Category: safety

[civil suit finally settled] Rumsey guilty of manslaughter

[ UPDATE May 2012: Final awards in Jose Rincon’s civil lawsuit after a trip to appellate court; azstarnet.com (though their links seem to regularly go dead). Note that the original award of $13 was the LARGEST judgement ever against the city:

…Chuy’s settled before the February 2010 civil trial for an undisclosed sum. During the trial, jurors were told that a city engineer had abandoned plans to add five feet of asphalt to the roadway during an improvement project, creating a large offset in the lanes on either side of Vozack Lane, just east of Harrison. As a result, Rumsey ended up in the bike lane when her lane ended and she tried to merge.

The jury decided Rumsey, the city of Tucson and Chuy’s were equally responsible and awarded $40 million to the Rincon family. The city’s $13 million share was the largest individual judgment ever against the city. The city appealed, and Pima County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Lee denied the motion for a new trial but granted the defendants’ request for a reduced judgment, slashing the judgment to $12 million.

The city then went to the Arizona Court of Appeals, and it decided in March 2011 that the case should be retried. The Rincons settled with both Rumsey and the city recently.

The settlement with Rumsey is confidential; the settlement with the city specifically states the city was making “no admission of liability, culpability or fault, either by expression or implication.” …. Back when Lee reduced the $40 million judgment, Rincon said he and his wife had agreed to settle the lawsuit for $950,000 before trial, but the city refused. He bemoaned the fact that because the public didn’t know the city hadn’t accepted the settlement offer, residents were under the impression he and his wife were “money-grubbers.”…

The city’s appeal is online at justia.com RINCON v. RUMSEY, CITY OF TUCSON, contains some interesting stuff. (it should also be online via court-of-appeals div 2 website, but i haven’t looked for it there). Note that the superior-court appeal upheld the trial judge; while the court of appeals found the trial court judge (and thus the superior court appeals judge) erred.

]

Glenda Rumsey was found guilty of manslaughter in the death of Tucson teenager Jose Rincon.  (see here for a roundup of types of murder). Like many drunk drivers, she also tried to run. Continue reading “[civil suit finally settled] Rumsey guilty of manslaughter”

IIHS: SUVs Becoming Less Deadly

It used to be that SUVs were both more deadly to others, because of something dubbed poor “crash compatibility”, and not particularly safe (or perhaps i should say: not as safe as they could have been) for their own occupants due to a propensity to roll over; see this 2005 IIHS study that looked at 1999-2002 model years. It was a bit of a lose-lose proposition.

The latest version of looking at the risk of dying in any particular car, which covers model year 2005-2008, shows a marked decrease in SUV rollover deaths, presumably due to design changes in SUVs the most prominent being stability control “Recently calculated driver death rates for 2005-08 models show that drivers of SUVs are among the least likely to die in a crash. That change is due largely to ESC (Electronic Stability Control)”

Who is your Crash Partner?

Those studies look only at the risk of death to the driver of any particular vehicle — without regard to any other factors of the collision. It has long been known that SUVs pose a higher risk to others, because of their rigid frame design, which is also rides higher; in a collision with a car, particularly a t-bone, the rigid frame tends to slice into the car, disproportionately killing the car occupants. Happily, design changes made to SUVs have helped the sit

uation, to the point where similar weight vehicles, whether they are SUVs or cars, have similar risk of death.

“Whether you’re in an SUV or just sharing the road with one,” Nolan says, “recent improvements to these vehicles are making you safer.”

The results don’t contradict the basic physics of crashes. Size and weight are still key, and a small, lightweight vehicle is going to fare worse than a big, heavy vehicle in a crash. In general, SUVs and pickups are heavier than cars, so in that sense different types of vehicles always will be mismatched. But the study shows that, beyond weight, differences in vehicle styles don’t have to be a safety problem.

— IIHS, Effort to make SUVs, pickups less deadly to car occupants in crashes is paying off, news release 9/28/2011

 Pickups remain problematic, though even they have shown improvement.

What if your Crash Partner is a Pedestrian?

