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Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on September 26, 2013 at 7:55pm

While we're on the topic of talking about personal crashes, I've had three!

The first was when I slipped on a huge pile of salt, fell over, and slid for several feet on my left side, bruising my hip and leg. (January 2006)

The second was when I rode a fixed gear bike for the third time, saw a pothole, decided to coast over it, before realizing I couldn't do that. The crank arms flipped me over the front of the bike. I got major road rash, with bits of asphalt embedded in my skin for a week. (June 2007)

The third was when I was biking home from Jewel (Roosevelt/Ashland) to home in Pilsen via Roosevelt and got t-boned by an elderly driver going about 5-10 MPH. I got knocked to the ground, landed on my back (actually on my backpack) and spent the night in the hospital. (September 2007)

That all happened in 2 years!

I think my point in the Curious City segment came across just fine: there's no way to tell the level of danger of cycling in the city and there's no point in doing so. 

Chelsi asked me in the interview (which lasted about an hour at the studio), "What's one thing we can do in Chicago [to make it safer]?" I didn't think about my answer for very long at all. I quickly, mentally, ran down the list: increased enforcement, separate infrastructure, mobility education, speed cameras, etc. but settled on "go slower". And this would apply to everyone. And it's a conscious choice we can all make. Going slower gives us more time to think about our next action. Going slower also means less injury when there is a crash. 

However, I'm going to start doing a better job in not contributing to the "dangerization" of cycling.

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Permalink Reply by Carter O'Brien on September 27, 2013 at 4:00am

Yeah, I definitely increasingly value the wisdom of slowing down as I get older and I'm a bit more in touch with my mortality. It's also good to remember that trying to accelerate your way around/through a dangerous traffic situation can just result in a worse accident, I see this all time.

I'd add that your ears can be as valuable as your eyes.  I avoided getting doored a week or so ago by sheer virtue of the fact I heard a door unlatch ahead of me (passenger side guy exiting a car stopped in traffic), and that gave me the half a second to yell, prepare and execute swerving out of the way without hitting anything else while doing so.  Dude slowed down his exit a hair (although he didn't actually stop getting out of the car, ugh) and the door missed me by 2", tops. 

That said, that was the closest I've come to being doored all year, and probably in several years. 

Steven Vance said:

Chelsi asked me in the interview (which lasted about an hour at the studio), "What's one thing we can do in Chicago [to make it safer]?" I didn't think about my answer for very long at all. I quickly, mentally, ran down the list: increased enforcement, separate infrastructure, mobility education, speed cameras, etc. but settled on "go slower". And this would apply to everyone. And it's a conscious choice we can all make. Going slower gives us more time to think about our next action. Going slower also means less injury when there is a crash. 

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