Trans America Race 2018

[mattc]

Hippy of this parish is creeping towards the Top10,
and Arrivée cover girl "Lenny" is doing darn fine:
http://trackleaders.com/transam18i.php?name=Alaina_Beacall

[Torslanda]

Ahem!

[mattc]

Ahem!

Ah - you didn't think your post was worthy of the Racing board, then?

[quixoticgeek]

Marcel Graber was first Velomobile to make it,

Peter Anderson is first upwrong to make it. Both of them beat the previous course record.

Amazing effort by them both.

J

[quixoticgeek]

Arrivé cover girl, Alaina Beacall, is showing up as 60km from the end. Looks like she should finish in the next 2-3 hours.  Once she finishes, Marzena Szymańska, will be the only woman left on the road.

Amazing effort. I'm in awe of what they've all done.

J

[Charlie Polecat]

Amazing effort. I'm in awe of what they've all done.

Me too, not just a day out on the bike.

[Frank9755]

John Egbers has now sadly died from his injuries, another rider is in critical condition, a third is now out of hospital and I've not heard news of the fourth - all hit by distracted (or worse) drivers.
There were about 80 starters, so 1 in 20 were hit by a car. On those numbers, I wonder if anyone will want to ride it next year.

[Darren Franks]

The fourth was clipped in Oregon. After hitching to an ER he was patched up and rode on to West Yellowstone before the ACL injury he sustained forced him to scratch.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

There seems to be a fairly high rate of getting wiped out in these long unsupported races in the last few years. Has anything much changed from early races, when it seemed that relatively few racers were hit by motor vehicles?

[quixoticgeek]

John Egbers has now sadly died from his injuries, another rider is in critical condition, a third is now out of hospital and I've not heard news of the fourth - all hit by distracted (or worse) drivers.
There were about 80 starters, so 1 in 20 were hit by a car. On those numbers, I wonder if anyone will want to ride it next year.

116 were listed on the tracker page for starting. 114 left the start line. That makes it 1 in 29, not 1 in 20. Still shocking numbers.

That said, assuming approx 1/3rd scratch, 80 people, time 6300km, That's over half a million km cycled. That makes it 1 collision per 126000km. With 1 death in half a million km.

That is high compared to many modes of transport. Extrapolate that out for your average cyclist, and how far they ride in their lifetime... Also I've only taken 1 race in isolation, how does it compare if we include all instances of the TABR?

Do we know where the accidents happened? ISTR a tweet from one of the riders (Was it Hippy or Darren?) saying all 4 collisions happened in the same state. Without more info tho, we are just speculating.

TCR starts in under a month, here's hoping things are better this side of the pond.

J

[Frank9755]

There seems to be a fairly high rate of getting wiped out in these long unsupported races in the last few years. Has anything much changed from early races, when it seemed that relatively few racers were hit by motor vehicles?

No, not really, other than there being more riders, hence greater chance of incidents. Inevitably they cluster, the recent casualties are probably reversion to the mean rate after a lucky start.
I don't think people are riding more hours, taking more stuff out anything like that. And it is people of all ages and abilities who are being clattered.

[Frank9755]

John Egbers has now sadly died from his injuries, another rider is in critical condition, a third is now out of hospital and I've not heard news of the fourth - all hit by distracted (or worse) drivers.
There were about 80 starters, so 1 in 20 were hit by a car. On those numbers, I wonder if anyone will want to ride it next year.

116 were listed on the tracker page for starting. 114 left the start line. That makes it 1 in 29, not 1 in 20. Still shocking numbers.

That said, assuming approx 1/3rd scratch, 80 people, time 6300km, That's over half a million km cycled. That makes it 1 collision per 126000km. With 1 death in half a million km.

That is high compared to many modes of transport. Extrapolate that out for your average cyclist, and how far they ride in their lifetime... Also I've only taken 1 race in isolation, how does it compare if we include all instances of the TABR?

Do we know where the accidents happened? ISTR a tweet from one of the riders (Was it Hippy or Darren?) saying all 4 collisions happened in the same state. Without more info tho, we are just speculating.

TCR starts in under a month, here's hoping things are better this side of the pond.

J

Thanks for correcting my figures. And the total mileage is useful context. Istr that, for the UK, you would accept a serious injury or death every 0.3million km so this is more but not by an order of magnitude as there are a lot of Kms ridden without incident.
However I believe that three of the four were in Kansas. The roads are flat, straight and boring there, so the belief it is drivers not concentrating that is behind it.

[quixoticgeek]

Thanks for correcting my figures. And the total mileage is useful context. Istr that, for the UK, you would accept a serious injury or death every 0.3million km so this is more but not by an order of magnitude as there are a lot of Kms ridden without incident.
However I believe that three of the four were in Kansas. The roads are flat, straight and boring there, so the belief it is drivers not concentrating that is behind it.

1 KSI per 300000km is really high when you think about it. If everyone on this forum cycled 100km a week, (5000km per year), we could expect one in 60 of us to be killed or serious injured every year. I've already nearly done 5000km this year (4800km so far), At this rate, I'd expect to die or be serious injured on the bike once every 30 years... In which case I shouldn't be worrying about a pension...