None of the above addresses this topic. Other studies have shown SUVs/Light Trucks are significantly more dangerous to pedestrians compared with automobiles: “Analysis of these three databases has clearly demonstrated that pedestrians have a substantially greater likelihood of dying when struck by an LTV (light truck or van) than when struck by a car.”  The fatality and injury risk of light truck impacts with pedestrians in the United States, Devon E. Lefler, Hampton C. Gabler, Accident Analysis and Prevention, v.36, pp. 295-304, Elsevier (2004)  (see also an earlier paper/version from the same authors sounded the alarm  did anyone pay attention, or even care?  The Emerging threat of Light Truck Impacts with Pedestrians is basically the same article)

Similar study published in 2005 Injury Prevention: United States pedestrian fatality rates by vehicle type by L J Paulozzi of the CDC, using 2002 FARS data “Compared with cars, the RR (relative risk) of killing a pedestrian per vehicle mile was 1.45 (95% CI 1.37 to 1.55) for light trucks… The greatest impact on overall US pedestrian mortality will result from reducing the risk from the light truck category”. This methodology is very straightforward, it takes the FARS data and segregates it by bodystyle (the paper does not state exactly how that was done; it looks easy, see below); and computes the RR (relative risk) based on Table VM-1, which is in Section V of FHWA Highway Statistics 2002. UNFORTUNATELY, the fhwa stopped reporting VM-1 in that way. Commencing with 2007 they no longer differentiate between passenger cars and LTVs; inexplicably they now differentiate by wheelbase, thus that data is useless for this purpose; so i guess we’ll never know how many more pedestrians are killed by LTVs (SUVs, pickups, etc). There are some footnotes to VM-1, saying methodology changes due to motorcycle reporting that do not seem to explain this change.

However, the data is all available in any Traffic Safety Facts Annual Report, e.g. here is 2011 and 2012 (search the library for newer ones). It is in Tables 7, 8, 9, 10 for Passenger cars, Light trucks, heavy trucks, and motorcycles. It lists VMT, and registration data; the only thing left to do is to extract from FARS the quantity of non-occupant fatalities split by those 4 vehicle types. I’ve already added a “synthetic” field to my FARS mysql data called sMODEL, it is based on the FARS field MODEL.

Here is a newer meta-study, that i would guess references the Paulozzi study and has very similar result, that i need to look up from Traffic Inj Prev. 2010 Feb;11(1):48-56. doi: 10.1080/15389580903390623.Do light truck vehicles (LTV) impose greater risk of pedestrian injury than passenger cars? A meta-analysis and systematic review. ” the risk of fatal injury in pedestrian collisions with LTVs compared to conventional cars was odds ratio 1.54, 95 percent confidence interval 1.15-1.93″

—

(given the dramatic change in the mix of the US vehicle (higher percentage of light trucks) fleet since whenever the cross and fisher data came from (mid 70s)…. it would be interesting to know if anything could be shown more statistically in, say, 2005.

There’s something called the “household” fleet, see exhibit 1 of the NHTS (Nat. Household Trans Survey)… mixture changed from 80/20 (automobiles/light trucks) to 50/50(!) from 1977 to 2008

There’s also this from the Cross and Fisher data (mid 1970’s or so):

TYPE OF MOTOR VEHICLE DRIVEN BY MOTORISTS IN THE FATAL AND NON-FATAL SAMPLES

[…]

Table 12 shows that trucks are involved in a proportionately greater number of fatal accidents (19%) than non-fatal accidents (9.4%). More than 80% of the trucks were pickups or vans; the remainder were larger types of trucks. These data suggest that the likelihood of fatal injuries increases as a function of the size of the vehicle. For instance, dividing the proportion of fatal cases by the proportion of non-fatal cases yields a ratio of .9 for passenger cars, 1.9 for pickups and vans, and 3.2 for larger types of trucks. However, because of the small number of cases involving a truck, these data can only be considered suggestive.

