How Safe Is Cycling? 947
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?"
Safe is a Relative Measure (Score:5, Interesting)
Injuries are seldom reported (Score:5, Interesting)
Google is your friend, it can show you every last killed and injured biker.
No it cannot possibly show you every last injured cyclist. Killed I could believe but definitely not injured because most cycling injuries never get reported including those that involve cars. I've been in numerous cycling accidents myself of which *maybe* one may have been documented somewhere because it required sutures. I've been in and around competitive cycling my entire life (father races) and I assure you that very few bicycle accidents are ever reported to the police much less the NHTSA.
Re:only? (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. One of the cities cited in the article is NYC; I live right next to Manhattan and visit frequently, and it's one of the least bike-friendly cities I've ever seen. Even in the few places where there's bike lanes, it's in no way safe, because of the crazy car drivers (esp. taxis). I even saw a biker hit by a taxi as soon as I got out of the bus station one day; the taxi didn't even stop. You have to be extremely reckless or insane to ride a bike in this crazy city.
NYC really strikes me as a "me too!!" city; it's weird how people here think this is "the greatest city on Earth" (why, I have no idea), but it always trying to play catch-up with some trend that another city started and does far better. First, it was IT tech; they tried pitching themselves as an alternative to Silicon Valley with the idiotic-sounding "Silicon Alley", but unlike Silicon Valley where things are clean and nice and there's lots of high-tech companies paying enormous salaries, here it's old and dirty, but the cost of living is higher (if you go by $/square foot tempered by commuting time; the public transit totally sucks if you live outside Manhattan), and the companies don't pay shit here, and think there's something wrong with you if you've ever worked someplace for less than 15 years. Now it's bicycling: Portland is the most bike-friendly city in the US by far, so now NYC wants to do a "me-too" on that too, and somehow try to convince everyone to hop on bicycles and not worry about getting hit by a speeding cab or a city bus while riding on streets that are about as smooth and well-maintained as those in Beirut, while breathing air as clean as that in Beijing. Heck, NYCers even try to convince themselves they're liberals, while they continually re-elect billionaire Republicans for their mayor.
Re:only? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a cyclist, I'd like to weigh in that it's the cyclists' fault.
Many of us are quite aware that there are laws. In Idaho, a bicycle can stop at a traffic signal and then proceed if clear (I want this extended to motorcycles and small, high-visibility vehicles like top-down convertibles). In most states, bicycles are supposed to stop at stop signs, traffic signals, and other traffic control devices. They should ride with traffic--not against it--and exercise reasonable road safety.
Unfortunately, most people on bicycles are not the many of us; they are the many blunt dunderheads who got a $50 bike at Wal-Mart that will probably fall apart one day when jumping a ramp. They don't know or care about the law. Some of them think salmoning is safe and will ride blissfully head-on toward high-speed traffic. As a result, you have all of these retarded people running through intersections into traffic; I've seen a guy on a fixed gear bike run through a red light and turn left through oncoming left-turn traffic, just weaving between close-packed moving cars.
Think about how dangerous cars would be if we didn't train people to drive them and didn't issue tickets to lawbreakers. You run traffic signals, drive down the wrong side of the road, and generally behave unsafely on a bicycle? The police don't do shit. Legally they're empowered to fine you and even take away your fucking driver's license--they don't have direct recourse for a bicycle, but they can eventually argue that the bicycle is an enabler and legally take possession of it. Some of these people could be fined out of existence or outright arrested for their dangerous behavior--you think running through a traffic signal and swerving through dense moving traffic isn't arrest-worthy? Someone could have panicked and swerved his car straight into the other oncoming traffic to try to evade the cyclist, or slammed their brakes on and caused a lot of (probably harmless, but expensive) rear-end collisions. I would fully support the cop who arrests your fucking ass for that.
There's your danger.
Re:only? (Score:5, Interesting)
Only? That sounds like proof of concept rather than a proof of overstatement.
