It was about a week ago in conversation a friend told me she was ‘hooked’ when a car driver passed her then immediately made a right turn into her.

“It was so weird,” she told me. “I’ve never heard of anyone get hit like that before.”

I, in my super knowledgeable bike advocate smarminess, informed her that this collision is, in fact, the most common type of bike vs car collision. It even has a name: The Right Hook.

It turns out I’m wrong, at least in Ft. Collins, Colorado. The city traffic department analyzed accident reports involving bicycles from the year 2000 to June 2009. The infamous Right Hook — or what the city calls “Overtaking Turn Accidents at Intersections” — is the second most common collision at 13% of the total in their count.

The most common collision is “The Broadside,” at 60.5% of crashes. That’s when a motorist goes straight through an intersection even when there’s a bike right in front of him.

The Coloradoan article on this analysis highlights the fact that of the 214 “broadside” collisions, 123 of them involve a cyclist riding against traffic. Naturally, the public comments section focuses on the scofflaw cyclists as the cause of this traffic mayhem.

What the article failed to mention is that in 10% of the broadside collisions, the motorist failed to stop at a stop sign or even a red light. Two of the drivers were DUI. In 130 instances, the drivers were cited for “failure to yield right of way.”

To be sure, cyclists should ride with traffic for safety, but that’s not the only problem. There’s a problem with the bull in the china shop, and that bull should be controlled (to use the methaphor from Copenhagenize).

Left Cross

The third most common collision type is the left cross at 9.3% of collisions. This is when a left turning motorist slams into a cyclist going straight through an intersection. Of the 33 left crosses, 3 involved a cyclist riding on the sidewalk, 2 were going the wrong way, and two failed to stop at a signal or sign. The overwhelming number of these were motorists who just kept going in spite of the presence of a bike in their path.

Hit from behind

After that, the next collision type is the dreaded “Hit From Behind.” The 30 “sideswipes” recorded account for 8.5% of bike collisions. With the exception of a single head on, all fatalities are these types.

The report also counts 25 severe injury (including fatalities) collisions out of the 354 bicycle accidents in the analysis. About half of the severe injuries are from the “Broadside” collisions.

Many risks are controllable while cycling and the city report highlights some of the contributing factors that involve bicyclists — you should generally ride with traffic, avoid sidewalks, and obey traffic control signs and signals. There’s still work to do to reign in the bull as well — Ft Collins with a population of 137,000 has a serious injury accident almost once a month.

But is it dangerous?

For the 9 year period that Ft Collins examined, the accident rate is 0.93 per 1,000 population. Compare that against an injury rate of 7.7 per 1,000 population for all people involved in car accidents. There were four bicycle fatalities in Ft Collins in nine years, compared against two to four traffic fatalities total each year.

While bicycling is generally a safe activity, there are risks in bicycling, and it’s good to see Ft Collins quantifying some of those risks.

Download report PDF here.

I’m being a gutter bunny and filtering to the right of traffic on Mission Street in Santa Cruz, California. It’s generally a bad idea to ride to the right of moving traffic, and you should never pass trucks on the right.

I mitigate the risk somewhat by slowing behind vehicles when crossing intersections, but I still invite “right hook” collisions as I cross several driveways. Another risk: there are plenty of people coming the other direction waiting to make a left turn. They might try to shoot across a gap without seeing the cyclist (me) coming into the gap at the same time.

Beside the two biggies of the left cross and right hook, what are some other possible risks in passing on the right like this?

Does anybody know where Randy’s girlfriend can get help for this situation? Posted here with his permission. They live in Longmont, Colorado.

I am writing this on behalf of my girlfriend and her two kids. There has been an issue with my girlfriend’s Ex-husband about the fact that we allow her two children (age 7 and 11 as of March 9th 2009) to commute to school by themselves on a bicycle. The Ex contacted there Mediator Arbitrator and complained, and the Med/Arb set a ruling forbidding the children to commute by bicycle by themselves.

All of us commute by bicycle all over town, and my girlfriend and I both commute to Boulder. If we were to continue to transport ourselves by bicycle, her two children need to go it alone to their school in the mornings. We had ridden with them for over 4 months, the same route everyday, and taught them all of the rules of the road.

As we felt the youngest lacked the responsibility to do this on his own bike, we set them up with a Yuba Mundo (www.ilikebikeonline.com), a cargo bike that is built to transport multiple passengers as well as cargo. I installed an extra set of handle bars on the rear of the bike for the youngest to hold on to. My girlfriend and I made several test rides with them to and from their school to ensure they not only operated the bicycle safely, but that they also felt safe on the bike and the route.

The route they travel is as safe as any route in town, and 90% of it is on streets with bike lanes, the other 10% in on streets either wide enough to have a bike lane, or little to no traffic. They use crosswalks with lights, or intersections with stop lights or 4 way stops to cross major intersections.

I feel a very dangerous precedent is being set here that should concern us all. I am asking for your help to fix this situation.

Given that my major mission is to promote bicycling as a safe activity, I’m very concerned about these kinds of misinformed rulings.

This 1972 bicycle safety comic book from the Highway Safety Division of Virginia is a like a Jack Chick tract for safe cycling.

Flip through the whole comic at Comics With Problems and follow “Dan the Disaster” as he learns his lesson to become a safe cyclist. Scofflaw cyclists, repent of your wicked ways and take this important lesson to heart!

I got a Safe Turn review unit and promptly lost it. We moved after Thanksgiving, we’re empty boxes and look what showed up! I finally found the Safe Turn bicycle turn signal.

The yellow flashing LED is mounted to a wrist band that you slip onto your wrist. A position sensor detects when you lift your arm to signal a turn to activate the flashing amber LED.

It’s a clever idea and it works well. The position sensor is adjustable. You turn the light on and off by pressing the top of the lens down, and a activation delay ensures random hand motions won’t set the blinker on. It’s almost magical how well it works. The designers obviously put a lot of thought and testing into the design of the Safe Turn turn signal light.

Drawbacks: the light isn’t bright for daylight use. The LED is powered by a pair of LR44 button cells that are not available as rechargeable batteries, though given the size constraints I’m not sure there’s a good solution to that problem. Since I’m a multimodal commuter, I throw everything into my bag when I’m not riding, resulting in the lamp getting turned on and off all the time, which means I drained the batteries in about a week of riding. A friend of mine with a similar commute just leaves the Safe Turn light on his wrist for his entire trip to avoid that problem.

There’s a USA distributor, but the easiest way to get this light is directly from the manufacturer which accepts PayPal and ships internationally. About $19 plus shipping, order fulfillment is very quick. SafeTurn.com for more information and to buy.