Bike Snob - Anonymous [58]
Listen
When you’re riding in a group of cyclists, it’s pretty easy to crash, since you’re really only as safe as the worst rider. All it takes is for one person to swerve or panic-stop for the entire ride to collapse on itself like Michael Jackson’s nose. But as any experienced racer will tell you, the first sign of a crash is usually the sound it makes. So keep your ears open, especially in groups. Hearing the crash can give you that extra fraction of a second to take evasive action before you get caught up in it.
Observe the Rules
I’m not one for mindlessly following rules. Don’t use your cell phone in the movies?!? What-ever. If I need to conduct urgent credit card—related business with a Bangladeshi call center at the top of my voice during a tender love scene, I’m going to do it! Otherwise it could cut into my riding time.
However, traffic-related rules need to be taken a bit more seriously. I’m not saying you need to obey all of them, but if you’re interested in crash avoidance you should at least be aware of them. The problem isn’t you, either—you could be the most adept renegade cyclist in the world. But the fact is when you venture into the world of lawless riding you encounter other outlaws. And not all outlaws are good outlaws. Some are vigilantes on the side of justice, some are criminals, and some are just outright crazy. You may be smart enough to run a light without getting hit by a car, but you might not take into account the other cyclist coming through the intersection who has the green light but is also riding the wrong way down a one-way street. Lawless cycling is just a crazy, topsy-turvy, mixed-up world where up is down, stop is go, and the laws of gravity don’t seem to apply.
Obviously, you can still crash if you follow every single traffic rule in nerd-like fashion, but the fact is it does improve your odds considerably. That’s all I’m saying.
Ride a Lot
The more you ride your bike the better you get at it, and the better you get at riding your bike the more likely you are not to fall off of it. Unless you’re Cadel Evans. That guy crashes all the time.
Don’t Drink
Cyclists love to vilify people who drink and drive, yet we are almost completely unwilling to address the problem of drinking and cycling. The truth is, many of us drink and ride. I know I do, and I admit I’ve crashed into things as a result. Still, we manage to congratulate ourselves for not driving home from the bar despite the fact that we’re weaving home on our bikes like First Avenue is a loom.
Drinking and cycling is like drinking and flirting—it’s pretty likely you’re going to wind up hitting something, and the results are probably going to be ugly. And while it’s relatively easy to avoid a person afterwards and pretend sex didn’t happen, giving a lamppost a fake number isn’t going to make either it or your swelling go away.
Don’t Listen to Other People
(A moving and cinematic personal account—film rights available.)
A particularly potent cause of crashes is peer pressure. You might think that the likelihood of peer pressure—related crashes decreases as you get older, but this is not the case. At least not if you’re me.
The year was 1984. The movie 1984 had just come out, Van Halen had just released the album 1984, and I was partying like it was 1984, which meant riding around the neighborhood on my BMX bike with a bunch of other kids, looking for places to do tricks. At some point, we happened upon a table with folding legs, the sort upon which you might play bridge, or atop of which you might find a platter of cold cuts at the VFW hall. If you’ve seen Close Encounters of the Third