It is only proof that America as a whole, of which NYC is a part of (contrary to popular opinion, who think it is America), has a shockingly low regard for bikers. Take for example, how the Dutch [youtube.com] handle bicycling -- they have not just dedicated lanes, but dedicated traffic signals. Bikes are an integrated part of their public transportation system. In the United States, it's viewed as "something children do, or people who haven't grown up." In other words, you're viewed as immature and/or poor if you ride a bike, not environmentally conscious, fiscally prudent, or body smart.
Now I live in the midwest, and several of our cities, to little fanfare, have been adopting the dutch approach. In Chicago, Minneapolis, and other cities, we are creating dedicated bike lanes and signals. Minneapolis in particular has an extensive network of inter-city bike trails which it maintains year round. For those who forget, Minneapolis is located at the same lat/long as Moscow, and it regularly gets snowfall of several feet come high winter. Chicago's trains have been installing bike racks in the cars and on buses, though they are seen less than elsewhere during the cold season. New York, for all its bluster about this, barely registers on the scale of bike-friendliness; cyclists there might as well be armed mad-max style and shooting at motorists for as much hostility there is between the two groups, whereas in the midwest, and even along the West coast in places like San Francisco, motorists are much more tolerant of cyclists.
This is starting to change as the millenials come into the workforce and seem decidedly uninterested in owning their own car. I'm not entirely sure why this is happening, because unlike Europe, the population density of America is such that owning a car is pretty much a necessity -- most people who own bikes also own, or at least have access to, a car or other form of motorized transportation. Even in Europe, scooters are a common sight, whereas around here, they're rare indeed.
I guess my point is that while culture plays a role, the bigger hinderance to mass transit and cycling both in the United States is population density. We are really spread out. You could fit several Western Europes into the US, and we don't have nearly as many people per mile as most European countries. The other part of this is that our city's infrastructure has never been flat out replaced. Europe's has -- it was called WWII, when most of their infrastructure was blown up. Your welcome by the way -- we paid for fixing a lot of that. We've never done the same here -- our roads were never reimagined to include bikes, or mini-vehicles, etc. Our urban sprawl continues unabated. And this is, ultimately, why we have so many problems; We're too spread out, and infrastructure costs too damn much, which is why it's only basic. We should have had bullet trains and such a long time ago; But the maintenance costs of all this suburban landscape saps away our budget. And it makes cycling a losing proposition -- the average road trip is 15 miles in the midwest. That's 30 miles a day if you want to go by bike. And considering that over 1/3rd of our citizens are clinically obese... I don't know that even half of Americans could survive a 30 mile bike ride.
Re:How safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Cycling-John-Forester/dp/0262516942 [amazon.com]
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.
Re:Please (Score:2, Interesting)
Want to avoid intersection problems a freaking flag and bight colors does this. the highly stupid bicyclists that refuse to have the flag because it slows them down are the problem. The flag increases your safety and visibility dramatically, many times I spot the flag way before the bike because he is passing by parked SUV's and invisible. Bicyclists without the flag are just plain old idiots.
Re:It would be safer if cyclists followed traffic (Score:4, Interesting)
I will happily furnish two chairs and as much liquor as you can drink, and we'll sit at the stop sign next to my house. One block away from a school, and one block away from a heavily frequented park. In a residential historic neighborhood with home values approaching seven figures. Speed bumps on almost every street.
You chug a beer every time a car rolls through the stop sign. You down a shot every time someone blows through it without even slowing down. You take a sip when cars bottom out on the dips. Shot for people texting or talking on mobiles. Just a sip for speeding. You want to up the ante? Add a drink for failure to yield right-of-way, or honked horn.
I'll take a shot for every car that doesn't break the law in some fashion.
I'll go home in better shape than you, by far.
Everyday on my bike, someone tries to kill me. Often enough on purpose. On my bike, it's very unlikely that I'll kill or maim anyone, whether I follow the law or not. Every cyclist I've ever talked to who has been in an car/bike accident (and that's just about all of them) was following the law at the time of the accident. And the car wasn't. Guess who got injured?
