<p>(Which really infuriates me because most bike riders absolutely ignore this: “Whenever any person is riding a bicycle upon a sidewalk, such person shall yield the right of way to any pedestrian”)</p>
<p>OP, please ignore the bored to the bones kids trolling the Parents’ Cafe. Clearly, in this situation it was the driver’s fault. I’m not shocked that the person never stopped… there are just too many a-hole drivers on the road. Just a week or so ago, a Seatte bicyclist was killed by an SUV that never stopped…</p>
<p>Dmd - Of course you are blaming him. Do you think he got what he deserved? Isn’t it nice to be able to dismiss all the bad things that happen to people by writing it off as their own fault? I mean, what isn’t the individual’s fault, when you get down to it?</p>
<p>Exactly why I didn’t get into detail about the accident in the OP. Someone would jump in and pass judgment.</p>
<p>BB - thanks. Just last week a car turned exactly the same way in front of a motorcycle, except HE was in the right-hand lane. He smashed into the car and ended up in the hospital. Some of the streets here are extremely dangerous on a bike. They have no shoulder, lots of grates, etc., and fast moving traffic which is often oblivious to bikes and motorcycles regardless of where they are.</p>
<p>I’m with dmd here: regardless of the legality, cycling on the sidewalks is inadvisable, for just the reason dmd said.</p>
<p>Momofthreeboys, your car has brakes. If you can’t pass the cyclist with three feet to spare, you must wait until it is safe to pass. “There wasn’t room to pass but I decided to pass anyway,” is not a defense in law, nor would it make you feel better if you struck and killed a cyclist. It astounds me that drivers will pass me with six inches to spare, when they would never squeeze by a car that close. Apparently my life is worth less than someone’s bumper.</p>
<p>Sylvan: this is a conversation I have with my daughter quite regularly. I don’t think anyone deserves to be hit by a car. BUT… </p>
<p>While I think it is the responsibility of all of us to try to avoid hitting cars, pedestrians, cyclists, strollers, etc., I think that it is ALSO the responsibility of the other drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, moms, dads, etc., to try to avoid BEING HIT. Thus, I look both ways and then move quickly when I walk across the street. I wear bright colors when I cycle–and look for colors never found in nature, as well. I try to be in places where I will be easily seen. Cyclists on sidewalks are not easily seen. Therefore, I think it’s a dangerous place to be.</p>
<p>sylvan, so sorry about the accident. I wonder if this was a problem, not because your son was on a bike, but because it was caused by a hit-and-run driver. Since, as you say, this area is very dangerous and has been the cause of other accidents, you might also want to ask your lawyer if you should be suing your town.</p>
Yes, but given that the street is ALSO dangerous, how do you determine which is the MORE dangerous situation? It seems to me that the street is dangerous at every point along its length (in terms of potential collisions with cars) while the sidewalks are only dangerous at intermittent points where cars are pulling in or out of driveways, businesses, etc. </p>
<p>Ultimately, more bike lanes and paths are needed to allow bikers safer alternatives. People here don’t want to pay for those, since the riding season is not exactly 12 months a year, as it were.</p>
<p>As many of you know from reading my other posts on CC, my husband was in a serious bike accident eight weeks ago. We got a form from the health insurance company last week that he needs to fill out and send in, basically asking him how he sustained his injuries. Thing is, we don’t know because he was on a bike path, riding alone and crashed. His bike was unscathed so we don’t think he had a collision with a car or anything. Oh, to clarify, he had a concussion and has no memory of what happened, or even where on the bike path he was. But he thinks what is likely, is that he slammed on his brakes to avoid something and went flying over the handlebars. Could have been a car as this path does have occasional intersections with sidewalks and roadways. But we’ll never know. A good samaritan found him and brought him home, but for all we know, this good samaritan may have been the one who H was trying to avoid. The path parallels a state road by up to 30-50 feet depending on where you are and the area between the road and the path is mostly wooded, so we don’t know how he was found unless the crash took place at the intersection of a sidewalk/street because otherwise no one would have seen him lying on the path due to the woods. Of course, it also could have been a squirrel, deer, rabbit, skunk, etc. that he tried to avoid hitting. </p>
