On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 1/1/2010
Honor • Integrity • Responsibility
1. Two friends are participating in an organized century ride. It’s early in the day and they’ve hooked up with some other riders out on the road. The other riders might be just a bit stronger than these two, so they’re stretched a bit, hanging on at the back, near their limits.
Then they’re gapped on a little climb and the short, steep descent that follows. Down at the bottom of the descent, they dig deep to bridge back up to the group. They put their heads down and crank it up to full hammer mode, just shy of seeing red spots in front of their eyes. They can see the other riders just ahead and have almost got them back...so close. Then the riders ahead brake suddenly for a tight, 90° turn onto a side road. The two chasers, blind to anything but their little hammer-chase, don’t see the braking ahead, nor do they see the right-turn arrows the course markers have painted on the road--repeatedly--for many yards before the corner.
The result: they plow into the backs of the riders ahead and they both go down hard, damaging both bikes beyond repair for the day. Fortunately, their injuries are minor and no other riders are taken out, but their rides are over, 30 miles into the century.
After a sag ride back to the start/finish, their adrenaline and shock distills into anger. They find the event director and complain that it’s all his fault; that the corner wasn’t well marked. (It was.) The director, a very nice gentleman who would rather see his participants happy than angry, offers to comp them for the event next year. This satistfies the two wounded warriors, and they head for home, convinced that their complaint was just and that a wrong has been righted.
2. A club ride stops at the top of a long, steep, technical descent. The coastal hills are buried in a pea-soup fog so thick as to be almost zero-visibility. The riders--in general, an experienced, skilled group--agree that conditions are very sketchy and that this nasty descent will have to be handled with extreme care. All begin to tiptoe down the hill very cautiously...except for one rider who puts the boot in it and takes off like a rocket, quickly disappearing down the hill, into the dense fog.
Sure enough, he finds a pothole at high speed and crashes very badly: multiple injuries, including a compound fracture of a leg. He ends his day with a helicopter ride to the emergency room.
Months later, he files a lawsuit against the county, claiming negligence on their part for the pothole that took him out. He calls several of his riding companions to testify on his behalf, assuming they will support his claim. But to his surprise, every one of them says it was his fault; that he was riding like an idiot after having been advised to be careful. The lawsuit is dismissed.
3. Another century ride. Another rider, solo this time, somehow loses control of his bike and leaves the road in a slight corner on a mild descent, inflicting some level of trauma on himself...exactly of what nature is not clear.
For whatever it’s worth, friends of the rider tell course workers on the scene that this is typical of the guy: lousy bike skills and frequent crashes.
Later, the guy files a lawsuit against the event organizer, against the county, and against a nearby resident, alleging that gravel in the corner made him lose control; that the gravel came from the resident’s driveway; that the county should have maintained the road better; that the organizer should have warned riders of the hazard.
A look at the section of road in question reveals no gravel whatsoever, nor any other road hazards that might have caused the crash. All observers, including other cyclists and law enforcement, agree that the crash was due entirely to operator error (lousy bike skills and/or not paying attention). The case is eventually dismissed, but takes over a year to work its way through the legal system, causing a great deal of stress and inconvenience (not to mention expense) for all three defendants.
What do all three of these cases have in common? Simple: they all involve riders who screwed up, but who then refused to accept responsibility for their own mistakes; they all sought to blame someone else for what went wrong, rather than admit that they were at fault.
Of course, all of these riders signed the obligatory liability waivers before doing their rides. Those entered in the centuries would have signed off on that dense block of fine-print boilerplate as a condition of being allowed to enter the event. For the club ride, riders would either have signed a waiver at the start or would have done so as a condition of becoming a club member. If you have ever participated in organized bike rides (or any other sporting events), you have no doubt signed off on similar waivers. But have you ever bothered to read all that fine print? They all vary slightly, but here’s a typical passage from one of them...
“(I)...understand that participation in bicycle events is inherently dangerous, and that whether such events take place on public thoroughfares or off-road; whether in public or private areas; that there are ever present Dangers and Risks of Injury and Death from either my own actions, or as a result of actions of others over whom neither the Releasees nor I have any control.
“2. I further acknowledge that I am aware of vehicle operations regulations imposed by the Vehicle Code and of safety precautions involving equipment and clothing. I assume all risk for myself and assume all liability to others for my failure to have complied with those regulations and precautions, or for any failure to inspect my bicycle, and I therefore:
“3. Release, discharge, and covenant not to sue the Releasees from any and all claims and liability...etc.”
That’s pretty heavy stuff: very graphic and explicit, leaving little wiggle room for spin-doctoring it into any other meaning that what’s right there. You will often hear people say that such waivers are “not worth the paper they’re printed on,” but insurance agents who underwrite bike events tell me they actually hold up pretty well to legal redress such as the lawsuits listed above. That doesn’t mean the plaintiffs can’t or won’t sue, and that the wheels of justice may not tie the defendants up in legal wrangling for years. It just means that most of the time, the waivers will stand up to legal challenge.
