Statistics Announced
John Forester
The cycling community has been deluged recently by government
statistics about fatal car-bike collisions sorted by inside or
outside an intersection. And some sorted by age group. The
advocates of bikeways and cyclist-inferiority cycling have jumped
on these as providing justification for their position. That is
not justified.
The Cross statistics show that fatalities are only 2% of car-bike collisions and are distributed very differently from the rest of car-bike collisions. Fatalities cannot be used as the measure of cyclist safety. Furthermore, this classification of inside or outside an intersection is not helpful and leads to the unjustified conclusion that car-bike collisions outside an intersection must be prevented by sidepaths. This assumption ignores the multitude of car-bike collision situations made more hazardous by installing sidepaths. Also, this assumption ignores the car-bike collisions that are associated with intersections but which occur outside intersections, such as cyclist positioning both before and after an intersection. The fatal defect of this analysis is that it never shows how any car-bike collision has occurred. Without that knowledge, no program of cyclist safety can be valid. The Cross statistics are constructed from detailed analysis and study of each of about 1000 car-bike collisions, showing the factors that contributed to each collision. The Cross statistics (not Cross's report on them), as presented in my book Bicycle Transportation, are a far more accurate presentation of the significant facts about car-bike collisions.
The presentation of the fatality statistics for cyclist age
groups for years since 1980 is illuminating. There is a general
decline in total numbers from 1980 to today. In each year, the
number for each age group are stacked above each other in order of
increasing cyclist age. But, to my mind, the most significant
point is that the greatest part of the decline over the years is
the decline for cyclists in the pre-driving years. By eyeball
examination of the chart, the numbers of fatalities in the driving
age groups do not appear to decline by much. This probably does
not mean that the young are cycling more safely; much more likely
it means that there are many fewer young cyclists on the road.
This confirms other observations. This destroys the force behind
Motordom's argument that cyclists are not capable of obeying the
rules of the road for drivers of vehicles (RRDV). The great
majority of cyclists on the road are of driving age and therefore
must be presumed to be capable of obeying the RRDV. It would
therefore be proper to insist that cyclists on the roadways obey
the RRDV and to take steps to teach them how to do it while
cycling.
-- John Forester, MS, PE Bicycle Transportation Engineer 7585 Church St, Lemon Grove, CA 91945 619-644-5481, fore...@johnforester.com