Pre-preliminary 2009 Fatality Report

[update, as of mid-may 2010, i have learned that there are a preliminary 25 cyclist fatalities. That would mean I am missing 9, which is way more than i was hoping for]

First, some perspective: In the state of Arizona, approximately 1,000 people are killed per year in traffic collisions of all types. The number of cyclist (usually called a “pedalcyclist” in the jargon) fatalities fluctuated between15 and 36 per year over the past twenty years, with an average of about 25/year.

[as a sidebar, Arizona total traffic fatalities which have been as high as 1,293 just a couple of years ago, were down to 937 for 2008.  The exact cause of this happy trend is a matter of great debate, e.g. the effect of economic recession, and photo-enforcement. Even after this dramatic reduction Arizona roads remain significantly more dangerous than US averages ]

I have become increasingly frustrated by what seems to me to be short-shrift paid to analysis of crashes resulting in a cyclist’s serious injury/fatality, as opposed to simply tallying collisions together. For example, in the Phoenix Bicyclist Collision Summary, there are only two breakdowns in this regard: severity by time of day, and helmet usage. ( The Phoenix and ADOT reports are linked here).

So, I have tried to collect ALL cyclist fatalities in Arizona, beginning calendar year 2009, you can view the current results here: 2009 AZ Cyclist Fatality Grid. If anyone knows of a cyclist killed in Arizona that is not on that list, please contact the email address on the top of the grid.

There are a number of caveats, 1) the incidents are certainly incomplete, 2) the data reported is mainly limited to whatever was released by the police to the media.

Eventually, final results will be issued from the state, along with a county-by-county breakdown. At that point, I will “know what I don’t know” in terms of identifying incidents. Further, eventually, I would like to obtain police reports — but I am not sure if i will be able to locate them all, and cost may be a limiting factor.

Pre Prelimary Results

As of the second week of January 2010; there are 16 known (to me) cyclist fatalities in 2009.

5 of the 16 known incidents appear to be the fault of the cyclist: one incident was a juvenile who rode out from a sidewalk; one cyclist rode out from a sidewalk against a signal; one is said to have “crossed” in front of traffic (though there are reportedly problems with the police report); and one was crossing the street. I also placed the Flagstaff city Truck incident in this category, though that may be a both-at-fault kind of thing.

11 of the 16 known incidents were the fault of the motor vehicle driver. You can comb through the grid — the whole gamut is there including several hit-and-runs, DUIs and whatnot. And by the way 9 of those 11 drivers have either already been cited, or indicted on criminal charges. The other 2 of 11 drivers outcome is either under investigation or unknown at this time.

It should probably come as no surprise that the modality of fatalities varies dramatically from that of aggregating all bike/vehicle crashes together… e.g. from the Phoenix 2007 Summary “…the bicyclist was listed as the primary AT FAULT party more than twice as often as the motorist”. hmmm.

So that statement, based on this data, would read something like this: “for fatal bicyclist collisions in Arizona during 2009…the motorist is the AT FAULT party more often than the bicyclist”.

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A 2002 ADOT report which examined each and every bike  / vehicle collision occurring over a 10 year period on limited access highways througout the entire state of Arizona may serve as a model. There were only 9 such incidents during the study period. As expected, the fatality rate was relatively high, 33%. While the “error rate” was almost exactly even between the cyclist and driver (though there was no elaboration on what constituted and error). For contrast, the city of Phoenix reports a fatal rate of well below 5%, and the claimed primary fault rate is heavily against the cyclist.

Bicycle – Motor Vehicle Collisions on Controlled Access Highways in Arizona, Richard C. Moeur and Michelle N. Bina

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I published this article, when i saw a write-up of a Fort Collins (Colorado) Collision summary described on cyclicious (and on treehugger), these diagrams look familiar(? maybe the Carol Tan paper?)

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This one looks pretty well constructed: Collisions Involving Pedal Cyclists on Britain’s roads: establishing the causes, J Knowles, et. al. from Britian’s TRL Free download but I think I had to register to get it.