It's a paradox, isn't it? Road deaths in or by motor vehicles are so common place that unless it happens locally or to someone you know it doesn't even tend to register. It's seen as the price society pays for convenient transport. Somehow individuals are seen as expendable in the interests of the greater good.
Yet cycling road deaths are so uncommon that they are picked up by the media immediately as a sign of how unsafe cycling must be, and local opinion sources are full of demands that "something must be done" and even cyclists, as the potential victims, are made to feel somehow at fault and inviting death and destruction just by daring to set tread on the road. Something must be done all right, but it's hard to see how an alternative view to the widespread motor centric one that prevails widely can be promoted in a way that the average person can accept and apply. I suppose the answer is " more cyclists" which increases other road users' expectations of seeing a cyclist in unexpected places, but if they are fearful of cycling they won't be there. Despite the publicity, and the awful grief and loss and recriminations surrounding a fatal accident, it must be remembered that cycling in itself still remains one of the safest pursuits that humans can take up, even if sometimes with high traffic levels it doesn't feel like it. I remember reading that the annual number of deaths from falling off furniture far exceeds the death rate from cycling. Should we therefore stop sleeping in beds or sitting on chairs?
I don't know about other posters, but despite my age I can detect approaching tyre noise from a good distance and try to have an escape route just in case. This doesn't mean that I perpetually ride in a state of clenched buttocked terror but that in the back of my mind there is the idea that ending up in a muddy ditch is a lesser evil than ending up under someone's vehicle. Sometimes, despite all your best intentions, shoot happens.
As a long time motorcyclist I remember being told as a beginner to always be aware of your surroundings, as it was the one you don't see or hear that will get you. Likewise, don't do anything that a driver might consider unexpected. They're locked into their blinkered four wheeled expectations, and two wheeled vehicles (motorised or not) move quite differently which can surprise someone with no experience of such things.
Things like nipping through gaps, filtering through traffic, sudden manoeuvres into spaces a car couldn't get in to etc.
Accidents don't usually happen just because of one thing. It's usually because several factors occur any one of which not occurring might cause it not to become an accident. Something as simple as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, driver had a row with his wife, going a bit too fast, low sun causing him to miss seeing a cyclist. Bad weather. Tiredness, bad day at work, dodgy brakes, oil on the road. Some might call it fate.
A decent level of competence and self awareness on the part of the driver of the heavier more powerful vehicle could probably avoid a lot of these. They don't seem to be able to avoid colliding with each other, so cyclists are probably the least of their worries. As a cyclist most of these factors are beyond your control.
All you can do is do the best you can, be alert, maybe choose your routes and times, and never attribute to malice in other road users that which can be explained by incompetence. Being assertive is helpful in getting yourself noticed, but it's good to know where to draw the line. "It was my right of way" doesn't look good on anyone's tombstone.
