Having handled insurance liability claims for the last 31 years, and having handled hundreds, if not over a 1,000 claims involving cars and bicycles, I would say around 50% of the time the car is at fault, 50% the bicyclist. I would say the biggest issue with bicyclists I've seen is, in no particular order,
1) swerving left into the path of an overtaking car, 2) riding on the wrong side of the road, 3) riding at night with no lights, 4) lane splitting, riding up the right side of a line of cars at a stop light and running into a car that is turning right, 5) and one I have personally seen a lot since there are a lot of bike routes where I live, a group of bicyclists spilling out past a stop sign as if they were one big catepillar into the path of a car that has right of way without understanding that every bicyclist in that group has an individual duty to stop at the stop sign.
Drivers tend to pass too closely and clip bicyclists, and tend to pass and turn right into the path of the bike, and parallel parkers that open doors into the path of approaching bicyclists.
As far as lawsuits - the vast, vast majority of legit claims get settled before a lawsuit is ever filed. Most lawsuits are settled in mediation or during the discovery process without ever making it into a court room. Verdicts as a proportion of total claims is miniscule. Most cases go to trial over liability disputes, not damages, though some go over damage disputes. Defendants are usually represented by a good attorney paid for my their insurer. Liability disputes tend to fall out in favor of the defendant. Insurers only tend to take the strongest cases to court. Hardly any verdicts are published publicly so finding them to post here would be very hard.
Damn, this is a really interesting post. I really appreciate you taking time to share this.
I tend to think the 50/50 split on at fault is pretty accurate. I have done a lot of reading on it and most suggests pretty close to a 50/50 split. Can you ball park a percentage of the cyclist at fault cases where the bicyclist was an indigent or for some reason couldn't hold a license? The reason that I ask is that those that I most often see riding against traffic and riding without lights look like they fall into that category.
The individual duty to stop begs a little discussion. I don't ride in large groups and can picture what you are talking about and agree that the long line moving through without stopping is a bad idea. If my group, say 8 riders, comes to a stop sign. We bunch together and occupy the footprint of a typical motor vehicle. If a car is coming, we stop and yield right of way. When we can safely go, we move through as a unit. I see that as pretty harmless, and if it's a busy 4 way stop intersection, it serves to allow cross traffic to get through much more quickly.
I don't do and don't like the filtering thing.
The cyclist swerving into an overtaking car. How often in those cases is it clear that the cyclist did the swerving? Do you work in one state or multiple? If those states have minimum passing distances (3 feet in most states) it would be one hell of a swerve for a cyclist to drift 3 feet over and into a car. I would guess that these cases are often he said/she said? If I were a betting man, I'd bet that in most of these cases the auto driver wasn't giving the minimum.
Something to consider for those that have an open mind or are reasonable. The three most common auto driver at fault collisions that you mention all have something in common. Cyclists who want to mitigate those risks would move further out into the lane. And we all know how that plays with motorists. Just something to think about.
