When sophomore Ryan Tanner locks his bike to a rail, there’s a good reason he secures the back tire instead of the front.
“The back side of my bike is almost as valuable as my bike, so if I were to lock up the front, someone could basically steal half the worth of the bike, no problem, and they wouldn’t have to break a lock or anything,” Tanner said.
Tanner, a craft major, said he thinks the biggest mistake cyclists make is failing to lock bicycles properly.
“They’re gone in class, or they leave it out for a day. And you know, someone walks by and realizes they can steal it really easily without breaking the bike.”
But what really is the biggest mistake a bicyclist can make? Evan Venditti, 27, co-owner of Richmond Recycles, said many cyclists fail to acknowledge traffic laws.
“A bicycle’s a vehicle just like any other, and they (riders) need to abide by the same traffic laws as any other vehicle on the road,” he said. “I see a lot of people neglecting common traffic laws.”
When riding around Richmond, Tanner said, he rides responsibly most of the time.
“I ride on the road and everything, but of course, there are always times where there’s a red light, or traffic has stopped, and you just kind of sneak through. So I do kind of cheat like that,” Tanner said.
Though accident numbers on campus are low — just two last semester, according to VCU police — bicycle crashes and injuries are often under-reported because the majority are not serious enough for emergency room visits, states the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute Web site.
About 784 bicycle-related deaths were reported nationwide by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System in 2005, which was the last time the report was released.
Ted Zeh, 55, is the editor of the Richmond Area Bicycling Association’s newsletter, the Pedaler. Many riders, he said, make the mistake of riding into traffic.
“They seem to think it’s not bad because they can see what’s going on, but it really impedes the law,” he said.
According to the Virginia Department of Transportation, bicyclists on a roadway are subject to the same laws as drivers of motor vehicles. Bicyclists are required to ride with traffic on the right side of the road.
VDOT does not enforce bicyclist helmet use, which is not mandatory in Virginia, except for children 14 and younger in specific localities.
Refusing to voluntarily wear helmets is the biggest mistake local cyclists make, Zeh said.
“For non-(RABA) club members, that’s the biggest mistake,” Zeh said, “because eventually you’re going to become a brain donor.”