Right, this is because a car that's moving faster than a cyclist and traveling close can drag the cyclist off their bike. A cyclist that is moving faster than a car cannot drag a driver out of their car.
But if the cyclist touches the car, he can be dragged off. No matter who was passing the other and who was faster. Only the contact matters.
If I'm filtering through slow traffic at 10mph and clip the side of a car, I'll have a minor tumble - scuffed handlebars, grazed palms, dented pride.
If a motorist clips me at 40mph, I'm almost certain to suffer serious injuries. I might be hit on the back of the head by a wing mirror, I might be dragged under the wheels, I might be launched over the hood, I might be bounced into some street furniture.
No, this is completely backwards. Small, inadvertant and temporary infractions kill people just as dead as vindictive and deliberately dangerous behaviour. And whether it's the driver's fault or the cyclist's fault, either way it's the cyclist who dies. What we need to do is start holding drivers responsible for deaths that are their fault, "accident" or not. If you don't have the skill or concentration to avoid causing a collision, you shouldn't be controling a ton of metal in a public space.
If a car traveling 40 mph or faster hits a pedestrian or cyclist, the person hit will almost certainly die.
The two are really not comparable.
If we replaced all the drivers on the road with still-fallible but conscientious/polite human drivers who always followed traffic laws, always drove the speed limit, were effective at looking for and stopping for obstructions in the road (e.g. pedestrians crossing the street), followed at a safe distance, and adjusted their speed and following distance to match road conditions, the death rate from traffic collisions would drop dramatically.
If we replaced all the cyclists with perfect riders, the death rate from traffic collisions would change only marginally.
A cyclist that passes a slow car with, say, 30 km/h and brushes into the car may very well die.
It's exactly symmetrical to the situation of a car passing a slow cyclist with 30 km/h.
Furthermore, dying isn't everything that should be avoided. Injuries and material damage are also bad.
Further-furthermore, aggressive and careless cyclists can also kill a pedestrian. Not as easily as a car can, but still. As a pedestrian my number one danger are cyclists. Cars and pedestrians are quite predictable in their movements. Cars especially don't sneak up on you without any noise and then pass you on a random side, while you're walking around.
Annual pedestrian deaths from collisions with motor vehicles in the US: a little under 5000.
Do you seriously believe 5000 pedestrians a year are being killed by bicycles? I would be surprised if there were as many as 500 pedestrian fatalities a year that had anything to do with bicycles.
Cyclists are not your number one danger. They are nowhere near to being your number one danger.
You need very little kinetic energy to make a cyclist topple and fall. The fall itself can lead to injury and death, lying on a street in the midst of all the traffic is even more dangerous.
Any touching of car and cyclist is very, very dangerous. That's why I brought up the example of cyclists passing cars with practically no space between them. They feel it's safe, but it's incredibly dangerous.
Lying on a street - yes. Because cars might roll over you, cause of the kinetic energy.
Getting squished between cars - yes. Because of the huge mass of the car.
Banging your head against an opening car door - yes. This time it is because of your own kinetic energy that hits a small surface area which is immobile cause of the mass of the car.
So it is quite dangerous to get near to cars, yes. But almost always because of the huge mass of the cars, especially if they are moving. That was the point of ggp.
Many of these people where not going all that fast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyclists_with_a_cyclin...
A 1 ton car at 10 mph has 9 000 joules of kinetic energy, so about 30% more.
He dies – as you put correctly – because of all the cars around him. Of course kinetic energy is relevant there, but it doesn't matter to the argument, because the claim was that being touched by a car is much more dangerous than being touched by a cyclist. And that's wrong.
As soon as the cyclist falls he's in mortal danger.
No casual cyclist can sustain 30kph on a level road. My average speed when I was in top shape and biking 20km every day was 15kph. I don't think you understand just how fucking terrifying 30kph is when you're on a bicycle. I don't want to ride at that speed, it's really way faster than I can react, and I feel it very well. When you're in a car, 50kph feels like nothing at all, but on a bicycle you're acutely aware how you're propelling your body sitting on a few thin tubes of metal and two flimsy wheels at a speed at which you have no control over. I've reached 50kph only once in my life on a downhill stretch of good asphalt road on a Sunday with no traffic as far as the eye could see and I don't ever want to do it again. 30kph is scary. 50kph is terrifying.
And on top of that - their brakes are useless, they in many cases drive as fast as they can, downhill or not. Yeah, for me as a driver, cyclists are the biggest threat in the cities and outside (effectively anywhere but highways). As a pedestrian, cyclists are again the biggest thread in the towns mostly on pedestrian crossings.
As a pedestrian stopping and going again is effortless. As a car driver the same. Only cyclists dread stopping.
I have experienced the former.
Do you know how many careless car drivers I meet? At least one each time I bike more than 3km. Not crazy (those I find every 100km), just careless. But thats enough to threaten my life.
Either way, the cyclist is on the receiving end of the risk (we're not talking about bike vs pedestrians here). So no Symmetry. Mass matters. A lot.
Yes, it is. At 10km/h it's really not dangerous; at 30km/h an open door may kill the cyclist, and a hitting pedestrian may be severely hurt them. Speed is that a relevant factor.
Cyclist are no angels, either. I always find it fascinating how they clamor for at least a meter space next to them when cars are passing, but when traffic is slow (not standing still – that's a different story), mere centimeters to my side mirrors are enough to pass cars themselves.
I think a drastic re-education of traffic participants would be necessary: de-emphasize small, inadvertant and temporary infractions and punish vindictive and deliberately dangerous behaviour much more aggressively.