More than 52,000 bicyclists have been killed in bicycle traffic accidents in the U.S. over the 80 years the federal government has been keeping records.
When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem to assume that such accidents are usually the cyclist’s fault — a result of reckless or aggressive riding.
But an analysis of police reports on 2,752 bike-car accidents in Toronto found that clumsy or inattentive driving by motorists was the cause of 90 percent of these crashes.
Among the leading causes: running a stop sign or traffic light, turning into a cyclist’s path, or opening a door on a biker. This shouldn’t come as too big a surprise: motorists cause roughly 75 percent of motorcycle crashes too.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/who-causes-cyclists-dea...
http://www.projectfreeride.org/team/cycling_health_and_safety/index.php?...
Comments
No wonder there are so few cyclists in the Anglophone world.
Roads...
We're not allowed to walk on them, so why are we COMPELLED to ride on them ? - Especially while being PROHIBITED from using the networks of segregated pathways that line the streets in our cities and towns.
I'm not advocating that all cyclists be moved onto what are currently designated as 'footpaths' - what I am saying is that, if we should choose to, we should be allowed and encouraged to exercise the right to 'micro-plan' our journeys,-according to our own discretion and the conditions as we see them.
If the law were to be changed to allow all cyclists to use the existing segregated infrastructure (i.e. 'footpaths') cycling would become practicable by a large number of people who currently will not even contemplate taking the risk of becoming one of the statistics that we see in articles such as this one.
I cycle every day. I don't own a car. I ride safely and don't take risks or put myself in harms way like entrusting my life to the whims of drivers of motor-vehicles.
If lots of people take up cycling because they don't mind riding slowly on the pavements, the case for building physically segregated pathways such as those that cyclists enjoy in the 'cycletopias'-where the statstics are much less terrifying, will be made much stronger.
Cycle lanes as we know them in New Zealand do not provide real protection for cyclists.
There is a better way forward and we need to stop trying to control the behaviour of drivers and start working towards creating the establishment of ideal infrastructure
for safe cycling.
Alan Preston in Mangawhai, Northland.
http://urbanbicycles.googlepages.com/
Promoting urban appropriate utility bicycles and utility cycling in New Zealand