Bad weekend in Scottsdale

[ Adot Incident 2609053 Update / FINAL on cyclist McCarty death: azcentral.com  The motorist who killed Shawn McCarty was fined a total of $420 (and the case is apparently closed). Regardless, It would appear that $420 is the “normal” fine schedule that anyone would pay. That would mean that the enhanced fine for 28-735 (section B) was exactly ZERO. How can that be? Would a judge or magistrate actually make that decision, or it is some sort of court “bug”? Continue reading “Bad weekend in Scottsdale”

One Arizona legislator REALLY doesn’t like photo red cameras

Our legislative elves have been hard at work trying to de-rail photo-enforcement. Again (click here for last year’s festivities). The biggest single item is supposedly dead as of March 6, 2012 — this would have referred a ballot measure which would prevent cities and towns from using photo-enforcement.

Safety studies have consistently shown a net safety benefit for photo-red enforcement. Net means that there are fewer serious injuries and fatalities. A few studies have shown an increase in the number of collisions accompanying the safety gains. See, e.g. the IIHS study, Red Light Running Kills, linked at trafficsafetycoalition.com. Or more locally, also see Scottsdale-based redmeansstop.org.

Here is a list of items in the current session (50th 2nd Regular. The Spring of 2012) of the Arizona Legislature, assembled by the Traffic Safety Coalition:

  • SB1315 – mandate personal service or certified mail for photo enforcement tickets
  • SB1316 – mandate that photo enforcement cameras cannot take pictures of red light running violations unless the light has been red for at least one second
  • SB1317 – mandate a study of intersections with red light cameras
  • SB1318 – force photo enforcement companies to obtain a PI License for each worker
  • SCR 1029 – put photo enforcement ban to the voters for approval

As noted above Senate Concurrent Resolution 1029 is for the time-being anyway dead… The first thing I noticed that was odd is that they are all in the senate. Upon closer inspection all four of the the senate bills have only one sponsor, and all four are the same guy; a Frank Antenori (R-30, Tucson). He clearly doesn’t like photo-enforcement, and is apparently making it his life’s work to defeat it’s effectiveness; if not ban it outright.

Aside from safety issues, the cameras can, and do, provide evidence that has been used to solve crimes; including (that I know of) catching a hit-and-run driver who seriously injured a cyclist in Tucson, a hit-and-run-driver who killed a cyclist in Tempe, and a assault-robbery-murderer in Tempe.

Stats?

Arizona has a particular problem with red-light running; despite improvement over the years, Arizona continues to be over-represented. For example in 2009 Arizona had 37 red light running (RLR) fatalities while New York had only 29…. Arizona being three times as dangerous as New York on a per capita basis.

The words below, written over 10 years ago continue to ring true today, from a 07/13/00 article in USA Today, Ariz. has deadliest red-light runners in USA:

Arizona has the nation’s deadliest red-light runners, with three of the country’s worst cities for fatal intersection crashes, according to a study of federal transportation data obtained by USA TODAY….  Arizona had by far the worst death rate among states, with 6.5 fatalities for every 100,000 people… Arizona also had three of the four most dangerous cities. for red-light fatalities. Phoenix topped all urban areas, followed by Memphis, Mesa and Tucson

In addition, cities with speed limits of 45 mph and higher on surface streets faced more serious red-light -running accidents… The Phoenix police officer says said that with an average of 330 days of sunshine a year, it’s typically usually perfect driving weather. That doesn’t mean motorists drive perfectly, however. Just the opposite. “If we got more rain or inclement weather, maybe it would slow people down some, particularly at the intersections,” Halstead said says. “As it is, they zip around the city at a pretty good clip.” And, according to the institute’s study, Phoenix drivers run red lights at an unrivaled pace. The city has by far the nation’s deadliest rate of fatal red- light running crashes, nearly five times the national average. Arizona and other fast-growing Western states have been particularly stung by red light crashes “because their wide open roads are suddenly seeing schools, businesses, and busy intersections crop up,” says said Phoenix traffic engineer Paul Wellstone. “The West has a reputation for being a drivers’ paradise; a place you can lay on the accelerator and not worry about the traffic and dangers. That’s changing now. Cities are struggling with getting their citizens to slow down.”