Naturally, there will always be lawyers to plead the cases of those who seek to blame others for their own mistakes. I can’t really blame the lawyers. We are a society of rules and laws, and we need experts to help us through the legal maze. I don’t blame them for using their expertise to game the legal system however they can to advance their client’s interests. But it would be nice, every so often, to learn of a lawyer who turned down a fee because he knew the claim was baseless. It probably happens, but I’ve never heard of it.
I was called once by an attorney representing a cyclist who had been hit by a car. (For some reason, a few local lawyers seem to think I’m qualified to be an expert witness or at least a consultant in cases involving bike tangles. I’ve never promoted myself in that capacity, but I still get the referrals now and then.) In this case, the cyclist had been riding on the sidewalk on the wrong side of the road--toward oncoming traffic--and had shot out onto a cross street without stopping, at which point he got nailed by the car, whose driver had no reasonable expectation of a cyclist appearing from that direction. The lawyer wanted me to pimp for his cyclist, but I told him his rider was 100% at fault. You want my expert opinion? Drop the case! I would like to think the lawyer did exactly that, but I very much doubt it. I expect he went looking for another, more pliable “expert.”
But that wasn’t a case of an organized event or even a club ride or any scenario involving a liability waiver, so I’m digressing slightly from my core message here. (Although it is yet another example of someone refusing to own up to their own mistakes.) My pet peeve today is folks who sign up for rides, signing away their right to sue, and then go ahead and sue anyway, or if not sue, at least assign blame to and seek redress from others for their own failings.
No doubt there are many cases where some redress is appropriate; where those in charge have dropped the ball in some negligent or even malicious or intentional way. I’m not going to suggest people shouldn’t have recourse to some compensation in such cases. But in the easy-going world of club rides and club-sponsored events, such instances of malfeasance must be extremely rare. More common will be the incidents which are either the fault of the riders or are simply nobody’s fault.
I am reminded of another case where a cyclist caught a wheel in a crack in the pavement and crashed, doing himself some injury and trashing his bike. He didn’t sue the county, but he sent them a letter asking them to cover his medical bills and his bike repairs. He certainly wasn’t at fault: just riding along in a responsible way. You might say the county was at fault for the crack in the pavement, but really, how far do you want to take that sort of liability? No county government can be expected to stay on top of every single flaw in all its miles of roads. In the real world--that is to say: the imperfect world--it is simply no one’s fault; neither the county for their flawed pavement, nor the rider for failing to see and avoid the crack.
Two bad things happen when a rider screws up and then casts about for someone else to blame.
First, he puts a burden or complication on the shoulders of the event organizer, in having to compensate the rider or in having to defend against a lawsuit. That’s the obvious bad thing: that this organizer, who is in all likelihood a volunteer, doing the event for the pleasure of his fellow cyclists, or perhaps to raise money for a good cause, is now embroiled in a Dickensian legal swamp.
The second bad thing is more subtle. If the plaintiff pulls the county or some other agency or municipality into the suit, they--the defendant--will not be pleased by it. If it happens often enough, those on the receiving end of these legal fishing expeditions will begin to be aggravated about the bike events that are the spawning grounds for the problems. They may then take a hard-hearted, flinty-eyed look at such events in the future; may in fact rewrite their local ordinances or permit processes in some stringent, draconian form that makes it next to impossible to stage the events. The essentially blameless volunteer organizer may be made to jump through all sorts of hoops while hog-tied with red tape.
None of this is good for club rides or the formerly cozy little events the clubs or other volunteer-driven, non-profit organizers were staging.
So...bottom line: if you’re in an event of this sort and you get yourself banged up out there, think very carefully before you point the finger of blame. If you were in fact the proximate cause of your own misfortune, then get over it. Tend to your wounds and mend your bike and move on. As the title says, this is a matter of honor and integrity.
Let me wrap this up with one more anecdote, this one from the world of pro racing...
A few years back, the great sprinter Thor Hushovd was duking it out for the finish in a typical mass-field, mosh-pit sprint. Somehow, another rider squeezed him over against the barriers and made him back off and unclip. As the riders crossed the line, he threw his hand up in a gesture of anger and frustration and protest, clearly indicating that he had been unfairly victimized by some other rider.
However, a few minutes later, after having watched a video of the incident, he recanted. He said it was no one’s fault; just one of those field-sprint moments. Further--and this is the part I like--he said he had been scared at the moment of crisis, and when we’re scared, sometimes we get angry, and when we get angry, sometimes we look for someone to blame. Having rewound the video of his own emotional trajectory, he was ready to let it go and move on.
To me, that retraction and admission showed a great deal of class. If a tough guy like Thor can admit to being frightened, and can understand how that adrenal shot can morph into anger and recrimination, then the rest of us everyday riders ought to be able to do the same...to take responsibility for our own actions instead of trying to lay them off on someone else.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net