Important Safety Tips for Florida Cyclists | Cycling Tip | Insurance, Helmet & Gear Tips for Cyclist

Three Safety Tips Every Florida Cyclist Should Know

1) The Importance of Having Uninsured Motorist Coverage on Your Auto Policy
The first is uninsured motorist coverage. In Florida, we have a huge problem with drivers having no insurance. 25% of the drivers on the road have zero insurance. And then we have the people who buy the bare minimum of liability of $10,000. And $10,000 in liability insurance will not get you to the emergency room. An emergency helicopter ride in Florida can cost you $45,000 in a heartbeat.

My message to cyclists is we have to self-insure ourselves, we protect ourselves against all these drivers who are not carrying enough insurance to protect us when they make a mistake and cause us harm. I have always said do not leave your home without a hundred thousand dollars in uninsured motorist coverage but I don't think that's enough. $250 is barely enough, what I would think is enough, but I would recommend more. If you can get $500, I'd recommend that, if you can get a million, I'd recommend that. Uninsured motorist coverage is so important because it covers you, it covers your spouse if you're married, and it covers your family who lives in your household with you. So uninsured motorist coverage protects each of you, you, your spouse, and your resident relatives, as a pedestrian if you're walking and get hit by a car, you're covered. If you're on your bicycle and you get hit by a car, you're covered. If you're driving in your car, you're covered. If you're a passenger in your car, you're covered. If you're in a friend's car, you're covered. If you have a rental car you're covered for UM.

If you have more than one car on your policy, you can stack, in Florida uninsured motorist coverage. So if you have two cars in your policy and you have a $250,000 policy, $250 per person, and $500,000 total for the collision, no one person can get more than $250. You can stack that, if you have two cars and that becomes $500,000 and a million it just doubles the coverage. If you have three cars, it triples the coverage. It is an inexpensive way to vastly increase your uninsured motorist coverage. You want to protect yourself, in my view from the worst-case scenario. If you do nothing else, from what I tell you today get your declarations page, call your agent, talk about increasing your uninsured motorist coverage and talk to them about stacking your coverage if you have multiple vehicles. But even if you have one vehicle in Florida, you can stack uninsured motorist coverage on one vehicle. And I recommend that you do.

2) The Importance of Wearing a Bicycle Helmet
Helmet technology has advanced tremendously in the last few years. The most common injury that we see in our practice with cycling crashes is a concussion. Your bike helmet is designed to operate in a millisecond to protect you and mitigate against a concussion. It's not foolproof, there's no guarantee that it'll protect you fully, but you want to mitigate, and make less serious the concussion chances less when you have a collision.

What I recommend is to go to the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab website, and they rate bicycle helmets. And I feel like I want a helmet in the top 10 and they'll have them by manufacturer and they'll have the rating for them. And you'll find BonTrager WaveCel, you'll find any number variety of manufacturers using the MIPS as well as Smith Koyard and Kineticore. Now, these are all different technologies but see how they rate out from Virginia Tech and find the one that you're most comfortable with.

3) The Importance of Wearing Hi-Vis Gear While Riding
So let me talk about what we wear, the clothing we wear on our bikes, and why I recommend what I recommend, which is high visibility clothing. And I recommend wearing as much as possible. I've spent a lot of time around cyclists and I understand a lot of clubs put out black jerseys and black kits. But the data is that when you wear black during the day you are invisible to a driver. And that's not me saying that that's just data, you are.

The critical thing for us on the bike is that we want to make sure we separate ourselves visually from all the clutter that's attracted, that the driver's looking around and through to see us. We need to stand out in their visual field and we have to stand out instantly. They're not scanning for us, they're not watching for us, we have to jump out into the visual field and how do you do that? With color high visibility color.

[ryanprasad]

That's the best explanation of stacking I have heard. But hoo boy uninsured coverage at those limits is expensive! I think I'll be cycling off of the public roads.

[gerardstrazzeri]

Great info Jim. Thanks for the knowledge and safety tips. The bicycling community needs this and more. As well as the auto drivers.

[captbill]

Thank you for sharing the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab suggestion. I personally was unaware of that research source, and a quick scan of that data has convinced me my 5 year old Bontrager helmet definitely is due for replacement!