“virtually indistinguishable” in the dark

[pwa]

I'm not saying it is right, but I do think it is natural for local drivers to lazily assume that because they have never met a cyclist on a particular road at night, they never will. I drive a lot on rural roads and tell myself, sometimes, that the next corner has never yet had a horse and rider around it, but it could do this time. My internal conversations run through these unlikely scenarios and, hopefully, keep others safe from what could be lazy assumptions on my part. But as a cyclist I would not assume other drivers are thinking that way. Some clearly are not. Making lazy assumptions is in our nature and it takes effort to break out of that.

But if Mike Hall had a half decent rear light, as appears to be the case, he had taken reasonable precautions and a competent driver would not have struck him.

[bovlomov]

I'm not saying it is right, but I do think it is natural for local drivers to lazily assume that because they have never met a cyclist on a particular road at night, they never will.

Yes, I can see that. What I find disturbing is the seeming absense of soul-searching by any of the participants. It's just the way it is. Drivers can't be expected to look out for cyclists.

The backdrop being the contempt for cycling and cyclists in that country.

The witnesses tell you everything. Hall "coming out of nowhere" (= riding along the road). The truck driver being utterly unembarrassed that he cut across the cyclist's path without looking. The police report that Hall was "virtually indistinguishable".

I'm sure Australian drivers will remember that, for when they next run a cyclist over. Though it could also apply to any driver that crashed into a brownish orange car in the outback.

[thirdcrank]

The mention of the driver explaining that he thought he might have hit a kangaroo reminded me of a documentary I saw some years ago about road trains being driven on long, straight roads in Australia. I remember one driver explaining how he read at the wheel to pass the time and hitting kangaroos was regular. Although this crash is said to have happened near Canberra and involved a local driver, the road seems to be a couple of hundred miles long so perhaps similar attitudes are involved.

[Cugel]

I'm not saying it is right, but I do think it is natural for local drivers to lazily assume that because they have never met a cyclist on a particular road at night, they never will. ......

This being the case, one must question the privilege to drive being allowed and encouraged (even demanded) along with the associated technology-access (the aggressive marketing of cars) so that we can go about in this dangerous but all-too-human fashion. After all, if it was dangerous cheese sandwiches killing over one million humans a year and severely disabling ten times that number, we would ban 'em and invent safe cheese sandwiches, along with a careful routine for eating them.

It's always amazed me that we tolerate carmageddon, just because cars seem "convenient" - until one bites you or yours.

But if Mike Hall had a half decent rear light, as appears to be the case, he had taken reasonable precautions and a competent driver would not have struck him.

You weren't there. None of us were. You're offering a judgement based on 5th hand hearsay. Why have an opinion about something you know nothing about other than a bit of mass media tittle tattle, also constructed by people who weren't there, from reports by others who weren't there - all of them with axes grinding away?

Cugel

[Steady rider]

Precise location could be helpful to know.

[pwa]

Cugel, you are reading my comment the wrong way and taking the wrong meaning from it. I am saying his light seemed okay to me in the video. "Half decent" means that it meets a certain acceptable standard. It may even have been better than that. It seemed to pass my own threshold to tick the box "good enough". It may even have been better than "good enough" but that does mot matter. It was sufficient in the video. And , as I say, a competent bit of driving would not have resulted in a crash.

[bovlomov]

You're offering a judgement based on 5th hand hearsay. Why have an opinion about something you know nothing about other than a bit of mass media tittle tattle, also constructed by people who weren't there, from reports by others who weren't there - all of them with axes grinding away?

There's a video of the victim. So we know something of what he was wearing, and we know something of his lights set up. We also know something of what has been said at the inquest.

The mass media tittle tattle is a couple of news reports from the inquest, and a video.

So these are opinions about something we know something about - more or less like everything else on this forum. I can't speak for pwa, but the axe I have to grind is that a dead cyclist is being blamed for the inattention of a driver.

[Tangled Metal]

That video looked like it was filmed on a phone. If it's a phone like mine it will adjust the sensitivity to light of the sensor for what is in the shot. It is quite easy to fool the sensor into reading the light levels as higher it lower. What I'm saying is you cannot be sure of how bright the light really is from a phone camera alone.

