Close Calls

Certain dangers accompany the commute to work on a bicycle when you share the road with automobiles. The basic laws of physics confirm that if a car or truck makes contact with me, I will bear the brunt of that encounter and the likelihood of a positive outcome seems negligible, at best. But my decision to commute came about gradually, only after I became confident in the willingness of my fellow travelers to help me arrive to work safely. While they still occur, near misses are few and far between and because I try to ride defensively for me and the cars around, I seldom feel overly stressed during my ride.

Occasionally I'll experience a near miss that makes me reflect and reassess the risks I run by cycling. Today that suggestion came courtesy of a semi truck that I fortunately predicted would not stay in his lane and I adjusted my path well enough in advance to make the situation much less of a close call. I was in in the outside left hand turn lane and this semi decided to take the inside. As I started my turn, I was already watching his path and calculated that our routes would make an intersection at the midpoint of my lane.

I didn't even consider playing chicken, especially with the size of my road neighbor's vehicle. I simply moved far to the right and gave him the use of his own lane and essentially all of mine. Now some people will read this and reach the conclusion that I am completely insane, as well as anyone else who makes this decision to ride alongside cars. While I won't deny a certain level of craziness, I don't think that I'm silly to ride my bike with the cars. Rather, those who have an extreme fear of riding with cars miscalculate the differences in two different types of risk measurement.

One measurement quantifies the probability that a negative event will occur. The other assesses the extent of the harm if a given event occurs. Stated another way, there is a difference between a substantial risk of harm and a risk of substantial harm. Thus, even if the chance of a automobile/bicycle collision is truly small, the extent of the harm if a collision were to occur would be great. Indeed, I am aware that my risk of death in such a collision is fairly high. So why do I do still ride? Because, like airline travel, the actual risk of a fatal accident is quite small.

I couldn't calculate the number of bike rides made in a year, but felt reassured when I learned that 726 cyclist died during 2012 in bicycle/motor vehicle collisions. Every death in those circumstances is tragic but I have ridden for years with peace and gratitude for my fellow travelers. So rather than worry about something really bad that might happen, but probably won't, I'm going to continue to look out and enjoy the ride.