New Citi Bike Stickers Warn of Truck Blind Spots

With more than two million rides and only a handful of reported crashes, bike-share in New York appears to be putting together an impressive safety record. In London and Paris, fatal bike-share crashes, while very rare, have mostly involved large vehicles like buses and trucks.

When Citi Bike launched, the “Bike Smart” brochure sent to all annual members included information about truck blind spots, and DOT regularly hosts demonstrations (including at Summer Streets) using its dump trucks to educate the public about blind spots, but Nicole Gelinas argued that Citi Bike should do more to warn its users of the risks posed by large trucks.

Now, as noted by commenter qrt145 and documented by Doug Gordon of Brooklyn Spoke, stickers have been appearing on some Citi Bike handlebars with a warning: “Trucks have large blind spots. Give them extra room.”

While a better solution — for pedestrians as well as cyclists — would be to make the trucks themselves safer by designing trucks with fewer blind spots, requiring crossover mirrors, and enforcing the city’s permit requirements for large trucks, this is at least a good step in helping bike-share users be aware of the dangers large trucks pose on city streets.