Leah - while I agree with your friend's father's eye-contact rule there's no guarantee that it will be accurate 100% of the time. Three or four years ago an unfortunate but related incident occurred with the in-law of one of my wife's nieces. He rides a Ti framed bike with 23mm tires at very competitive speeds, therefore only on paved streets and roads. He was zooming along one of those roads, when he saw a motorist getting ready to pull out of the entrance to a rural subdivision. He says for absolute fact that he had established eye-contact with her when all of a sudden she just pulled out in front of him. He crashed through the passenger side door window, sustained multiple facial injuries, had to have his nose reconstructed, and lost some of his front teeth that had to be replaced with dental implants. In retrospect, it was established that the driver was distracted by a cell phone, either texting or talking.
I had a similar incident, not resulting in contact or injury, about 6 or 7 years ago where I was climbing a slight grade along a suburban street when a driver with a car load of girls and I were both approaching the intersection of a side street. The driver looked directly at me and must've thought something like "he's just an old fart who can't be going that fast" and turned left right in front of me. In the back of my mind I was prepared for that and slammed on the brakes hard, just missing being hit by her turning vehicle by inches. The girls in the car all turned to look back at me to see my shaking head and a silently mouthed string of slightly vulgar invectives at the actions of their driver. You just can't be absolutely certain of anything out there, eye contact or not. On Friday, January 31, 2020 at 12:32:14 PM UTC-6, Bicycle Belle Ding Ding! wrote: > > Just a little anecdote.... > > The eye contact rule. It actually isn’t my own idea - it’s a practice I > borrowed from my best friend’s dad. He is a cardio thoracic surgeon and has > a ti Seven he has been riding to work for many years. His commute is 11 mi > each way. Since a surgeon’s livelihood greatly depends on his ability to > stand and use his hands, I found it surprising he’d take the physical risk > and ride busy roads for 22 mi per day on his commute. I asked him if he’d > ever had any close calls. > > Two, he said. And his number one rule for staying safe out on the roads > was to always always always make eye contact with drivers. > > His advice has served us very well! I hope the same for all of you, my > friends. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/78a530de-0a58-406b-b146-2d394ae6dc0d%40googlegroups.com.