So the hell with you. Cyclists rarely hurt anyone, and car drivers kill cyclists every day.
Re:How safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Loads of prior research has been done (Score:2, Interesting)
What one should not forget in the case of the Netherlands, is the traffic laws:
Bikers in the Netherlands are legally virtually omnipotent. The law is on their side. In fact, whenever an accident between a powered vehicle and a bicycle occurs, the driver of the powered vehicle is always the liable party, even if it was the biker who technically caused the accident (e.g. went through a red light). This means that car drivers are extra cautious hitting any bikers, since it is them who have to cover up all the costs of an accident. This also leads to this peculiar observation: everyone who has driven a car in the Netherlands will know that the bikers seem to come from EVERYWHERE, always ignore the rules, go through red lights and tend to zip past roundabouts on the left. Driving a car in Holland is not fun. Riding a bike is.
Besides that, the bike infrastructure in the Netherlands is far more advanced than even the bike-loving cities in the US. The Dutch have been constructing bike infrastructure ever since the 1970s Oil Crisis. The US is inevitably still a few decades behind.
Re:How safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:An important distinction (Score:5, Interesting)
The simple fact is that bicycling (as much as I love it) is horrendously dangerous in urban areas, and the reason is cars (and even worse, SUVs). All these moves to build bike lanes are idiotic and wasteful, because they do absolutely nothing to physically separate bikes from cars, and cars will drive in the bike lanes whenever they want (which is, every time they need to take a right turn, or simply stop paying attention, or get drunk).
If these idiot mayors want to encourage bicycling, they need to build real bike roads, like they have in Copenhagen, where the bikes are the only thing on the road, not cars, and not pedestrians either. That's the only way to do it.
Actually, while this seems intuitively obvious, a lot of research and testing indicates that it's the opposite of what is true. There's a Dutch city planner/traffic engineer by the last name of Monderman who did some fascinating work on the topic, re-engineering a Dutch village in the opposite way. What resulted was a dramatic drop in both the number and severity of accidents...of all forms. Instead of trying to calm traffic, separate cars and pedestrians/bikes from each other and provide tons of stop signs and other signage, he did the opposite. There's a surprisingly enjoyable book called "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do" that I recommend for anyone who drives a lot. I know, a book about traffic...must be insanely boring, right? It's actually quite good, both an entertaining read and full of solid academic rigor. Monderman himself is a riot. He points out, while driving towards a bridge, a sign that says it's a bridge. He asks if anyone really needs a sign to know that they're seeing a bridge. "Treat people like idiots, and they will behave as such," he points out. I agree.
I'm a cyclist too, and you're victim-blaming (Score:5, Interesting)
As a cyclist, I'd like to weigh in that it's the cyclists' fault.
As a cyclist, I'd like to weigh in that you're full of it, and engaging in thinking/logic that's a cousin to the basic logic employed by racists. You cite some guy riding extremely dangerously as an example of how everyone rides. You rely on an anecdote, which is not evidence. And then you state that this behavior is what causes all/most injuries, which is victim-blaming.
Turns out, there's plenty of studies on this subject, from all across the world, using various methods. They typically find between 66% and 90% of collisions are the fault of motorists, and the cyclist was doing nothing wrong or improper when they were hit. The top causes of injuries in most cities are doorings (which in many places is automatically the door-openers fault, even if it's not specifically codified into law, as virtually all jurisdictions make opening a door into the path of "traffic" illegal), right hooks (driver passes you and then immediately slows/turns, cutting you off and blocking your path), and left-crosses (left turn in front of you, illegally failing to yield to oncoming traffic.) None are the cyclist's fault.
The reason you're engaging in this victim-blaming is for a psychological self-defense mechanism. See, it's scary when a cyclist gets hit or killed, especially if they weren't doing anything wrong. That means it could happen to you. In order to protect yourself from that danger mentally, you see yourself as superior. "I ride safely." "I follow all the laws." "I have really bright lights." "I'm not riding a cheap bike, mine's better and well-maintained." Tada! You now ride proudly and feeling "safe."
