How to Avoid the Most Common Bike-on-Bike Accidents

If you ride your bike enough, you’re bound to experience a few close-calls. Theoretically, knowing what to do in common bicycle accident-inducing situations should help you to prevent them. In that vein, here are the most common bike-on-bike accidents and how to avoid them.

Most Common Bike-on-Bike Accidents

• Bumping shoulders – If your riding in a group or participating in a race, it’s common to bump shoulders. No worries, this sort of contact is unlikely to cause an accident. You can further mitigate them, however, by always keeping your elbows tucked in against your body.
• Touching tires – Front wheels can grow a mind of their own and make contact the back tire of the person in front of you. Should this happen to you and contact is imminent, steer into them. It may go against your gut, but unless you pivot your front wheel into their back tire, you’re going down. This is because the back wheel is sturdy, whereas the front wheel is less stable.
• Dodging a crash – Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge. When someone crashes right in front of you, you’ll have to think fast to avoid the crash. One downed cyclist can quickly domino into several others, so you may have to execute some tricky maneuvering. Besides “good luck,” a piece of advice is not to brake. Doing so will leave you vulnerable to being hit from behind. Additionally, don’t be like motorists staring at a car accident as they pass it. Stay vigilant so you don’t contribute to the size of the pile-up.

Bike accidents happen, but they don’t have to happen to you. By staying “woke” to the most common types of accidents, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding them.

Bonnici Law Group is a San Diego bicycle accident lawyer and cycling enthusiast with a passion for promoting bicycle safety and fighting on behalf of his fellow riders.