Bicycling

Everything is so new to them, they end of seeing everything. On the other hand, it is drivers who do the route every day that you have to worry about. Every driver makes assumptions based on past experience, they then drive the routes they have driven on frequently based on those assumptions. This nature of man is best summed up in the old comment "Familiarity breeds Contempt". You go through a dangerous section of road every day for months, you learn why it is dangerous and come to think you can handle it. Throw something new into the mix, such a person falls back on his experience (Or training if you think that is a better word for what he or she had been doing for months before) and ends up ignoring the new thing, or treating it like he or she had treated other things in the past i.e. treat a cyclists like a truck for both go slow.

For the above reason, the greater danger is someone who frequents a road you are on, not someone new to the road. I give you a personal example. In my area of Western Pennsylvania I have to be careful on old country roads. The locals are use to little or no traffic on such roads, they end up driving in the middle of the road (and cutting to the ends of the roads at turns) at high speeds (55 mph and up). 99% of the time, do to the lack of traffic no one gets hit, but every so often someone else is on that road and you end up with a huge accident.

On a vehicles per mile travel basis these country roads are the most dangerous. They may see only one accident a year, but that is often the only time two cars were on that road. Thus you can have a very high accident per mile traveled on such country roads. For example, if only two people drive on a country road and it is 1/2 mile long and both drive on that road 200 times a year, but only one time a year are both drivers on that section of road, and that is when they hit each other, that is 1 accident per 200 miles driven (each driver drives that 1/2 mile, 200 times a year). On the other hand a "Dangerous" section of urban road may have that much travel in an hour, and only one accident every day. There is 24 hours to a day, thus you are looking at 4800 miles traveled per day in that urban section of road and one accident for every 4800 miles traveled. Thus you have an urban section of road with a much lower accident per mile traveled then the country road, every through the urban road has an accident every day, but the country road only has one accident every year.

The reason for the high per mile travel on such country roads is the low volume of traffic makes people think no one else is on that road and thus they can speed up and get where they are going faster. Most days that works out, but every so often another car is doing the same thing and you have something BOTH drivers are not expecting, another car on that section of road.

As to people new to those roads, not a problem. They may be lost, but they are careful for they are lost. They have no experience on that road to fall back on, so they fall back on caution. This is what people do all the time. Thus it is rare to have an accident where a person who is lost is at fault. People may yell at them, curse them, blame for the accident they themselves cause as they try to get back into their rut they are use to as to that road, but such accidents tend to be the fault of the people familiar with that road and trying to travel that road like they normally do NOT the person who is lost. The lost drivers just do not cause accidents for they are to caution. It is the regular drivers on that road you have to be careful, for they are use to do certain things on that road, and get upset when they can NOT do it, or worse, driver as they normally would ignoring anything new, including lost drivers and cyclists. It is these regular drivers I have had the most problems with NOT lost drivers.