The Victim’s Fault
On Thursday, a cyclist was killed on the University of Minnesota campus. She was riding on a street with a designated bike lane, following traffic laws, and riding as predictably as possible: going in a straight line through an intersection. A truck at this intersection turned right across her right of way and struck and killed her. This category of accident — driver failing to yield right of way to bicycle — is the #1 cause of bicycle deaths in Minnesota.
So how might you imagine reporting on this would look? “A driver has struck and killed a cyclist in Dinkytown today”? “A tragic reminder for drivers to be more alert around bicycles”? Nope. Instead, a written report begins:
A 25-year-old woman is dead after her bicycle collided with a semi-truck Thursday morning.
No, actually, false. She would not have died if she had collided with the truck. Human + bicycle generally weighs <100 kg, and is itself of lethal threat to almost nobody, including its rider. It was rather the fact that the truck collided with her that’s the issue here.
The video is even worse. The reporter snottily notes that “she wasn’t wearing a helmet, but she was wearing headphones.” Neither of these behaviors is illegal in Minnesota. Potentially, it is not advisable to wear headphones in city traffic, but the problem with pointing that out is that it suggests that the victim’s distraction was a cause of the problem. She was behaving correctly. And anyone who has ever ridden a bicycle in a city knows that you notice a semi-truck. There is no doubt in my mind that she was this truck. Her (reasonable) assumption is that the truck both saw her and legally yielded to her.
So whose fault is it? The driver’s, obviously; he may have not been able to see the cyclist, but that reminds his and the truck’s fault. If a vehicle that large and dangerous going to be operating adjacent to a bike lane (and turning across it), it needs to be able to see cyclists.
But it’s not just the driver. The other fault lies with the road designers and engineers. In Minnesota, the preferred way to handle right turning traffic on a street with bike lanes is to provide a right turn lane to the right of the bike lane. This means that cars have 30-50 meters to negotiate with cycles and get into the right turn lane. At the intersection, there is no conflict, because they have already crossed the bike lane. In this case, there was no dedicated right turn lane, so right turning traffic had to cross the bike lane at the intersection.
Copenhagen has a different attitude, that keeps bikers closer to sidewalk and less mingled with traffic. Copenhagen has no one standard intersection, but many approaches. The above diagram, according to a paper called Livable Copenhagen, is a fairly optimal intersection: the separated cycle track ends before the intersection, but bikes have a narrow painted lane to proceed without being blocked by cars. The staggered stop lines means that, on a red light turning green, cyclists are far more visible to right-turning cars (also bear in mind that, unlike in Minnesota, standard intersection behavior does not allow for right turns on red). The intersection itself also has a very clearly marked bicycle crosswalk to indicate the path of cycles and remind cars of their presence.
Minneapolis needn’t adopt all of these things, but at least a couple of them could have prevented this accident:
- A marked bike crosswalk would have reminded the driver that there is through-traffic of cycles.
- Staggered stop lines (only possible with no right turn on red) would have potentially kept him a bit further back before entering the intersection.
In any case, while it’s important cyclists behave appropriately, it always behooves the bigger and stronger to watch out. These are not tragic accidents; they’re tragic symptoms of bad design and bad behavior.
