Person on Bicycle hit by Car Yesterday around 6:30pm —how a person on a bicycle can protect themselves from a car

A person on bicycle was hit by car yesterday afternoon. The light was green for both directions of traffic, and the person on the bicycle was coming out of Hollywood going into downtown Homewood at Ventura Road. The car was turning left onto highway 31 coming out of downtown Homewood. Below, the bicycle is yellow line moving left and the car is in red moving right:

Bicycle path in yellow and automobile path in red.

Let me give a bit of the background about why this happened: Homewood is being overrun by aggressive people driving cars daily — it has to do with the location of Homewood being between where people live and where people work. People driving cars think Homewood neighborhoods are their shortcuts. They aren’t paying attention, and they don’t care about your neighborhood.

Over the past 5 years, I have ridden about 10,000 miles commuting on a bicycle. Below, I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned:

How to ride a bicycle in a way that protects you from a car

1. Be a human — when people are friendly drivers, let them know. Give them a peace sign. Make friends with good drivers. Cars do a good job of isolating people from the environment. These car cabins prevent people from having human-to-human connections with other road participants. Do the best you can to break that isolation of the driver so that they understand you as a human and not an obstacle.
2. Make eye contact — the person driving the car is going to go where their eyes are looking. If you see the driver’s eyes, and you understand the driver sees you, you have reduced the probability they are distracted. If you don’t see their eyes, that means they are driving on auto-pilot — either distracted, not paying attention, or going through the motions. At that point, you have two options: get their attention or stay out away from the front side of their vehicle.
3. Use your voice and hands to communicate with drivers — learn to ride a bicycle with one hand so you can use your other hand for turn signals, stop signals, and peace signs. If a driver is distracted, yell at them or wave at them — not aggressively, but to get their attention. Because most people who ride bikes have more experience in the isolating experience of driving a car, we forget that our arms and legs and voice have abilities for communication. Use them. Wave. Hand signals. Yell. Talk.
4. Watch how road structure sets the driver patterns—on a straight road, moving cars can only go forwards and backwards. At right turns, drivers look left and turn automatically (because right-on-red laws aren’t enforced). Green lights at intersections cause drivers to accelerate so they don’t get stopped. In a car, drivers check out and don’t really pay attention to these patterns. As a person on a bike, without a safety cage, you’ll need to learn them. If you are following closely behind a car, stay directly behind the driver side of the car. From there, you can watch for quick right turns, and oncoming traffic that may intend to turn across your lane.
5. When going through intersections, take the lane, be seen, and look for the eyes of drivers. Just as straight roads mean cars go straight, intersections mean cars are turning many different directions. If you are following a car, give yourself space so that you can see the eyes of the oncoming traffic. After seeing their eyes, watch for the eyes of the drivers who may be turning right from your right. Moving through a busy intersection on a bike is a series of addressing “the next risk”. You do this by looking for eyes, and by using your voice / hands / arms / legs to confirm you are being seen. Don’t feel goofy if you are waving at people to confirm they wave back.
6. A parked car is most unpredictable, give them the widest birth. Doors can open. People can run out of it. It can reverse. It can u-turn. Be prepared for anything from a parked car. Give them the widest birth. If you are approaching a parked car, look to see if the car has a driver or a passenger. Using the cars mirrors to see the driver is a little hack that you can determine if a car is occupied.
7. Use your ears. People in cars think they are silent because modern cars are isolation chambers. But, as people on bicycles, we know that cars are loud. Their tires, their engines, their out of balance wheels, the rough road, it all makes a sound that can be heard from a significant distance. Like a train whistle, you can even tell if a car is driving towards you without looking because the engine will be a higher pitch.
8. Look for signs on the car — if a car is dented up, stay away from that car. This person is already known to be a bad driver by the state of their car. Let that driver go.