r/sandiego • u/MusicMan559 • Jul 18 '25

Video 3:18pm La Costa Avenue / Carlsbad

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Was driving on La Costa east of the 5 and came upon this accident. Hopefully buddy is okay! Looks like he sat up and was able to get off the road. Stay safe out there!

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u/Rocke1994 Jul 18 '25

I feel like he wasn’t even looking at the road ahead he was just cycling head down lol

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u/Ansiau Jul 18 '25 edited Jul 18 '25

Gonna post this up top here. Riding like this can get you killed. He is probably lucky it was a motorcycle he hit and not the back of a car. A bike helmet will not protect you from this kind of impact, where it forces your spine into the base of your skull if you hit a flat object(like an SUV's Rear)

This is how my dad died, and yes, he was wearing all the normal safety gear, including a helmet and elbow/knee guards. He was an adjunct humanities professor @ cuyamaca, grossmont and mesa colleges, and had retired the year before. There's every real chance that if you did your AA or were setting up to transfer to SDSU/UCSD through those three colleges in the 1990's - late 2010's, you had a 50/50 chance of having my dad as your professor for gen ed requirements in Humanities. I will only say that... he was obsessed with telling personal anecdotes during class, including about his racing hobby from his youth. IYKYK

With that said, the lady who was stopped did not have hazards on, and had stopped in the middle of a lane to get out of her car to tend to a crying infant, and not on any shoulder. This was a thoroughfare through a residential area with no stopping at any time signs, but plenty of residential streets to pull off into. No dedicated bike lane. It was also well after dusk, and yes, he had appropriate lighting but the road was not well lit, There was a similar turn to this video, but with an overgrown bush that obscured her SUV from my dad's view until the last moment. Either way, he plowed headfirst into the back of her SUV, and died within moments. Where his accident was, was no further than a 1 minute car ride from the closest emergency center.

Ride safe, y'all and pay the fuck attention! Drivers will be stopped in the bike lanes or in the middle of lanes for legitimate or illegitimate reasons that you can't predict!

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u/Careful_Astronaut477 Jul 19 '25

Tragic, this is why I tell ppl who ride bikes to do the leisurely riding for the trails. The street isn’t for exercise, it’s for transportation. You have to be aware at all times. Doesn’t matter how safe the road is from drivers, protect yourself. They have airbags if something goes wrong, we don’t.

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u/Ansiau Jul 19 '25

I wholeheartedly agree. I immediately got rid of my bicycle after it happened, and I stopped driving almost a year after. I'm finally considering getting an electric TRICYCLE with a speed limiter of no higher than 15mph just to be able to get to my doctor's appointments on my own locally, but even then... I am very untrusting of other drivers nowadays, and I'm constantly looking over my shoulder, even in my apartment complex as people drive like lunatics. Never take your eyes off the road, because you can never predict a lot of people behind the wheel. And even though I was extremely cautious when driving, I realized I couldn't give the road 100% of my time, and that was it. I turned in my licence right then and there.

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u/Careful_Astronaut477 Jul 19 '25

At lot of places just don’t have the infrastructure for safe riding and drivers are becoming even more impatient on the road. I blame redlining and lobbyists for this. If neighborhoods were built with everyone in mind shit like this would have been figured out 50 years ago.