Overview

Car drivers make mistakes all the time. Some are inexperienced, some are distracted, and some are literally on drugs. And getting hit by a car is one of the worst things that can happen on a unicycle. Drivers’ mistakes are predictable, though, and motorcyclists and cyclists have developed all sorts of strategies to deal with them.

One major issue is that drivers often fail to notice small vehicles, so it can help to make yourself more conspicuous with bright colors and lights. Defensive riding habits can also make a huge difference. And there are a bunch of miscellaneous actions a rider can take to make street riding less risky.

Visibility

Often drivers aren’t looking for smaller vehicles, and this is the source of many crashes. You can increase the odds of being seen by wearing bright colors, lights, and retroreflective materials.

Bright colors tend to attract attention. During daytime, the typical human eye is most sensitive to yellow-green (██, aka chartreuse), so this color is often used for high visibility gear. In motorcycle gear, it’s often just called “hi-viz”. During low-light conditions, a slightly blue-ish green color (██) is the most visible.1

A high visibility safety vest might be the easiest way to add bright colors. There’s also all sorts of bicycle and motorcycle gear in these colors. But even wearing white instead of black can improve visibility.

Retroflective materials reflect light back in the direction of the light source. At night they reflect the light back from car headlights, making you much more visible to drivers. Motorcycle clothing often comes with retroreflective elements. Retroreflective tape is also pretty cheap and can be added to helmets, wheels, and other gear.

For lights, I recommend a red rear light and a white front light, since drivers are familiar with those. Blinking lights are often more conspicuous than steady lights.2 Even in the daytime, lights can prevent crashes for both bicyclists and motorcyclists.3

Lumens is a common measure of the brightness of a light. This table shows typical lumens values for traffic applications:

Type of light lumens
To be seen (rear and front) 50-200
To see (front only) 500-800
Car headlight 1500

Third-party sellers on sites like Amazon and AliExpress often lie about the performance of their lights.

yellow jacket cyclist
The high visibility jacket used in the Denmark experiment

Research confirms that these strategies are effective. A meta-study from 2006 (updated in 2009) finds that

Fluorescent materials in yellow, red and orange colours improve detection and recognition in the daytime. For night‐time visibility, lamps, flashing lights and retroreflective materials in red and yellow colours increase detection and recognition.4

In 2012 to 2013, researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial of 6793 cyclists in Denmark to find the effect of wearing a high visibility jacket with retroreflective elements. They estimate that wearing the jacket reduced accidents with other road users by 38%.5

Defensive riding

There are all sorts of defensive riding tips for cyclists and motorcyclists. Many of the tips apply to both riders. I only split them up here for the sake of organization.

Bicycle tips

These tips generally apply to people riding on the side of the road and in bike lanes.

Dooring. Avoid riding close to parked cars to avoid colliding with a car door that unexpectedly opens.

Ride predictably. Drivers will have an easier time accommodating EUC riders if they act predictably. That includes things like following the normal rules of the road and signaling before turns. If carving, keep in mind that carving looks unpredictable to many drivers.

Right hook. Drivers turning right often fail to check for cyclists riding to their right, and may turn into you at an intersection. A simple way to avoid this is to take the lane while riding through the intersection, even if there’s a bike lane. (For countries that drive on the left side of the road, or for bike lanes on the left, it will be a left hook.)

Take the lane. When it’s not safe for a car to pass, “take the lane” by moving to the middle or inside portion of the lane, as opposed to the outer portion where bikes normally ride. This prevents cars from passing, or at least requires them to change lanes to pass. I often find taking the lane useful at intersections where passing can become confusing and chaotic.

Avoid large vehicles. Large vehicles like buses and 18-wheelers are especially dangerous. They may have more blind spots, and turn in ways that can be difficult to predict. Don’t pass these vehicles on the right. See this video from the Chicago DOT for more details on buses and bikes, and CyclingSavvy’s page on 18-wheelers.

Motorcycle and scooter tips

These tips apply more to people riding with traffic. Ken Whitehouse from Honda Australia Rider Training gives a good overview:

Lane position. A single lane for a car is the equivalent of 3 or more “lanes” for a motorcycle or EUC. Choose lane positions to increase your visibility to other road users and to create a space buffer between yourself and road hazards.

Don’t tailgate. EUCs cannot brake as fast as cars can. Leave room to allow yourself to stop without hitting the vehicle in front of you.

Blind spots. Don’t ride next to a car in the car’s blind spots, which are usually directly beside the car and slightly behind the driver. If you can’t see the driver in one of the car’s mirrors, then you are in a blind spot.

Left turning cars (left cross). The most frequent cause of motorcycle-car collisions is a car going the opposite direction turning left in front of the motorcyclist.6 The same also happens to cyclists, who have named it the “left cross.” Be cautious around cars waiting to turn left. (For countries that drive on the left side of the road, it’s a right cross.)

Sunrise/sunset. The sun blinds a lot of drivers around sunrise and sunset. If the sun is blinding you, it will blind other drivers moving in your direction. If you cast a long shadow ahead of you, drivers moving toward you may be blinded.

Ride like you’re invisible. There’s never a guarantee that a driver has seen you (or that a driver will take the correct action even if they do see you), even if you make eye contact. Ride with the assumption that they haven’t seen you.

Escape route. Position yourself so that you have an easy escape route if a vehicle moves dangerously toward you. For example, instead of stopping directly behind a car at a stoplight, you could stop behind the left or right side of the car, so that it’s easier to dart out of the way.

Should you…

Run red lights? (Idaho stop)

There’s a popular theory among cyclists that you should run red lights in order to pull away from the stopped traffic. Meanwhile, an opposed group of road users assume that running a light must be dangerous.

