Cycling Safety Tip: Most Bicycle Accidents Occur By What's In Front of a Cyclist

Video Transcription:

I read a statistic the other day which is a little surprising to me because I know that when I'm on the road riding I'm a little focused in my mind on cars coming behind me because we can't control it and we can't see it. But only about 7% of crashes occur because of a vehicle approaching or overtaking a cyclist.

The vast majority of our issues are gonna be something coming from your left or something coming from your right or straight ahead. So, I think if we keep our focus on where the real probabilities are, we'd go a long way to reducing the chances of something happening that we otherwise might control or prevent. So, we can't control the cars from behind us but we can control, a lot of times, all of what’s ahead of us, if we're really hyper vigilant about it.

So, keep that in mind as you go out and ride this weekend. Let's go where the numbers are. That's my tip of the day.

[southwirralcyclist]

I don't think this is surprising. Most accidents occur because a driver doesn't see a cyclist (or less frequently because a cyclist doesn't see a vehicle). A driver approaching a cyclist from behind will usually be able to see the cyclist for many seconds, whereas at a junction a driver only checks for cyclists by glancing left and right for a fraction of a second. The longer a cyclist is in the driver's line of sight the lower the risk of not being seen and therefore of an accident. The real message therefore is that when cycling you should make yourself as visible as possible. The obvious things are high vis clothing and lights, but road position is also crucial. Wherever possible cyclists need to maximise the time they're in the driver's eye line and should try to establish eye contact. Therefore don't cycle in the gutter and avoid blind spots around vehicles. If a cyclist is unable to make eye contact it's safest to assume the driver hasn't seen them and to plan to brake or swerve to avoid a collision.