 The FHWA has a page on red light running.

Is Phoenix Safe?

[ Updated Sept 2018; this year’s Allsate 2018 America’s Best Drivers Report lists Phx rather low (less “safe” than average); not sure if anything has changed in methodology(?). ]

Sept 2015 Update: Each year we’re treated to this recurring tidbit of stupidity via Allstate Insurance press release which always gets picked up and published in the media: Arizona’s urban drivers score well for safety. ‘Well’ for safety?  Unfortunately Arizona remains significantly less-safe (i.e. more dead bodies) than average in US, and far worse than the best state.  Like as much as hundreds of percent worse, depending on which metric is chosen (VMT vs. per capita)
NHTSA state-by-state stats.

Phoenix was reputed to be America’s 7th safest city, according to this survey which looked at three factors relating to insurance. Clearly the stuff of newspaper-filler stories. Intrigued, I see that the survey involves ranking cities in three categories 1) Crime, 2) Natural disasters, and 3) Traffic safety; though it wasn’t clear how they were weighted. For example, traffic fatalities claim far more lives than murder, and the number of deaths in the U.S. due to natural disaster is miniscule.
That being as it may, their source for traffic safety rankings is the “Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report” (tm!), which Allstate claims “Reveals Safest Driving Cities”.

What it actually measures is the statistical likihood of having an auto insurance claim. Which Allstate claims, and I think sounds reasonable, as a proxy for the number of MV collisions. The next leap, which is demonstrably false, is that fewer collisions translates into “safety”. One glaring data point is enough to disprove this: cities of similar size are frequently and for good reasons ranked against one another; it just so happens that Phoenix and Philadelphia have virtually the same population, and are currently the 5th and 6th largest city in the U.S. Actual fatality data reveal that Phoenix is significantly more dangerous than Philadelphia, yet Allstate’s proxy data says just the opposite:

NHTSA Fatality Data Allstate data
City Killed population killed per 100K time between collisions rank (higher=worse)
Philadelphia 95 1547297 6.14 60.2% worse 6.2 years 187
Seattle, WA 30 616,627 4.87 25% worse 8.0 years 147
Phoenix AZ 159 1593659 9.98 1.1% better 10.1 years 74

Source: NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts 2009 (latest year available), Table 124 811402.pdf, and Allstate (follow link above; current year result they refer to as 2011, is similar to 2005-2010 ). Notes: overall U.S. fatals/population/ratePer100K = 33,808/307,007,000/11.01

So, Allstate’s data merely shows that Phoenicians suffer from fewer fender-benders than Philadelphians; but say nothing about safety.

Why is Phoenix so dangerous? The main reason is probably because it’s “Dangerous by design”, with a higher priority on moving more cars, at higher speeds; and a lower priority on getting everyone to their destinations without being killed. More driving could explain some but not all of the gap; this, in itself, a symptom of poor land-use choices.

I threw Seattle into the table simply because of this recent op-ed that aggravated me: why-seattle-is-safer-than-phoenix. Phoenix and Seattle are quite dissimilar in population, but here again the Allstate data claims Seattle is significantly more dangerous than Phoenix when just the opposite that’s true.

2014 Update

Here’s the figures based on Allstate released in Sept 2014. Phoenix is the “best” large city at 9.2 years; and coincidentally Philadelphia is the “worst” large city at 6.2 years.

Auto Insurance Center Fatality Statistics

An outfit called the Auto Insurance Center put out a statistical roundup that looked only at fatal crashes (covering data years 2005-2015) and then normalized each stat to each state by population, and then ranked the states. It’s a FARS data-mining exercise that comes up with sometimes curious stats of dubious value but interesting nonetheless, e.g. “Fatal car crashes caused by road rage were the most prevalent in Indiana (almost 13 fatalities per 100,000 residents)”. Variations like that tend to come from wide variations in reporting, not that there’s a lot more road rage in one state versus another.

 

By the way

I always have trouble finding this page at www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov (which can be found by searching for FARS, then clicking on “publications”) where it lists publications like Traffic Safety Facts; e.g. 2009 Traffic Safety Facts Data Summary Booklet ; and 2009 Traffic Safety Facts FARS/GES Annual Report, they list back to about earlier 1990’s.