It is really hard to find an accurate KSI per unit distance number. 1 in 300k seems low. I'd hope it's nearer 1 in 500k or even 1 in 1M.

What I can tell is that the Netherlands had 206 cycling deaths last year (201 for car occupants). The Dutch cycle an average of 900km per person. Population is 17,084,788.

So scratching some maths on the back of an envelope:

17084788*900
=15,376,309,200km per year.

divided by 206 = 74,642,278.

Or one death per 74.6 million km. (giga meters?). Which is 149x fewer deaths than the TABR number.
 
Can someone double check my maths?

One death per 74.6gigameters is much more reassuring, perhaps I should worry more about that pension...

J

PS There has been a big spike in the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands in recent years, and they have been almost exclusively in the over 65 age bracket. The rise in number of e bikes has seen people who would have previously been limited in how much they cycle due to getting old, are now riding e bikes, this coupled with slower reflexes and the general trait that older people when they fall down, they don't get up so good, has lead to the spike. As the primary downside of e-bikes in this context is mitigated, i.e. they get lighter, we can expect more older people to use them for longer. Tho if this is also off setting a reduced number of people dying of sedentary lifestyle related illness, I have no data.

PPS And by e-bikes I mean pedal assist sub 250W, max 25kph machines, not anything more powerful.

[Darren Franks]

We need so much more information before we can draw any wider conclusions. Frank's death was a hit and run in Belgium, of all places. To me that feels unusual. Mike, Eric and John were all struck on roads where I would expect the rate to be much higher, sadly. Eric, John, Ash and TC were all hit in Kansas. I skipped the entire state so it's hard to offer much direct insight, but from what I've heard it does seem to have a problem with culture and infrastructure that's no conducive to safe cycling. The rest of the course I actually found to be very safe and relatively cyclist-friendly. In the eastern states drivers would go above and beyond to give me room. Even the hick who threw a beer bottle at me as he passed did so after giving me a full lane's width.

If you remove Kansas from the equation then the numbers start to look closer to statistical norms. Feels horrible to reduce these losses to cold hard statistics but it needs to be done. Ultimately our data set is very small and there are plenty of potential influences that we haven't been able to lock down, which could muddy analysis even further.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

TABR is along a recognised touring cyclist route, so I'd expect the route designers to minimise the 'bike-unfriendly' distance, as opposed to choosing the fastest way across the country.

[quixoticgeek]

On a more cheerful note, the last of the women riding TABR this year has made it to Yorktown. Marzena Szymańska was the 5th of the female riders to finish. Giving us 5 finishers, our of 6 starters. Amazing ride from all of them!

J

[hippy]

and still riders plough onwards towards the finish...

I recall fewer dramas this year myself but I was almost hit from behind from a distracted driver in Kentucky, I think it was, maybe Virginia.
Riding along on a quiet road next to a large highway and all of a sudden there's a huge brake lockup behind with a car swerving off the road, skidding, while trying to avoid me.
I can only assume they were looking elsewhere (outside, mobile?) or had dozed off and didn't see me until the last seconds. Not great.

There seems to be something wrong with drivers in Kansas. Is mobile phone use while driving legal in that state?

[Frank9755]

I recall fewer dramas this year myself but I was almost hit from behind from a distracted driver in Kentucky, I think it was, maybe Virginia.
Riding along on a quiet road next to a large highway and all of a sudden there's a huge brake lockup behind with a car swerving off the road, skidding, while trying to avoid me.
I can only assume they were looking elsewhere (outside, mobile?) or had dozed off and didn't see me until the last seconds. Not great.

Lucky escape!  I didn't hear about that.  If he had looked up a quarter of a second later, you would have another statistic.
I've had it three times in my cycling life - a white van in the Cotswolds early one morning, a road train in South Australia last year, then a car, also in South Australia, a couple of days later.  The smell of burning rubber is not pleasant but it is a good feeling when realise what has happened and that you are still alive to be able to smell it!

[hippy]

I recall fewer dramas this year myself but I was almost hit from behind from a distracted driver in Kentucky, I think it was, maybe Virginia.
Riding along on a quiet road next to a large highway and all of a sudden there's a huge brake lockup behind with a car swerving off the road, skidding, while trying to avoid me.
I can only assume they were looking elsewhere (outside, mobile?) or had dozed off and didn't see me until the last seconds. Not great.

Lucky escape!  I didn't hear about that.  If he had looked up a quarter of a second later, you would have another statistic.
I've had it three times in my cycling life - a white van in the Cotswolds early one morning, a road train in South Australia last year, then a car, also in South Australia, a couple of days later.  The smell of burning rubber is not pleasant but it is a good feeling when realise what has happened and that you are still alive to be able to smell it!

I kinda glossed over it at the time because it was over quick, nothing actually happened to me and my missus/family worry enough - https://twitter.com/firsthippy/status/1010371804593053696

I've had so many near misses in my life, I just chalk it up and carry on. Best one was me stopped at lights in Melbourne and then full screeching lockup behind me that sounded like it lasted days and big waft of tyre smoke blows over me. I don't think I even turned around. Lights green, on we go.