Having said that the lights look bright enough to me too. The reflective should have been obvious too. I have reflective band on my tyres. They're old and scuffed but boy can you really see them when a light hits it from a wide angle if view too.

If he was dressed as that video he had a horizontal strip of that reflective material plus what looked like a large patch over the shoulders too. With the light I can't understand how a driver could even consider a SMIDSY defence. The very fact the police are helping the driver makes me think the police there are bent in the criminal sense. I hope the hall family get the right result out of the proceedings but I think it's pretty much assured they won't.

I used to think I could live in NZ perhaps Australia too. If those countries have this attitude to cyclists then they're not the places I thought they were.

[thirdcrank]

With reflective material, a lot depends on the angle of the reflection. If you stand with a torch near your eye and shine it on something reflective it will be very bright, but a motor vehicle headlight is not on the same plane as the driver's eyes. The greater the distance, the more acute the angle. Also, reflectives on or near the feet reduce the angle and are highly visible at close distance in the way that something on the shoulders or head isn't. This isn't to excuse crashing into somebody without reflectives, just pointing out that reflectives don't necessarily amount to being always easily seen.

[meic]

but a motor vehicle headlight is not on the same plane as the driver's eyes.

This may be true on a level of extreme pedantism.
However in practice my (even dipped) headlights light up all the hi-viz on the road in front of me at the correct angle for my eyes from the bottom cats-eye to the top of a transit van.

[Brucey]

I think that driving and expectations thereof vary wildly in Australia, from urban/semi-urban conditions in some areas to real bush driving in others. Some of my Aussie chums have explained what this is like and have told me that they won't ride on certain roads at certain times because they think there is a pretty fair chance they will be killed, such are the poor standards of driving.

I am pretty appalled by the accident and the reaction locally from the media and the police. But, sadly, not terribly surprised.

cheers

[thirdcrank]

... This may be true on a level of extreme pedantism.
However in practice my (even dipped) headlights light up all the hi-viz on the road in front of me at the correct angle for my eyes from the bottom cats-eye to the top of a transit van.

I'm only going from my own experiece. I see joggers' feet brightly enhanced when stuff higher up does not reflect. Of course, if a vehicle is so close for this to occur, the entire person or object should be clearly visible in the light of the headlights without reflectives and no matter what their clothing.

(And if the next question is why did I bother to post, then it was because it seemed to be suggested that reflectives inevitably = visibility.)

[meic]

A table from retro-reflectives manufacturer 3M show a very marked depreciation in the amount of light reflected even at angles as small as 1 degree from incident light.
Just as well as we dont want a full 100W x4 back in our faces!
Against the pitchblack background of the Aussie countryside at night, it doesnt take much reflected light to stand out.

[The utility cyclist]

In that video he seems to have quite a large area of reflective material, and his rear light is bright. But even if his batteries were down, his front light was providing a bright pool of light moving in front of him (he wouldn't have been able to ride without it).

If they suppose the cause of his death was invisibility, then no cyclist is safe in Australia.

Mike's light was dynamo powered. "For the Indy Pac, I have a Grandfondo Ti V3 with conventional road calliper brakes from TRP and I’m rolling on Reynolds Aero 65 wheels. The front is built around the newly revised SP PD 8x dynamo hub."
https://road.cc/content/tech-news/21903 ... wheel-race

[bovlomov]

I'm sure someone must have posted this at the time, but it's worth seeing anyway.

Australian cyclist deaths surge and road safety strategy 'failing'

Over the past 12 months, 580 drivers were killed, which is up 1.8% from the previous year. Passenger deaths also increased over the same period by 3.8% to 219, pedestrian deaths increased by 4.7% to 177, while motorcyclist deaths decreased 21%. Cyclist deaths jumped by the largest proportion from 25 to 45 over the same period – an increase of 80%.

Given that 9% of Australian drivers admit to steering with their knees, it's good that cyclists have the protection of mandatory hats.