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How Safe Is Cycling?
theodp writes "With new bike sharing programs all the rage, spending tens of millions of dollars to make city streets more bike friendly with hundreds of miles of bike lanes has become a priority for bike-loving mayors like NYC's Michael Bloomberg and Chicago's Rahm Emanuel. 'You cannot be for a startup, high-tech economy and not be pro-bike,' claimed Emanuel, who credited bike-sharing and bike lanes for attracting Google and Motorola Mobility to downtown Chicago. Now, with huge bike-sharing contracts awarded and programs underway, the NY Times asks the big question, How Safe Is Cycling? Because bike accidents rarely make front page news and are likely to be dramatically underreported, it's hard to say, concludes the NYT's Gina Kolata. UCSF trauma surgeon Dr. Rochelle Dicker, who studied hospital and police records for 2,504 bicyclists treated at San Francisco General Hospital, told Kolata,'Lots of my colleagues do not want to ride after seeing these [city biking] injuries.' On the other hand, Andy Pruitt, the founder of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine and an avid lifelong cyclist, said the dangers were overstated, noting he's only broken his collarbone twice and hip once in four decades of long-distance cycling. So, is cycling safe, especially in the city? And is it OK to follow Mayor Emanuel's lead and lose the helmet?"
http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Cycling-John-Forester/dp/0262516942
Has definitive answers to how and why Cyclists get hurt.
I have an older version, but effectively the injury/death rate is mostly effected by poor decisions by the cyclist, not the car. Getting hit from behind by a car was 2% of injuries (but a major cause of death) while getting hit by the asshole riding against traffic was 33%.
In fact, the most dangerous thing to a cyclist is another cyclist.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Listen to this and believe it. I have lived in Key West since 1990 and sold my last fuel burner in 1995. I have a "grocery getter" bike with big baskets and a lean and fast bike for getting somewhere quickly or running my dog. I stop at traffic lights and stop signs, obey one way streets and respect car traffic while not expecting the same in return. However, I am in the minority and am fully aware of that.
Most bicyclists do not think that road rules apply to them whether they are tourists or locals. Looking both ways when crossing a one way street has saved me from many accidents. Drivers don't see you, especially when they are talking on their phones. Bike lanes are not respected. It is up to you as a cyclist to anticipate the other guy doing something stupid and unexpected. They surely will.
Having driven motorcycles for many years prior to moving here I already had this mind set and it helped a great deal.
You can take "technically" out of that sentence - bikes have the same right to the roads as cars do (except in certain specific situations).
Whenever I see a bicyclist say those words, he almost never follows them with "and the same responsibilities to obey the law". It's always in the context that bicyclists want to be treated by drivers as the law says they must, but them following the vehicular laws isn't important.
If you're in the SF bay area, let me know, I'll meet you for a weekend ride and show you that there are cyclists that *do* follow laws as much as they expect cars to respect them.
You say "*BANG*, I've got a car driving 2 feet behind me" during a commute to work on city streets. So? There's a car two feet behind that car, and another one two feet behind him. It's called "rush hour", or in some smaller town, "rush minute". Part of commuting and quite legal.
If you've got cars stacked up 2 feet from each other, then you're in stop and go traffic that's moving at a crawl - bikes aren't slowing you down, they are reducing the number of cars in front of you.
You in particular may be very fastidious in obeying traffic signals and rules of the road, but since almost none of the riders I come across in this town bother with such trivialities it is impossible not to paint the entire riding population with the same brush.
Yes, some cyclists obey the law, some don't. Some car drivers obey the law, some don't. Yet we all have to share the same roads.
In fact, to keep from killing many of your compatriots, it is necessary to assume they are going to ignore the law. A bike approaching the street you are on from a side street with a stop sign? Assume he isn't going to, assume he's going to actually speed up to challenge you for the right of way, and then he's going to either lay over in a sharp turn or side-step into the crosswalk to try to invoke the pedestrian in a crosswalk laws on you.
That's one of my biggest pet peeves - I can maintain a stopped trackstand for only a few seconds before i've got to unclip and put my feet down - when a car has the right of way at a stop sign, I wish they would just take it because then I can get through the intersection faster. Encouraging cyclists to take the right of way when they don't have right of way just further encourages them to not respect right of way laws.