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Bicycle Accident Victim’s Fund

12.12.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 4 Comments

Every so often, we hear of a car-bike accident that leaves the cyclist dead or severely injured.  We shake our heads and cluck about the sorry state of affairs.  Maybe we even keep tabs on the case, to see what (if any) penalty is imposed on the driver.

Now, there’s more concrete help for victims of car-bike crashes.  It’s called the Bicycle Accident Victim’s Fund.  Based on Boulder, Colorado, the BAVF actually comprises two separate funds — one to help with legal bills as a result of a car-bike crash, and one to help with non-legal expenses.

The Bicycle Accident Victims Assistance Fund is designed to help bicyclists defer non-legal expenses.  The Bicycle Accident VAF is made possible by donations and in-kind services from corporations, foundations, individuals, government agencies, participants of organized events, and philanthropists, club and team memberships.  They also sell RiderID — a sticker you attach to your bike that connects you to a national registry of rider information.

The second fund is called the Bicycle Accident Legal Defense Fund (LDF). This is the one that helps with legal bills, and according to the BAVF news release, is funded by annual memberships from law firms.

To qualify for assistance from these funds, the bicyclist must not be at fault in the crash, and must be in the 48 contiguous states or the District of Columbia.  Sorry, Alaska and Hawaii.

The fund is just starting up.  It will accept applications for funding for crashes that happen after December 31, 2010, and expects to start paying out sometime during the first quarter of 2011.

It’s an interesting — and in my view, welcome — concept.  I’m not sure about the RiderID, though.  It strikes me as much the same thing as RoadID — but stuck to the bike, instead of worn by the rider.  Frankly, I don’t want a sticker on my bike.  I’ve had bikes in the past that I had to put registration stickers on, and they’re not aesthetically pleasing.  I wonder if the BAVF could have partnered with RoadID to do something similar.

In fairness to the RiderID concept, the BAVF news release notes that 100 percent of the proceeds from the sale of RiderID will go to the Bicycle Accident Victims Assistance Fund.

In any case, I’m glad to know that cyclists who find themselves on the losing end of a car-bike crash now have a way to recover some of the costs of recovery.

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Categories // crash Tags // advocacy, crash

Causes of Bike Crashes

11.18.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

I recently came across data from two different sources that sheds some light on the causes of bicycle crashes.  The first is a report from the Twin Cities Bike Club of Minnesota.  The second is a report prepared by the city of Fort Collins, Colorado.  While the two sets of data covered different time periods and were compiled in different ways, they are interesting to look at.

The Twin Cities Bike Club has a Safety Committee that compiles records of all of its members’ bike crashes throughout the year.  The most recent data is from 2009.  In all, 34 crashes were reported,  and they fell into three categories:

Falling from a bike, 23; bike-bike collisions, 5; and bike-car collisions, 6.

The falls ran the gamut of causes, from silly to unfortunate.  My favorite: “Rider was drinking from camelback with one hand and braking with the other while negotiating a curve, went down.”  Other falls happened because of trouble with pedals and cleats, skidding on wet pavement, going off a paved bike trail, and handlebar grips coming loose.

Falls aren’t a laughing matter, though.  Falls can hurt.

In Fort Collins, the city’s report didn’t count falls from bikes.  It focused solely on car-bike crashes, with an eye to making the city’s streets safer for commuters.  It covers police reports filed between Jan. 1, 2007-June 30, 2009.  In all, 354 bike-car crashes were studied.  The conclusion:  Both motorists and cyclists share the blame.

The biggest cause of bike-car crashes may be considered somewhat of a surprise: Bikes traveling against traffic and ending up in a broadside collision with a car.  These kinds of crashes accounted for more than half of the fatal or severe injury crashes, and 60 percent of all crashes, in the report.  A broadside is a crash when a bike hits a car on a perpendicular road.

A broadside crash in the making.

Those of us who ride regularly might be surprised to learn that most of the broadsides happened when the bike was riding against traffic.  Part of the reason might be that Fort Collins, a city of about 140,000 people, is home to Colorado State University, which enrolls 26,300 students.  Many of these students commute to campus by bike.  The city’s bike coordinator says the crash data shows that university students could benefit from bicycle education efforts.

Other car-bike crashes included the overtaking, or “right hook” crash, where a car passes a bike, then turns right.  Those were 13 percent of the crashes.  Sideswipes, where bikes and cars were going in either the same or opposite directions, accounted for seven percent.

The Twin Cities crash data is less clear about the causes of bike-car crashes.  Only one seemed to fit the “right hook” description, and none apparently were broadsides.  Inattention by cyclists was the evident cause of some crashes: A rider was hit in a right turn lane, and another rider crashed into the back of a school bus when the bus suddenly stopped for railroad tracks.

So, what do we learn from these very different reports?  Both bikers and motorists have lots of room for improvement.  Clearly, if you ride predictably and obey the rules of the road, your chances of tangling with a car diminish.  But you must be alert and attentive all the while you are on your bike.  It’s not just the cars that can knock you down.  It’s yourself, too.

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Categories // crash, Safety Tags // crash

Falling Into Fall

09.23.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 2 Comments

Guest poster Don Blount recalls a year-old incident.

The first day of fall brings back memories of the day I first fell. At least the day I fell badly enough to suffer a significant injury. It was Sept. 22, 2009 and I was halfway through a 46-mile ride. The turnaround point was at an area nature preserve and I had gone to the visitors center to look for a trashcan to throw away a banana peel.

A long driveway and sidewalk leads to and from the visitors’ center, and as I was on my way out, a car was on its way in. The driveway is just wide enough for two oncoming cars to pass each other if they go slowly. As the car approached, I moved to get over and onto the sidewalk to be completely out the driver’s way.

I vaguely remember the feeling of falling. I clearly remember the pain of being slammed to the ground. And then the next thing I remembered was someone, the driver of the car, asking me if I was alright.

It took me a bit to collect myself, check my bike and then ride the remaining 23 miles home – with a fractured left wrist.

The gap shown in the photos is what caught my front tire. The sidewalk is about an inch higher than the road surface and that gap is just wide enough to trap a tire.

I watch out for these little road inconsistencies more closely now and work hard at keeping the rubber side down.

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Categories // crash, Injury Tags // crash, fall, Injury

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