Why Bikers Are Not Safe

Drivers are not all are inherently bad people who are just out to run down bicyclists, just as white people are not all white supremacists; however, there is an unknown bias we all have due to the influence of media and infrastructure. This cannot be undone easily, it can be, but it takes an abundance of work, dialogue, and understanding between countless people. Dowsett explains this by saying, “... Bike lanes are relatively new, and still just kind of an appendage on a system that is inherently car-centric.”

People who text and drive can hit or even kill pedestrians because of being distracted by their phones and not paying attention to the road. In the course of five years, the national number of pedestrians who were killed or hit by distracted drivers increased from 344 to 500 people. If you think about it, many of those people who died could have been young children or elderly people who didn’t have a fault, but because of someone being so inconsiderate using their phone, they killed these people. In 2015, 5,376 pedestrians were killed because of drivers who were too busy texting. All those pedestrians who were killed did not think that because of walking somewhere they would be killed by someone so distracted who didn’t have the capacity to make sure that the road was clear for them to keep driving. If this problem had further consequences, then many of the people who died wouldn’t be dead right now.

What do you think your parents would say when all you can do is say “sorry” after you crash their car because you were texting while driving? Or maybe when you’re talking to your friend in the passenger seat, and you swerve into the other lane resulting in a head-on collision? Are you going to tell your friend’s parents, “sorry, you had to go to her funeral?” You probably couldn’t even apologize to them because sorry doesn’t mean anything when you are not alive to say it. What about when you’re singing along to the radio, miss a stop sign, and end up running over a child crossing the street. Are you going to tell the child’s family, “sorry, you now have one less family member?” Or maybe you tell the child’s teacher, “sorry, but you should’ve taught your student to look both ways?” Why apologize, when you can prevent all of these incidents? All of these incidents can be prevented by putting your cell phone away while driving, paying attention to the road while talking, and turning off the radio. These are all simple things that can prevent deadly accidents, so why do people continue to text, talk, and listen to the radio while driving, when they know these things impair their driving and can lead to deadly

motorists that cyclists who use bicycle-sharing schemes tend to be inexperienced riders who do not follow the traffic rules”(United Nations 18).

After reading “Driving While Stupid,” by Dave Barry, he tells us about some of his experience with seeing bad drivers. Barry uses many old experiences while being in Miami, China, Boston, and Argentina. I agree with this statement because in almost every city I been in the driving was terrible. Everyone, in some way or another, has witnessed people drive very stupid and reckless. Barry indicated that some drivers use insane driving techniques. These include driving very fast, failure of the utilization of headlights at night, and having distractions for the view of the drivers. He says that the drivers do not have a sequence for navigation since some are involved in phone calls, eating, reading, changing CDs, crowd surface makeup, etc. This is a common thing for teens and even adults to be distracted behind the wheel. He drove through various cities where the traffic laws are constantly being violated. For example, has only one traffic law, which is “No driver may ever be behind any other driver.” In his opinion, Miami drivers are the worst drivers that he has ever witness because of the guy who was driving on 1-95. He was watching videos on his phone and was clearly not paying attention to the road or any other drivers. This does not only affect him but also the other people around him. He was not be cautious of the road and putting his and others lives in danger.

When I hear about these accidents I question some things like, should we change the laws

State and national motorcycle rights organizations are strong advocates of rider education and motorist awareness. I agree this is an important issue but not enough. The Journal of Trauma conducted a study to investigate motorcycle collisions with animals. Based on the results they concluded, “Deer Motorcycle Crashes (DMC) are a significant public health issue in mid-western states.” A deer darting in front of

According to the Office of Highway Safety Planning, riders without helmets are 40% more likely to suffer fatal head injuries than those with helmets, and are 15% more likely to incur nonfatal head injuries. When you consider that approximately 3,250 motorcycle accidents occur every year in Michigan, the passage of this new law would lead to hundreds of deaths and head injuries every year that could have been prevented. Michigan is the latest state to

Across the United States, every year millions of license drivers choose to ride motorcycles rather than drive automobiles for a variety of reasons; Reasons range from individual pleasure to a much more cost effective way to travel. The universal motorcycle helmet law debate over the past forty years has revolved around whether the federal government should adopt a universal helmet law that mandates all motorcyclists to wear helmets at all times when riding to reduce societies economic cost, or whether the individual rider should have the right to choose rather to wear or not wear a helmet.

First of all, I believe we have too many drivers and not a perfect enough system to tell our drivers how fast to go. It’s a scary thought that we trust people we don’t even know to be sober and level headed enough to share the road with a car full of young children. We need to manage how fast our drivers are actually going to make us safer.

And this is also a good friend to my argument, you see if the government wanted us to be driving around recklessly this would be a world of chaos, and we don’t want that. They put in place the DMV and the Drivers Ed. classes we also have to pass our test to get licenses and our car inspections too. We are told that there will be punishment if we break the law. Regardless we don’t listen; then they give us the Drivers Seminars where people that have been in bad accidents come over and talk to the whole school on tips for safe driving and they share their stories of recovery, they tell us to NOT drive recklessly so that we don’t become one of them. It’s time that we take the resources given to us by the law and that we implement them into our lives, that we listen to our laws so that we can make the roads safer for everyone, so that one day it’s a custom to not use our electronic devices while driving, instead of it being just a law either followed by fear and resentment or not followed simply out of

If you ask anyone, who has lost a loved one to a car accident, 8 out of 10 it's because the driver was distracted. Weather they were reading a text, changing the radio station, or on the phone, those few seconds where their attention was elsewhere cost them their life. Sometimes not only their life, but the life of another driver, damage to property, and even more so the lives of the family and friends of the individuals involved. When such horrific events take place one cannot help, but to think "Why them?" or "If only..." "If only there were precautions that could have been taken, than none of this would have happened." But the truth is there are precautions, such as turning off your phone while driving, and the laws made for the sole purpose

The compulsory wearing of helmets does reduce the number of fatalities associated with motor cycling and pedal cycling accidents. Data from a variety of studies overwhelmingly supports this fact. When discussing motorcycle helmets, there is a 40% prevention of fatal and 13% prevention of nonfatal serious injuries associated with their use, according to Adam, et al. (1453). After Florida repealed its mandatory helmet law in favor of one that allowed helmets for those over 21 with $10,000 in insurance to be optional, motorcycle fatalities increased across the state (Hooten and Murad, 1329). According to Boone, et al., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated that the use of helmets prevented 1,630 deaths in 2013 and could have prevented 715 more if all motorcyclists wore helmets (3). In a study of almost 17,000 patients admitted to the hospital for motorcycle crashes, 37% of the riders were not wearing helmets. These 37% accounted for 69% of the deaths among these patients (Dua, et al. 1184).

Drivers who use cell phones while driving are also highly dangerous to pedestrians. A young woman killed a pedestrian on a bicycle while she was texting on her phone. She may not have intended to end that person’s life, but she made the poor decision to drive and text which she has to live with for the rest of her life. Any one of us could have been that poor individual on that fateful day. I used to ride my bike everywhere, mostly using the roads in the way that bikes are supposed to. That just proves that point that everybody

I do not know how many times I have been driving down the road when someone does something stupid, ranging from pulling out in front of me or tailgating. More and more drivers enter the road every year and it seems as if less and less of them know how to drive.