Being taught a lesson?

[Jezston]

Man, with the incident on the BBC, the couple of nasty injuries and now these two bus passes and regular rear-ending ... can I nominate benborp for being the most unlucky cyclist ever?

 

[pshore]

Imagine a cyclist/motorcyclist at the back end of a queue. When driving, I have noticed that it is possible for the (my) brain to focus on the car in front of the cyclist whilst braking. This isn't normally a problem because as you get nearer the queue you will find focus on the two wheeler and apply more braking.

I think this might be something to do with the brain focusing on the larger more dangerous object. I've seen this referred to as the looming effect when the traffic is coming at you.

Suppose you were the kind of driver who drives fast, or was not paying enough attention, you approach the the traffic queue at speed and have to brake pretty hard. If you are committed to hard braking, it is then more difficult to brake even harder as your focus changes. Some will be over committed - and collide.

I too have been rear ended, luckily in a car, and I am quite paranoid about it now. On the bicycle or motorbike I try not to leave myself at the back of queue if fast traffic is approaching. I'll filter ahead or go way over to one side.

 

[benb]

Just a thought, but, maybe its worth reflecting that chance is inherently 'lumpy' (if it wasn't it wouldn't be truly random). In other words, it can be quite natural for a 'cluster' of similar events to occur, without there being any connection. An intriguing recent example of this was the shuffle function on Apple's ipod. People were complaining that it seemed to have 'preferences' for particular tracks or bands. In fact it was just 'lumpy chance'. Apple rewrote the software from a truly random system to a 'pseudo-random' one that smoothed out the lumps and everybody was happy. Scares about 'cancer-clusters' a few years ago were complicated by the same issue: It can happen just by chance and doesn't necessarily mean there's something nasty in the water.

It may be that your events have a common factor - but its equally possible that they don't, and you've just had a run of bad luck.

Good luck!

Also, once you think there's a pattern you look for it. Clearly not applicable to being rear ended (that's pretty obvious whether it has happened or not) but if you had had some close overtakes, you might notice others more that at another time you would think were borderline. See the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Ben, I think you've just been unlucky - I can't think of anything that you could or should be doing differently.

 

[PaulSecteur]

I dont know how you resist putting an arse shaped dent in his bonnet, seems fair you get to rear end him.

 

[Marbler]

Rear ended once when I gave way to someone turning right into my path.. Looked behind and there was a big red double decker buss up my ass. Bricks were shat but no damage

Had a few choice words with the driver though

 

[DrSquirrel]

Few typical comments on youtube

 

[david1701]

Never been rear ended. *touches wood*

so......... much............. innuendo.........