Where’s my head at? When you get behind the wheel of a car, you MUST ask yourself this question first. We drive the way we feel unless we compensate for it. Every time you put the key in the ignition, stop and figure out whether you are preoccupied, distracted, unhappy, sick, angry, happy, with friends, alone, late, tired — you name it.

The hardest challenge facing drivers is to be consistent, thoughtful, and risk-averse EVERY time. NO TEXTING! It can wait! When you’re in a car and in a hurry (or distracted), you’re in your most dangerous frame of mind.

As Boulder’s municipal prosecutor for six years, I suggested to cyclists a different mindset, “When I’m on a bike, I’m invisible. If drivers see me, they’ll try to kill me.” This may not be fair, but it’s the truth.

Seeing what is there to be seen before turning requires attention, focus and practice. On rare, but always tragic occasions, a bicyclist gets killed because a driver didn’t see him or her. Riding a bike at night without a light is stupid. Glow in the dark, if you can. Even in the daytime, drivers don’t see people on bicycles when they are there to be seen. A driver’s brain will interrupt to let them know when an RTD bus or semi-trailer is barreling down on them, but bicycles are not a threat. A driver’s brain does not intercede for cyclists. Cyclists must accept that “eye contact” may not be meaningful contact.

For drivers, don’t look for “cars,” look for what you CAN’T see. Identify your blind spots and look for bicycles! If you see them both, you might not kill someone else, and you and your passengers will also be safe.

There are hundreds of “rules of the road,” but these four urban killers are the most important: NEVER ride a bicycle at night without a light; NEVER speed in residential neighborhoods, NEVER run a red light, and NEVER make a left turn unless you KNOW you can complete it safely (no “guessing” allowed). Try to learn and follow all the other rules, but please make a commitment today — for yourself, for your family, and for your friends — to get these four right every time

Finally, don’t trust the seat of your pants. When it comes to protecting cyclists, we are both the problem and the solution.

Ed Byrne, edbyrne@smartlanduse.com

When tragedy strikes, I completely understand the desire, the need, to “do something.” When my dog cut all her tendons on a sharp section of metal edging in our yard, I pulled it all out of the yard. I should have just hammered it in deeper or put a plastic cover on it, but I needed to remove this evil material. I needed to do something instead of just sitting next to my lame Labrador.

The goal of making our streets safer for cyclists, pedestrians and even drivers of cars is, of course, laudable and something to constantly strive for. But there is no benefit from making it a farce. I’m annoyed by Boulder’s Vision Zero goal of achieving zero cycling and pedestrian deaths by 2030. It’s so juvenile. That’s like saying Boulder’s goal is to Cure Cancer by 2030 or use 100% renewable energy by 2030. All three are clearly, obviously, glaringly impossible.

The only way to even approach zero deaths is to ban cars and trucks from our roads. Zermatt, Switzerland (home of the Matterhorn), among other cities, has mostly done this. No private vehicles are permitted. How do people do their shopping without cars? By living in “walkable, 15-minute neighborhoods,” which is Zermatt. Heck, most residents of NYC don’t own a car, and most live in walkable neighborhoods. It’s understandable why Boulder is pushing these ideas, but it’s tougher here, in the West. We don’t have the density, by design. Most people live here for the space. Not every place to live has to be the same. There is no one right way to live.

It is not practical or even desirable for cyclists to be completely separated from cars. If we did that, there’d be no more cycling up Flagstaff — a beloved climb of cyclists. In our congested areas, we have lots of bike paths and bike lanes and we should concentrate our efforts there and we are. The new Longmont-to-Boulder bike path will be a boon to cycling safety. But the climbs and the highways will always be risky. We humans embrace risk and most of us seek it to some extent. I just got back from Yosemite where I willingly went up a 3,000-foot cliff. For “fun.” Not everyone is that extreme, but nearly everything we do involves more risk than just sitting at home. I love the line from Braveheart: “Everyone dies. Not everyone truly lives.”

Life is dangerous. Live it anyway.

Bill Wright, bill@wwwright.com

Humans tend to see what they expect to see; this, in turn, is influenced by what they are familiar with. For those who doubt this, please visit tinyurl.com/yu5yz2hx or consider the difference between what a radiologist vs. an internist is likely to see on an X-ray. This is dangerously true when it comes to our attentional priorities while driving. For example, drivers may be used to directing their attention to such regular features of the road as stop signs, traffic lights, other cars and obstacles directly in front of them. In this context, it’s easy to miss phenomena that appear irregularly and/or infrequently — especially if such phenomena occur primarily outside our usual range of focus. For example, data show that countries with more cyclists (e.g., the Netherlands) have lower rates of car-bicycle and car-pedestrian accidents than those with fewer cyclists. Research has consistently identified two main contributors to this difference: the bicycle-friendly infrastructure of such countries and the effect of repeated exposure on the expectations drivers bring to the experience of driving.

Thus, efforts to improve road safety should involve a two-pronged approach that focuses on structural changes and attentional set. In terms of the former, creating Boulder’s version of the safeguards enacted by such cities as Copenhagen will take time, money and bureaucratic approval. However, efforts to modify and refine our attentional tendencies can begin more quickly if we adapt the kinds of methods that have been successfully used in professions that demand complex coordination between perceptual/attentional and muscular systems (e.g., pilot training).

Specifically, I suggest that the Boulder city government take the lead in recruiting a team of volunteers to create a video game that simulates the experience of driving in Boulder. Such a game could use all the usual features of existing games to create driving challenges involving cyclists, pedestrians and other less expected and less familiar events. Local businesses could be asked to supplement the built-in rewards of the video game itself with small incentives (e.g., coupons, free drinks) to be awarded for merely completing a certain number of simulations. The overall goal here would be to promote the inclusion of a wider variety of events in the default attentional set we bring to driving. In other words, drivers would be trained to react to cyclists and pedestrians in the same semi-automatic ways they respond to other cars and potential road hazards.

This may be a particularly opportune time to organize a road safety initiative of this sort. Aside from its contributions to road safety per se, such an effort might also enhance our sense of community and increase our sense of agency. These are among the most powerful mitigators of the negative effects of community-wide trauma and among the most influential contributors to restoring feelings of security and empowerment following such a trauma. Threats to public safety come in a variety of forms, and it’s tempting to prioritize rare but nationally impactful events over more common local ones. However, it would be fitting if Boulder’s response to the Pearl Street attack energized efforts to keep residents safe from both ordinary and extraordinary threats to our individual and collective safety.

Elyse Morgan, emorgan2975@gmail.com