This thread has certainly digressed from the original post, but on the question of bike fatalities and causes, my two bob's worth.
How many of them occur at intersections or in situations where where cars fail to yield right of way or the driver's vision is obscured by the design of the car he/she is driving? My purpose in asking this question is based on my experience with my past two vehicles, both Captivas. The windscreen pillars on Captivas are so thick that they can hide a complete small car coming from your left at certain angles. It happens frequently when I get to the intersection at the end of my street. They'd have no trouble at all obscuring a bike. VE Commodores have been criticised for the thickness of their "A" pillars and many if not most modern vehicles tend to have much thicker pillars than in years past.
In addition, modern vehicles tend to let styling and aerodynamics influence the amount of glass area available. Rear and rear three-quarter vision is often very poor, particularly with the popularity of SUV's. It's often easy to fail to see a car from various angles, so missing a bike would be very simple.
Off track, I realise, but attributing increased bike fatalities to lane filtering alone might be overlooking other, very common factors which could influence the death rate.
