By BILL HEINMILLER
Los Alamos

Sadly, I read in the Los Alamos Daily Post of an encounter between a bicyclist and a vehicle near Diamond & Orange at 9 p.m. on July 10 (link). The bicyclist was a 14-year-old boy and suffered “serious but non-life-threatening injuries.”

As a regular road bicyclist around Los Alamos, I can empathize with the rider, as being hit by a car is my own cycling nightmare. I continuously focus on avoiding it while riding. I approach that particular intersection with trepidation. It seems at times to have very short cycles. Seeing it turn green from 50 feet away while underway does not mean I will get through on that cycle.

Colliding with an automobile while biking is not fun. It can mean a life-changing event that no one should suffer at any age, much less at 14. I can testify from personal experience, albeit on a motorcycle instead of a bicycle, that hitting cars is not the way to spend your day. In my case, Incident 1 involved a car exiting a driveway from behind tall bushes and parked cars. Incident 2 involved hitting a small dog and careening out of control into an oncoming car.

I judge the overall respect for bicyclists here in Los Alamos excellent. Drivers routinely afford me ample clearance. On Diamond, usually a whole lane. On 501, drivers frequently straddle the double yellow when safe to do so for the brief time it takes to pass me. When right-turning motorists see me in the bike lane close to where they want to turn, they let me pass on their right before turning. Drivers also are patient when entering roads from the side, allowing me to pass first even though they could gun it and beat me if they so choose. When stopped at red lights, I stop 50 feet back so I don’t impede cars making right turns. Vehicles with DRL are wonderful from cyclist’s point of view. Some drivers without DRL turn their headlights on as they approach me from the rear. That makes their vehicle stand out like a beacon in my rear-view mirror. Believe me, that courtesy is much appreciated.

I have had only two close encounters of the chaotic kind.

• While riding in front of the high school, a driver veered into the bike lane but I could not move farther to the right due to the curb. Peripheral vision picked up a texting driver who quickly realized their mistake, presumably when their own peripheral vision picked up a cyclist a foot from their passenger window, and quickly moved back into the lane of traffic.
• Again, in front of the high school, at dismissal time in the midst of the LAHS 500. Bus drivers didn’t seem to care if there was a cyclist in the bike lane or not as they drove through it to pick up students waiting at the curb. One wonders if they will be fired if they are 10 seconds late. 

Cyclists are critical to their own safety. They really have only two tasks: Follow the rules and be visible. Being visible takes some work. From my own observations, I see cyclists,

• Wearing street clothes rather than bright clothes. Street clothes easily blend into the background of earth, buildings, shadows and trees, reducing driver margin. Note that on sunny days, it is clothing that dominates visibility.  
• Little to no lighting in use. On cloudy days it is lighting that dominates visibility.
• Over time I have seen the situation improving with more and more cyclists adopting hi-vis apparel and better lighting.

IMHO, stock reflectors and lights are nice but offer only limited standout visibility. So, road cyclists of all ages have to pick up the slack.

• Cyclists should wear very bright clothing. Hi-vis yellow, blue, red and orange are the best. They should have dyes that fluoresce in UV light in a solid or complex pattern out of the same colors that do not blend into backgrounds. Zillions are available. Avoid the Army green/tan camouflage jerseys that essentially say, “If You Can Find Me You Can Run Me Down!”
• Hi-vis shoes and socks. This creates a high-vis biological motion that is hard to miss. Kudos to one cyclist I saw with fluorescent green over-the-calf socks. Every motorist will see that rider! 
• Powerful forward and rear facing lights, flashing an irregular pattern. Steady lights simply do not attract attention. By powerful I mean ≥800 lumens forward and ≥150 lumens to the rear. Since tail lights are so much weaker than headlights, I use 2-3 on each ride. I have gotten compliment on my complement of lights.
• Needless to say, a bright helmet. When cresting a hill, that is the first thing drivers notice.
• Night riding changes everything. Flashing lights are paramount, as are multiple broad reflective bands on the clothing. Steady lights just blend into other lights and render the cyclist invisible.

Motorists are critical to cyclist safety, too. They don’t have to wear bright clothing, but we cyclists depend on them to heed our presence. Grant clearance, yield when entering from side roads, pass quickly on main roads, watch out for us on RTOR, and communicate by signaling intentions.

New Mexico recently joined several other states in allowing bicyclists to (a) treat stop signs as yield signs, and (b) treat red lights as stop signs. First of all, Part (a) is no change. Motorists and cyclists alike already treat stop signs as yield signs. The only difference between a stop sign and a yield sign is the speed at which everyone goes through them. Part (b) is a mixed blessing. Yes, it allows cyclists to leave an intersection away from the cluster of vehicles created when the light turns green, but it also transfers control of cyclist travel through the intersection from the traffic light, an engineered device, to the cyclist, a subjective device prone to human error. I use it with caution and deliberation.

In the end when bike meets car, it doesn’t matter who followed the rules and who didn’t. It all comes down to who is still walking and breathing after the encounter. In these types of contests, the driver of the car will always come out doing both. Fortunately, the young rider in the Los Alamos Daily Post article is also still doing both. So, I and hopefully many others certainly wish him a full recovery.