Dept. of Bad Ideas: Multitasking on a bike on a busy road
Posted on August 21st, 2008 – 6:05 AMBy Roadguy
Roadguy is on the road again today, so for your reading pleasure he’s reached into his mailbag and pulled up a li’l something that alert reader Amy sent along a couple of weeks ago:
I had reason to be on Snelling Ave. in Roseville this afternoon. Snelling is all ripped up, under heavy construction, and with the stoplights, traffic was backed up for blocks. While idling away at a red light, I looked over and saw a teenage girl, weaving and swerving on a bike. At first I thought there was something wrong. But no — she was steering with one hand and texting on her phone with the other. Eyes on the phone, of course. In heavy traffic, in a construction zone. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe she was just dialing a number, but no, it just went on and on.
My jaw still hurts from where it hit the steering wheel!
Maybe she was texting her legislator to ask whether the texting ban applies to bicyclists…
24 Responses to "Dept. of Bad Ideas: Multitasking on a bike on a busy road"
In a discussion on another article about bicycling I got chided for not wearing a helmet and wearing headphones on a bicycle by someone who thought this was unsafe, and possibly illegal since you can’t wear headphones driving a car for some reason and since “all the rights and responsibilites of a motor vehicle” apply to bicycle, wearing headphones while bicycling would be illegal by extension.
Presumably texting on a bicycle would be illegal too. Anyone have an answer about whether you can wear headphones or text on a bicycle? Does it matter if you stay on the trails like I do, or if you ride on public roads?
In the big picture though it seems bicycling is pretty safe, helmet or headphones or no, and even accounting for the occasional texter. In my job at a health insurance company, I’ve processed 50,000+ claims and only seen one bicycle accident, compared to hundreds of car accidents or the untold number of fat slobs who kept eating pie and ice cream on the sofa instead of going out bicycling and now have diabetes or are getting their stomachs stapled.
My question is does your jaw also hit the steering wheel when you see a driver swerving all over the place while texting?
I do wear headphones while biking (and a helmet, light, etc), because they’re the only way I can answer my phone before it shunts to voice mail. And before your readers’ righteous indignation kicks in: I pull off the road and stop when I’m on the phone, and most of the time I don’t answer.
I do wonder sometimes whether or not those bluetooth devices people leave hanging out of their ears (on bikes and in cars) are considered headphones or not. If not, would it be legal for me to wear just one of my ear buds?
This post is nothing but a blatent attempt to start a bike v. car comment war. For shame, Roadguy!
Pretty sure headphones while biking isn’t allowed. It would obviously be safer on a trail but the law wouldn’t make an exception for that.
Sum1 cl1p hr valvstem b4 she hurts hrslf lolomg.
Bike v. Car debate will never die…
I’m not quite sure what ‘alert reader Amy’ is saying. Did the cyclist texting cause your accident? In a construction zone with reduced speed? This post should be labeled ‘Driver Error’.
I’ve nearly been hit on my bike several times this summer by Drivers on their Cell Phone/Texting/Gawking/Etc.
Everyone Please>> pay attention, turn on your lights, put down the phone…
NO ONE WANTS AN ACCIDENT.
Of course, when you read the comments on today’s article about Wayzata and locally-issued tickets, you’ll see that most most of those people think that tickets are only a way to increase police coffers, and getting a ticket for going 5-10 over is “just stupid anyway”. I wonder how many of those people crying because they got a “rolling stop” ticket at 9pm on a quite side street (i.e. no danger to anyone) are the same people crying for cyclists to be ticketed more because “cyclists all think they own the road and never obey laws”…
Again, this whole debate goes back to driver looking at bikes as “different then themselves” thus making cyclists targets of this sort of unrealistic expectation. Maybe I’ll start emailing Roadguy every time I see a car driver doing something stupid. He’s gonna get a lot of mail…
Amy’s story reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw recently. It said:
Darwin Loves You
Bad driving habits starting early? Maybe once the teenage girl on the bike gets her driver’s license (if she doesn’t have one already), she will follow all the rules of the road and use good common sense.
My wife says I should try to be more optimistic.