Well, guess what? I follow the law. I have years of experience riding in the city. I know all the protect-yourself techniques. I have great lights. I ride a really nice bike with great disc brakes and it's well maintained. I've still been hit.
or slammed their brakes on and caused a lot of (probably harmless, but expensive) rear-end collisions. I would fully support the cop who arrests your fucking ass for that
The officer would ticket the driver of the vehicle that rear-ended the other for failing to follow at a safe distance. Nice try.
Re:How safe? (Score:4, Interesting)
research contradicts Forester and you (Score:4, Interesting)
I have an older version, but effectively the injury/death rate is mostly effected by poor decisions by the cyclist, not the car.
First off, "the car" doesn't do anything. The driver does. You're attributing behavior to an inanimate object, something I see people do constantly.
Second: several decades of research proves your claim wrong. Most collisions are due to the driver doing something illegal, sometimes simply failing to yield because they think they have right-of-way over someone on a bicycle.
Australian helmet cam study: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/study-blames-drivers-for-bike-crashes-20101122-18330.html [smh.com.au]
London study: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/drivers-to-blame-for-twothirds-of-bicycle-collisions-in-westminster-8602166.html [standard.co.uk]
UK-wide study: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/15/cycling-bike-accidents-study [theguardian.com]
Toronto study which found cyclists at fault in TEN PERCENT of crashes: http://www.examiner.com/article/study-claims-cyclists-at-fault-only-10-percent-of-crashes [examiner.com]
The list goes on. Keep in mind that studies which are based off police reports that aren't carefully analyzed are typically faulty because police very often incorrectly side with motorists, don't interview cyclists, witness statements are wrong, etc. It's common to review a report, see obvious signs that the motorist did something illegal, and police do not cite them, and often cite the cyclist.
This guy was hit and two witnesses and the driver claimed he ran a red light; police tried to give him a ticket for running the light. He knew he hadn't. He found video from a traffic camera showing very clearly that he was cut off by the driver - what we call a "left cross": http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19284/it-must-have-been-your-fault-cmon-you-are-a-biker/ [greatergre...ington.org]
It should make you stop and think to consider that many cyclists ride with helmet cameras. There's a reason - drivers lie, police don't believe us (or very often we're incapacitated or otherwise unable to defend ourselves), and witnesses are discriminatory towards cyclists or simply don't understand traffic laws or think they saw what they didn't.
Re:An important distinction (Score:4, Interesting)
Given the speed and travelled distance difference between cars and bicycles maybe per-hour accidents would be a better metric.
Accidents-per-person-journey is probably best (or its reciprocal if you like larger numbers), as that most closely matches the likelihood of someone having an accident, given that the profile of time spent in different vehicles is different. It even handles how to compare with various kinds of mass transit schemes. You can then think in terms of "how likely am I to get seriously injured when going from home to work if I travel by bicycle?" which is actually a useful question (and comparable to "... if I travel by car?" by even not too statistically-sophisticated people).
Re:How safe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Source: (read the article for full details)
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/06/13/bicycling-the-safest-form-of-transportation/ [mrmoneymustache.com]
Biking vs. Driving
Driving a car at 70MPH for one hour:
20 minutes of lifespan erased
$35.00 per hour of money burned
Riding a bike at 12MPH for one hour:
4.5 hours of lifespan gained
$100 of monetary gains secured
On a Per-Mile Basis:
Car: Lose 50 cents and 18 seconds of life
Bike: Gain $8.33 and 1350 seconds of life
Re:An important distinction (Score:5, Interesting)
That's it—not the absolute number of injuries/fatalities, but the rate. It's very high, at least around my area, considering the relatively small number of cyclist miles ridden on roads.
But would the injury rate remain the same if the number of drivers was reduced and the number of bicyclists was increased? Does their rarity contribute to the lack of awareness that cars have for them? Would an increase in bicyclists help justify extra costs of building extra safety measures for bicyclists (suck as bike lanes, perhaps even ones divided from other traffic?)