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It certainly would be good to get more info on how the crashes happened--time of day, vehicle types, locations (these all seem to have been away from junctions), etc.
I agree it would be good to know more. I never heard any details of Eric's death from last year. However, it mustn't become a road to victim blaming. A car hitting a bike from behind is to blame. Always.
It is funny that drivers automatically accept the convention that when a car runs into the back of another one, it is always the fault of the one that hits the other from behind. Somehow, when it is a bike, people are only too ready to abandon that principle and look for reasons to blame the victim.
The situation that I find particularly scary is sunrise on these west to east races, like this and IndyPac, where you are riding directly into the sun. The drivers still have total responsibility for not driving where they can't see, but their ability to do so is dangerously impaired. The European races, which don't head due east-west, and don't have such long straights, don't have this particular risk to the same degree.
frank9755-
No, I'm coming at it much more from the opposite end of the spectrum.
If these accidents are happening in full daylight then how is there any excuse for a driver not seeing a cyclist in the road, if it's literally the only thing in the road and if it's happening at night, how, with lights and reflectives are the drivers failing to observe cyclists.It's always going to be the driver's fault unless something odd happens like the cyclist crosses the carriageway unexpectedly - but why, on a flat straight road, would you not pass another human being with as much space as was possible?
Alex_B
I can totally see how that might happen. Drivers just don't expect riders. The driving's incredibly monotonous, a tiny village (well, I think they'd call it a town) every 10 or 40 miles, often even set slightly away from the main road. No frontages, no animals that could cross the road. All the roads are extremely straight, drawn with a ruler. Many drivers are probably on these autopilot mechanisms and watch films (although I may be doing them an injustice with that supposition; it's just what drivers already reportedly do here on motorways--perhaps American drivers are more law-abiding).
It certainly would be good to get more info on how the crashes happened--time of day, vehicle types, locations (these all seem to have been away from junctions), etc.