Call me cynical, but if I believed that people’s never ending propensity for acting stupidly only resulted in their own ruin and demise, I’d be all for the freedom to pursue their own interests. The unfortunate reality, though, is that your stupid actions may have dire consequences for someone else - and that’s criminal! If you choose to engage in extremely foolish behavior and put yourself and others at risk - please - simply put a loaded gun to your head and pull the trigger. You’re playing Russian Roulette with other people’s lives and welfare and that’s simply not fair. How many accidents and deaths have to occur before we wake up to this? How many of those 50,000+ accident claims you’ve processed, Monte, were caused by someone else’s irresponsible behavior? If you don’t track that information, why not? When will people start being held accountable for their actions? If not by the police, or insurance companies, or society - then by whom?
I should emphasize that they weren’t all accident claims, just claims that were flagged for manual review. There are multiple reasons such is coding errors, multiple insurances, high dollar amounts, unique contract benefits that a claim could be flagged. If an accident is involved it is guaranteed to be flagged because of all the potential liablity issues. With accident claims I don’t get involved in who did what, That’s for our subrogation and legal departments to sort out so I hand it off to them.
That’s not to say I don’t have ample stupidity stories, I very much regret I cannot cite examples because of privacy regulations, but if you knew some of the stuff your health insurance and tax dollars are paying for you would be disgusted. Insurance companies do what they can to encourage good behavior with advertising campaigns, fitness center discounts and premiums incentives but ultimately there’s no “stupidity exclusion” in our customer’s contracts. My guess is that at least 20% of our dollar amount is paid for stupidity, running the range from suicide attempts to eating Big Macs instead of veggies.
Monte, do you know if there’s been an attempt to reduce or preclude insurance payments when the claim is the direct result of stupidity? My understanding is that, life insurance is not collectable in the event the death is a result of suicide. So why not in the event of:
Driving w/o seatbelt
DUI (both driving and boating)
Motorcycling w/o helmet
Bicycling w/o helmet
Snowmobile plunges thru ice
Falling asleep while smoking
God, the list is endless.
I’m thinking that Amy was more concerned as to where this young girl’s common sense was.
Recently in Eden Prairie I saw an adult woman crossing in the crosswalk at a controlled intersection (on a red light) text messaging on her cell phone. Totally immersed in her texting that she didn’t see cars stopping for her. She wasn’t walking fast either; she was slowly walking while she was texting. Nothing happened to her and she will probably keep doing this behavior until she gets hit and injured.
I don’t see this as being another car vs. bike issue, but as a common sense, use your brain issue.
Most people who drink alcohol do so responsibly. They know enough to not drink too much to begin with, or to not drive or engage in other risky behaviors while under the influence of alcohol. But because there are people who don’t know where to draw that line, there are laws. The laws don’t prevent the behavior, but they provide recourse when someone’s irresponsible behavior causes danger or harm to someone else. I see little difference with cellphone use, particularly text-messaging. The state draws a line in the sand and says if your blood alcohol level is .08+, you are legally defined as drunk and may be held accountable. Where is the line in the sand for idiots and their cellphones? How many near misses are there because someone who’s supposed to be paying attention isn’t because their using their $*!#%$@ cellphone? It isn’t until they actually cause an accident, or are involved in one that they realize they’ve been living on borrowed time.
I work in the “engine room”, not the “boardroom”, so I don’t know. There are really three different problems.
First of all, the insurance industry, more so than say a bank, attracts people who want to “help” other people. This gives the industry a liberal slant, and personal responsibility is not a liberal value.
Secondly, to take the example of a teenager texting. Suppose she rams her bike into a car and then we deny her claim. Her sob story is going to be plastered all over the media, not the story about how we’re saving our intelligent customers 20% on their premiums. To use a real example, with the I-35W bridge disaster the insurance companies decided not to go after the money paid by the state as compensation even though the compensation was intended in part for health care expenses, expenses which the insurance companies already paid for. Doing so would have been a public relations disaster. Insurance companies are already regarded on the same level as the IRS and collection agencies by most people, so we’re sensitive about bad press. Unlike the IRS it’s a free market so people can choose our competition when it’s time to renew.
Finally, there are all kinds of laws and regulations, and more keep coming. If we tried to deny coverage to obese people how long do you think it would take for a law to be passed. Going after people not wearing seatbelts might be more palatable to the public but the saving would be relatively small. Only a fraction of the claims coming through here are reviewed, and only some of those are auto accident claims, and the auto insurance companies will pay first up to the limit of their medical pay provisions.