<p>Anyway, our health insurance will be stuck paying for it since we have no details to support a theory that a car caused it, although it is likely that’s what happened.</p>
<p>Oh, summary damage to H: concussion, broken clavicle that required surgery to put in a plate and screws (isn’t done anymore unless it’s a really bad break), six badly broken ribs and a pulmonary contusion. Our out-of-pocket will probably run around $2500 when all is said and done. He still has a couple of more doctor and physical therapy appts.</p>
Thank your son for doing what is known to be a dangerous activity, likely with little regard for pedestrians, in a manner that may have been illegal in your municipality, as it is in many. If you act in a reckless manner, you shouldn’t blame others when you end up hurting yourself.</p>
<p>In NYS, it is against the law for anyone over the age of 14 to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk. It is also no longer a requirement for anyone over 14 to wear a helmet but I hope your son was. </p>
<p>My husband has a case slightly similar to yours in NY also. His client, an elderly man, was riding his bike when someone opened their car door and he fell down. I am not sure if the door hit him, he rode into the door or he fell trying to avoid the door. At this point, the driver’s insurance is covering the first $50K in bills under no-fault (he had broken bones and needed to be in a rehab facility for a while). The police refused to take his report because he was standing up when the ambulance arrived so the ambulance left! My husband had him file an MV-104 form with DMV. The client’s own supplemental underinsured policy is covering beyond that.</p>
<p>You might look into MVAIC, which is the NYS entity that covers situations involving uninsured motorists or cases where there is a hit and run and you don’t know the license plate of the vehicle involved. I am not 100% certain if your situation would be covered because I haven’t dealt with auto in years but it’s worth checking into. You could call the Bar Association in your county and ask for a referral. All personal injury cases in NY are on contingency so you don’t pay anything for a consultation. </p>
<p>Also, continue to fight with the health insurer. If there is no other coverage, they have to pay it.</p>
<p>It’s an obstacle course out there! I continue to be humbled, almost every day, by the things I almost don’t see in time. The best advice for anyone driving or not driving is to be more alert than they think they need to be and to be able to safely stop at any time (or dodge, as the case may be). And don’t cast blame, either. Unless someone causes damage and blithely rolls on!</p>
<p>Good luck and speedy healing to your son, sylvan.</p>
<p>teri, your husband’s accident sounds very similar to the one my DH had a few years ago. I came home from grocery shopping with the kids and asked my husband how his ride was. “I don’t remember,” was all he said. Wait, what? </p>
<p>Turns out, he must have fallen straight over his handlebars. The frame was a bit destroyed, and his helmet was a goner. He only knows that he was even in some kind of an accident because he discovered an ambulance report that said he refused going to the hospital and signed it. Gave the loction: a nearby lumber yard (closed on the weekends.) Dated for that afternoon. Fortunately no other damage.</p>
<p>I assume our health insurance covered the cost of the ambulance.</p>
<p>limabeans - absolutely unbelievable! EMTs let him refuse treatment when he had no idea of what happened? The ER doc we saw the next day (after an acute care doc failed to pick up on any of his injuries, other than the broken clavicle) told me immediately, before she even did an exam or head scan that he’d had a concussion due to his amnesia of the event. They knew he hit his head, because I told them I had his helmet in our car in case they wanted to look at it to see where the helmet hit the ground (it had mud on it, as well as some scratches). As I discovered a couple of days later when I took time to really look at the helmet, it was cracked in four places.</p>
<p>I think head injuries are the one situation where someone is not allowed to refuse treatment. People with concussions are not capable of making those kinds of decisions, as I learned, the hard way.</p>
