code, the same one that gives cyclists all the rights and all the responsibilities of motorists, only requires cyclists to ride as far to the right as is "practicable." "That's one of those legal words, it means safe and reasonable," Ciccarelli says.

Cyclists don't have to ride on the shoulder if it's not safe.

"There are all sorts of reasons legally for you to use the lane," the Palo Alto bicycle transportation consultant says.

Legally valid reasons to take the lane include avoiding obstacles, passing slower traffic, making left turns and holding a strategic position on roads too narrow for a bike and car to share.

One of the most important reasons to ride away from the road's edge is to avoid being "doored." Being doored is what happens when a driver opens a car door into the path of a cyclist riding along a line of parallel-parked cars. The door opens too quickly for the cyclist to react and the cyclist can be injured by the collision itself or thrown into traffic by the impact.

"Get your brain out of the door zone," Ciccarelli told his class. "The door zone can kill you."

Being more assertive in the lane can also counter another of the more common bike/car conflicts. Ciccarelli calls it the "right hook." A right hook occurs when a motorist tries to take a right turn around a cyclist, catching the cyclist in the apex of the turn. Ciccarelli advises riding a few feet out from the curb at intersections to discourage the trailing driver from making a dangerous move.

"You're totally changing the equation of the cutoff," Ciccarelli says.

Ciccarelli's class is taught with the aid of slides and charts he keeps on a slim laptop computer. In one color-coded pie chart, he delivers the somewhat surprising information that only half of bike accidents involve a car. A startling 8 percent involve animals.

"There are a lot of ways you can screw up and hurt yourself on a bike not involving a car," Ciccarelli says.

But accidents that do involve cars can be very serious. And while the common fear of getting hit from behind represents a very small percentage - "It turns out that is relatively rare," Ciccarelli says - the overwhelming number of bike/car accidents involve turning corners or changing lanes.

Such "crossing or turning motions" make up 90 percent of the car/bike accidents.

The solution to many, maybe even most, of those potential conflicts is the "shoulder check." The "shoulder check" is the simple act of looking over your left shoulder to see what is coming up behind you. Ciccarrelli calls it the "quintessential cycling skill," but it is not as natural a motion as it might sound. Many cyclists swerve when they turn their upper bodies back to look. Ciccarelli advises practicing a smooth, controlled backward glance, riding ovals in a schoolyard or empty parking lot until they can keep the bike pointed straight.

"Before you apply anything else you learned in this class, master the shoulder check," he tells the class.

With the shoulder check, cyclists can signal and "negotiate" lane changes.

Communication with motorists is key. If the motorist can anticipate what the cyclist is going to do next, the chances for conflict are lessened.

Signaling begins with basic hand signals - Ciccarelli adds some beckoning and simple pointing to the established left-turn, right-turn, stop repertoire - and continues with body language and road position. "Your position on the road communicates just as effectively as a signal," he says.

He'll even add another signal to keep the lines of communication open. "If you're good enough to signal a lane change, you're good enough to signal thanks."

Much of Ciccarelli's class involves intersections. Choosing the right position to enter an intersection is the key to crossing it unscathed, he says. Cyclists need to size up the intersection before they get there and avoid sudden lane changes. "What you do is smooth and early instead of abrupt and late," he says.

When in doubt, Ciccarelli advises getting off the bike and using the crosswalks. "Nothing says you can't become a pedestrian when you need to," he says.

Other pieces of advice covered in Ciccarelli's class include:

- Lights and reflectors: "You can do way better than the legally required equipment for way cheap," Ciccarelli says.

- Daytime visibility: Dress for contrast. Neon lycra may not be a hip fashion statement, but it is eye-catching. "The earlier you can be recognized as a bicyclist, the better is it is for you."

- Downtown areas: Watch for passengers getting out of cars in stopped traffic.

- Railroad tracks: Cross at right angles to avoid losing control.

- Buses: Before loading your bike onto a front-mounted bus bike rack, make sure the driver sees you.

Much of what is taught in the class is well-known to avid cyclists. Mill Valley computer programmer Marc Radest, who saw a poster for the class while visiting the hospital to check on a slowly healing collarbone broken in a bike accident, called the class a good way to put together the information he'd learned "on the road."

"It made me think of it in a more exact way," Radest says.

But for cyclists new to biking in traffic on errands and for work, the class was a more complete learning experience. San Anselmo landscape designer Louise Hassan, who recently traded her SUV for a smaller car and bought an electric bike for errands, says the class will help her feel more confident on the road, especially in intersections.

"That's the thing I was really confused about. I thought, 'Do I have to pretend I am a pedestrian?'" People like Hassan are the type of cyclist the Marin County Bike Coalition is trying to reach, says Coalition spokeswoman Deb Hubsmith. "The number one reason people don't ride is fear," Hubsmith says, adding that Ciccarelli's class could give people "the confidence to be able to make short trips."

For his part, Ciccarelli doesn't want cyclists to lose that fear. He just wants them to reapply it.

"I'm trying to move all of you from fearing everything to fearing the things that are worth fearing," he tells the class. "The promise of the bicycle as a transportation mode is never going to be realized if people are scared to go through the next intersection."

IF YOU GO

Ciccarelli's "Street Skills for Cyclists" class will be taught two more times in Marin. The four-hour in-classroom class does not require participants to bring a bicycle. Interested cyclists can attend Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. at Novato Community Hospital, 180 Rowland Way. The second class will be held from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at Marin General Hospital, 250 Bon Air Road in Greenbrae. Register at www.marinbike.org or call MCBC administrator Bob Trigg at 456-3469, extension 3.

Contact Rick Polito at polito@marinij .com.