So about all that’s been done is to jack up the rates for smokers, offer discounts to people that participate in health incentives, pay preventive care at first dollar, and write exlusions for behavior that goes beyond stupid into outragous, like traveling in a war zone or committing a felony.
Great posts, Pete2, especially the first one. I couldn’t agree more: if they only hurt themselves, bring it on, cull the herd. Unfortunately that’s not the case.
I used to get worked up when I saw someone doing something stupid while driving, but it got to the point where it’s like a third of the drivers I see, so I decided to quit stressing out over the unbelievable ignorance of people, since they’re so dumb there’s no hope for them. I just pray it’s them who’s hurt when the inevitable disaster strikes.
I would love to see one of the TV crews do an expose’ on the subject, find people putting on makeup, working on their laptop, eating a bowl of cereal, reading the paper, etc. while driving and follow them to their destination and just ask them: what the @&#* are you thinking?!?
Speaking of stupid drivers causing harm/damage to others, I was run off the road last Friday by a semi that failed to yield to me at a merge point. I was on SB 280 heading to WB 94. At one point there is an onramp from University and Franklin Aves. that joins the ramp onto WB 94, but it has its own lane for awhile before merging.
I was in the left through lane when the truck came beside me. At the point where his lane has a sign that says “Lane ends merge left” he began coming into my lane. I laid on my horn and he looked in his mirror, made eye contact and kept coming, forcing me off the road. He rendered my passenger mirror on my van useless.
I got back on the road behind him, but I couldn’t change lanes since I couldn’t see out the right side. Fortunately I was going SB on 35W so didn’t need to change lanes. When the “exit only” signs came for 35W SB, the truck moved over and I was able to get beside him and see he drove for Northridge Express out of Clearwater.
At this point I pulled over and was able to rig my mirror to make it operable. I also called my wife and had her look up the number to Northridge Express to call his boss.
His boss was belligerent and basically had a “who cares” attitude. When I told him my next call was to the State Patrol he said “if that’s the case, this call is over”. I told him I just made a courtesy call to him, because I thought he might like to know he has a potentially lethal driver working for him.
My wife was incensed by this whole thing and called to get some more answers. She was transferred to a safety guy who had the actual driver of the truck call her. He said it was my lane that ended and that any damage was my fault. I went back and took pictures of the scene and sign and then called his boss and said “not that you seem to care, but I thought you might like to know that not only is that guy a deadly driver who uses his rig to force his way into traffic instead of yielding the right of way, buy he’s also a bold-faces liar”.
I sent two quotes to them to fix the mirror, but they have not replied. Great company, huh?
lol, texting while riding/driving…thats like typing a report while watching spongebob squarepants.
But Morg….. if I recall, you’re the one who claims to pee in a plastic bottle on long trips to save the time and trouble of stopping. I would think that would be a rather distracting and potentially hazardous occupation while driving.
Game over. botski wins the thread.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a guy on a bike who, I think, beats Amy’s teenager. This young man was riding in fairly heavy traffic on Blaisell, holding his phone with one hand, and gesticulating with his other hand while he talked. In other words, no hands on the bike. No helmet, either. When he came to a red light, he continually rode in a small circle in front of the stopped cars, so he wouldn’t have to stop his bike. I marveled at his ability to ride no-hands, but I was becoming nervous that he would either lose control of his bike and fall in front of a car, or that he’d be so unaware of something happening in the traffic that there’d be trouble.
I hate to read stories like this; not because I don’t find examples of human stupidity amusing (I do!), but because reports like this will cause the nannies in the government of the People’s Republic of Minnesota to pass more laws in their never-ending and futile attempt to legislate common sense.
If I was in charge (which is a horrifying thought), I would simply increase incentives, both positive and negative, for consistently demonstrating common sense. For example, if you choose to bike with a helmet, you get a decreased insurance rate. If you get in an accident because you were text messaging, then you pay a penalty.
Ok, probably not realistic, but I think my stupidity tax idea would work better than endlessly passing laws.
It’s called survival of the fittest. If you are this stupid you do not deserve to pass down your genes and it would be a benefit if you didn’t.
Monte, regarding ice cream and big macs, I would recommend you do some reading before you continue to offend some people.
http://www.addictionrecov.org/foodwhat.htm