<p>Sylvan, in order to determine whether cycling on streets is more dangerous than cycling on the sidewalk, we can look at evidence and studies. They confirm that cycling on the sidewalk is more dangerous. This seems counterintuitive, because as you say, on the sidewalk, the cyclist is only at risk at driveways and intersections.</p>
<p>However, the vast majority of bike/car collisions occur at driveways and intersections, either when inattentive drivers don’t notice cyclists or when foolish cyclists ignore traffic control. So, cyclists on the road where they should be are also at low risk when they aren’t at driveways or intersections.</p>
<p>Cyclists on the sidewalk are invisible to drivers. Moreover, even if the cyclist is legally riding on the sidewalk, the motorist has the right of way at every single driveway or intersection. Sidewalk cycling is just not a safe thing to do unless the rider is going at walking pace. But it’s difficult to ride that slowly.</p>
<p>teri, yep. EMTs let him refuse treatment. He saw that on the form, although he has no recollection of any of what happened, or where. </p>
<p>But what could they do? They didn’t know him and he probably seemed quite in tuned to where he was and how he was feeling. At least, that’s probably what I surmise. We live about 1/4 mile from the incident and he figured out how to get home, after all. But, he only realized what happened b/c he found the signed form in his pocket as he was “coming around” while washing some blood stains on his elbow.</p>
<p>limabeans - didn’t they ask him what happened? If he was not able to answer, that should have been an indisputable clue that he had a concussion. Who called 911?</p>
<p>I was telling one of my doctors I see on a semi-regular basis (not my family practitioner) about H’s crash yesterday. The more I kept going through the story, the more he kept saying, “And this was a physician who examined him at the acute care center? Not an RN? Not a CNA? A real physician?” He was absolutely dumbfounded that H was released from this facility that night, and that they didn’t do a complete exam and subsequently call an ambulance to take him to the hospital.</p>
<p>Did you ever go back and ask for the records from the EMT station? H is still going to pick up copies of his record from the acute care center visit so we can see what they say. The bill for that just came this week, and they charged our insurance company $541.00 that night. Our co-pay is only $50, and I’m pretty sure I paid it that night (another charge I have to go back and do some research on), but I got a bill for it.</p>
<p>In the cities I have lived in, the sidewalk is often shielded from the roadway by parked cars, trees, or both. It wouldn’t be fair to cars for a cyclist traveling at high rates of speed to expect that a car making a right turn observe the cyclist and avoid cutting them off. From sylvan’s description of where it took place, I don’t think that parked cars blocked the view, but in many cities and sidewalks, parked cars do block the view.</p>
<p>From an engineering perspective, cars turn right from the most right travel lane. Since cars can’t drive on the sidewalk, it doesn’t make sense for bicycles to use sidewalks as travel lanes. If they do use a sidewalk as a travel lane, they should be aware of what the cars are doing in the lane to their left and cross in a manner that allows them to safely stop.</p>
<p>Also, from an engineering standpoint, in the event of a bicycle/car collision, a bicyclist is far more apt to sustain serious injuries. The cyclist should be very aware of this fact and ride in a very defensive manner giving themselves plenty of time to avoid a driver who makes a driving error. This isn’t for legal reasons or insurance purposes, but for protection of life-and-limb. It doesn’t benefit anyone to write “but I had the right-of-way” on your tombstone.</p>
<p>I bicycle a lot and enjoy it. I support bicycles on the roadway, and try to drive in a manner that accomodates them. But bicyclists need to understand that they are shouldering the burden of risk from errant cars and should ride accordingly.</p>
<p>That is one of the reasons why I do not like vehicles to slow down, stop, or try to be nice to me when I’m out riding my bike. I find a lot that someone will stop and let me cross the street - and not realize that 3 other vehicles on the road are not stopping. I will purposefully wave them on until I can find a time to cross when I am comfortable, not at the insistence of a nice driver.</p>
<p>Sylvan - hope your son has a good recovery.</p>