A version of this became legal in Idaho in 1982, so that it’s now called the Idaho stop. The law allows Idaho cyclists to treat a red light as a stop sign, and a stop sign as a yield. Some preliminary evidence suggests that the law did not lead to more bike accidents, and may even have prevented them.7 However, the “studies” I’ve seen on this topic are informal and not published in peer-reviewed journals, so I don’t put a lot of weight on these results. In any case, data does not show that the Idaho stop is obviously dangerous.

Ride on the sidewalk?

It’s been found repeatedly that bicycle accidents are more likely on the sidewalk than on the street.8 The main issue is that drivers don’t watch for vehicles on sidewalks. Another issue, in my experience, is that many sidewalks are more poorly maintained than the street. Sidewalk riding is also illegal in many US cities.

But this is an aggregate finding that doesn’t necessarily apply to every street and every cyclist (or unicyclist). One set of researchers summarizes it this way:

While average event rates on sidewalks may be higher than similar event rates on roads or paths, simply educating cyclists to stop cycling on sidewalks may not be prudent as these cyclists have higher event rates on roads than non-sidewalk cyclists. … It is reasonable to suggest that more experienced cyclists are more comfortable with vehicular traffic or have learned by experience where the hazards lie. Whatever the reasons, sidewalk cyclists should not simply be educated that sidewalk cycling is dangerous and should therefore be discontinued.9

Basically, riders who start on the sidewalk should increasingly use the street as they become more familiar with local traffic.

Both the League of American Bicyclists (here) and BikeSafe (here) have advice for safely riding on sidewalks.

Lane-split / filter?

Lane-splitting, usually referring to motorcycles, is riding between car lanes on a multiple-lane road. Lane-filtering is a similar term, but refers specifically to riding between stopped traffic. Some motorcyclists advocate lane-filtering at stoplights, with the argument that it reduces the chance of getting rear-ended.

SMARTER, a motorcyclist association promoting safe riding, published the best overview of the evidence I’ve seen here. Very few studies directly examine this question. While one study (in California) finds that lane-splitters are significantly less likely be in a crash, two studies (in France) find that it increases the odds of a crash. It isn’t clear to me what to conclude based on this limited research.

Misc.

Know the roads

An easy way to avoid problems is to avoid riding when and where problems tend to happen.

There’s often a lot of aggressive traffic around rush hour. Drunk drivers are more likely to be on the streets late Friday and Saturday nights/early mornings. Some small neighborhood roads can have surprisingly aggressive traffic if people use them to cut through the neighborhood.

Special events that draw people from out of town can create hazards. For example, my area has a few colleges, and on the days of college graduation ceremonies the roads become much more chaotic than usual.

Braking

The faster you can brake, the better. If you have a larger wheel that’s more difficult to slow down, it’s good to have power pads to help. Also practice the technique where you pull back on the front of the wheel with your hand to decelerate faster.

Mirror, horn, and turn signals

Rearview mirrors are very useful in traffic. EUC riders can get one attached to their helmet or on their wrist. I recommend them to everyone riding on the street.

A horn can also come in handy now and then (for example, if a car starts to merge into your lane, or pull out in front of you). Electric horns made for bicycles can work well, and some EUC apps have horn capabilities too.

There are some turn signal lights made for cyclists, but they aren’t strictly needed. Since our hands are free on a unicycle, we can use the bicycle hand signals.

If you find yourself having negative interactions with drivers, some kind of action or dash cam may be useful. I’ve found that a police-style bodycam works well for this. Cameras won’t necessarily capture license plate numbers, but at least you have evidence to provide to the police.

If you live in the US, consider increasing your uninsured motorist coverage:

But getting an insurance payout could be tricky if you live in a state where EUCs are not officially street legal, which is the case in most of the US.

More resources

  • Enjoy the Ride - Essential Bicycling Skills, a somewhat cheesy but informative video produced by the League of American Bicyclists
  • BikeSafe video guides
  • Bicycling Street Smarts, by John Allen. A popular $5 booklet about navigating traffic on a bike.
  • Bicycling in Traffic, by Diana Lewiston. A text with great diagrams and advice for many different traffic situations.
  • The MSF’s Basic eCourse. This online course, which is required before the in-person MSF course, costs $20 and covers defensive riding strategies for motorcyclists.

  1. This is according to the CIE, an international organization that produces some technical color standards. It comes from their photopic and scotopic luminous efficiency functions, which peak at wavelengths of 555nm and 507nm, respectively. ↩

  2. “The Conspicuity Benefits of Dynamic and Static Bicycle Taillights at Night,” https://doi.org/10.1177/1541931213601755 ↩

  3. “The Effects of Motor Vehicle Fleet Daytime Running Lights (DRL) on Motorcycle Conspicuity” (link), “Safety effects of permanent running lights for bicycles: A controlled experiment” (link) ↩

  4. “Interventions for increasing pedestrian and cyclist visibility for the prevention of death and injuries,” https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD003438.pub2 ↩

  5. “The effect of a yellow bicycle jacket on cyclist accidents,” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2017.08.001 ↩

  6. Hurt report, p. 46-47 ↩

  7. “Bicycle Safety and Choice: Compounded Public Cobenefits of the Idaho Law Relaxing Stop Requirements for Cycling” (a self-published study from a public health professional) (link), “Delaware Yield Crash Data” (link) ↩

  8. See “Risk Factors for Bicycle-Motor Vehicle Collisions at Intersections” (link), “Survey of North American Bicycle Commuters: Design and Aggregate Results” (link), “Adult Bicyclists in the United States: Characteristics and Riding Experience in 1996” (link), “Sidewalk Bicycling Safety Issues” (link) ↩

  9. From “Sidewalk Bicycling Safety Issues” ↩