Yesterday was a good example of why it is important to always clean your car’s windshield completely before driving. I didn’t see the accident take place, but a car that was parked on the street was pushed about fifty feet down the road, onto the grass, and into a tree. This caused quite a bit of damage to both ends of the car. The driver that hit the parked car left the scene. A few minutes later another neighbor showed up with a smashed bumper. What I think happened was this:

(Using standard cryptography alphabetical stand-in names)

It was warm but snowing (‘slushing’) just enough that car windows needed to be cleaned before driving. Alice was in a hurry and didn’t clean her windshield. In the half block between Alice’s house and where Bob was parked, Alice accelerated too much. I can tell Alice was driving too fast for a neighborhood street by how far Bob’s car was pushed given the relative masses of the two cars. Alice must have not cleaned her windshield, preventing her from seeing Bob’s car, even though it is common for a car to be parked where Bob’s was. Alice then drove back up the block, cleaned the snow off the car, and came back.

Now, imagine that instead of a parked car, it was one of the many cyclists or joggers in the neighborhood. So, please, completely clean and defrost your car’s windows before driving.

Why is this important? The current law uses a subjective definition of safe passing separation. What a cyclist feels is a safe distance isn’t necessarily the same as what a driver or police officer feels is a safe distance. Drivers often believe the safe distance is much less than it is, and make dangerous passes. Since the safe distance is no less than three feet, and many people don’t realize this, we need the minimum separation to be explicit in the motor vehicle code.

You can help promote this important safety law by filling out this survey from Bicycle Indiana, and by writing your state representatives. And while you are at it and if you live in Allen County, fill out the City of Fort Wayne Trail Survey.

With or without an explicit legal definition, remember to only make safe passes:

Notice the steps of the safe pass:

1. Begin to move over well before reaching the cyclist.
2. Pass at a safe distance. Keep a minimum of three feet between the closest points of the car and the bicyclist. At high speeds and with large vehicles the minimum safe separation is larger. Don’t forget about your mirrors.
3. Move back into the lane well after passing the cyclist. Don’t forget to leave room for your trailer.

GMAC Insurance released their 2010 National Drivers Test results. The findings are interesting:

• If taken today, 18.4 percent of drivers on the road – amounting to roughly 38 million licensed Americans – would not pass a written drivers test exam.
• The national average score was 76.2 percent; a score below 70 percent is considered failing.
• Average test scores in 2010 continue to show a slight trending downward, from 76.6 percent in 2009 to 76.2 percent this year and a drop of almost 2 percent from the national average in 2008 (78.1 percent).
• With Age Comes Wisdom: The older the driver, the higher the test score. Males over 45 earned the highest average score.
• Factoring in margin for error, the average test score was significantly higher among males than females (78.1 percent male versus 74.4 percent female). Females also had a higher failure rate than males (24 percent female versus 18.1 percent male).

I’m not particularly surprised at the results. It can be hard to remember which of several similar answers is correct, which partially accounts for the low score; but this isn’t an excuse on something this important. The way I see it, the results are evidence that nearly one fifth of the licensed drivers in the country should have their licenses suspended until they re-pass their licensing requirements. Even this is optimistic. A survey like this can’t distinguish between book knowledge and its application. How many people can pass the test but never follow the rules afterward? This could be examined by including both the scores on the driver’s written tests and state accident data in the analysis.

Even in the wildly optimistic case that all drivers are able to re-pass the driver’s licensing tests after driving for a few years, it still wouldn’t be enough to ensure safe roads. The driver’s tests are currently only for the absolute minimum required knowledge and skill to drive a car on public roads, safe driving requires much more skill and awareness. A good step toward this level of driving is to take the ABATE or MSF motorcycle safety test. I think that passing one of these courses should be a prerequisite to applying for a car learner’s permit. This would make the roads much safer.

The GMAC test is online so you can try it yourself. Then you should read my page on safe driving around bicycles.

Source: 2010 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test via AOL Autos via USA Today. Note that this was an online survey.

Recommended reading:

• ‘Driver’s ed value doubted: Trained teenagers wreck more often, legislators told’ – Journal Gazette
• ‘Ex-ISU prof urges tougher driving standards’ – Tribune Star

Notice this pass consists of:

1. A dangerously late and close pass with partial lane change,
2. followed by completely changing lanes, well after the cyclist.

Since the driver stays in the far lane for a while, it is clear that they had space to move over early and make a safe pass, but for some reason, chose not to. To make it worse, the driver often seems to forget the extra width of their dual rear axle and trailer. Instead of nearly hitting the cyclist, the driver could have easily made a safe pass:

Notice the steps of the safe pass:

1. Begin to move over well before reaching the cyclist.
2. Pass at a safe distance. Keep a minimum of three feet between the closest points of the car or truck and the bicyclist. On fast roads with large vehicles, the minimum safe distance may be larger.
3. Move back into the lane well after passing the cyclist. Don’t forget to leave room for your trailer.

I’ve driven some of the narrower roads in the area while pulling a large trailer with a full size pickup truck many times, so I know that—even in a large vehicle—it is easy to pass cyclists without endangering them. So, I’m not sure why this type of pass is common. It isn’t the typical dangerous driver intentionally buzzing a cyclist; it doesn’t seem fit the usual explanation of driving aggressively to feel faster. The Indiana pass could possibly be mostly done by drivers who like doing slipstream passes, where they close dangerously close to the car they are passing before moving over, trying to draft a little. Beside the normal danger of a drafting pass on open roads, it is ineffective when a car is passing a bike, because the car is almost entirely outside the cyclist’s slipstream. It seems more likely that the Indiana pass is the result of inattention, poor depth perception, and general unawareness. I don’t know what combination of these is the cause, but hopefully this post will contribute a little to stopping the Indiana pass. Remember to keep enough space between yourself and the other cars and cyclists that when the person in front of you makes an emergency stop, you will be able to avoid hitting them.

Notes:

• Check out my page on Safe driving around bicycles, including more on passing.
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