NTSB calls for complete cell ban: LaHood backpedals

The NTSB has called for a complete ban on personal electronic communications device usage by drivers on the grounds that any non-emergency usage is unacceptable risky. Here is Deborah A. P. Hersman, NTSB chairman writing in USA Today on 12/15/2011:

Distraction, whether it’s hands-free or handheld, whether it’s texting or talking, is deadly. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) said distraction-affected crashes killed 3,092 people last year

Handheld-only bans, such as that proposed in the city of Tucson, are at best not likely to improve safety much; and in fact may have perverse effects. If handsfree become explictly permitted, it may well change behavior of those who formerly chose to abstain entirely, thus increasing risky behavior rather than reducing it.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, in late December “U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he won’t back a proposal to prohibit drivers from talking on cellphones, even hands-free devices, giving a boost to car makers and mobile-phone companies that stand to lose if regulators impose a ban” [wsj]. So there you have it, distracted-driver warrior LaHood won’t back a ban; along with an explanation of presumed pressure from business interests.

At this point, you might be wondering and confused about who-is-who in this Federal alphabet soup: What is the NTSB? This is a both interesting and intricate. One might think that NTSB resides under the DOT, however it turns out that is incorrect: “In 1974, Congress reestablished the NTSB as a completely separate entity, outside the DOT”.  The NTSB is run by a five member board; each nominated by the president for five year terms. Read that as far less politically sensitive, as compared to the Secretary of Transportation.

So Ray LaHood is Obama’s Secretary of Transportation; who runs the U.S. DOT, the United State’s Department of Transportation. And the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) is the group, under DOT, tasked with highway safety.

…

There is an enjoyably-cycnical view of the subject at LaHood says hands free calls are A-okay; throws NTSB under the bus.

…

Recent DOT blog  fastlane.dot.gov touts enddd.org.

…

Listening to Phoenix’s Bicycle Collision Summary

[Updated Jan 2015: There are more recent summaries posted at  phoenix.gov/streets/safety-topicss; direct links (unfortunately, many of these links now are 404 or link to the wrong report): bike (2010) ; ped(2012) ; all traffic(2012); bike (2013) (see section below for 2013 numbers) also an interesting MV collision rate study spanning 2006-2010.  I did a quick glance at the bike and numbers are very similar to the 2007 which is detailed below… including the tendency of Phoenix PD to mis-characterize collisions at driveways and crosswalks as the fault of the bicyclist ]
[Update 2023: I see a bicycle summary for year 2020 , see below, which was released in 2022; ]

Phoenix, and many other entities issue a report, usually called something like a Bicyclist Collision Summary. For some background, complaints, and links to others, see Understanding Collision Summaries.

At hand, I have the most recent, 2007, report from the City of Phoenix, which can be still be found here ( Local copy in case that link breaks) Continue reading “Listening to Phoenix’s Bicycle Collision Summary”

Mesa traffic cameras to stay 2 more years

Story from AZ republic (via Tucson Citizen site; i don’t see it online otherwise. Also it ran in condensed form as an east valley brief 2/14/2012) Mesa traffic cameras to stay 2 more years.

Story mentions the Sean Casey fatality from 2005 where a junior high school student was killed while walking his bike through a crosswalk with a green light when he got whacked by a motorist who ran a red light. This whole story seems to have been a huge miscarriage of justice. A judge dismissed neg hom charges against the driver. And to add insult to injury, according to news reports the driver did not even pay her fine, or attend traffic school as ordered.

In any event the gist of the story is camera enforcement (among other factors) is credited with reducing crashes, according to Mesa Police commander Bill Peters: “Crashes at intersections now monitored by cameras dropped from 694 in 2005 to 370 in 2010, Peters said.”

Why Seattle is safer than Phoenix

An op-ed written by one of the wsj editorial board staffers illustrates a certain strain of belief in have-your-cake-and-eat-too-sism. Kaminski, in decrying how the mayor Mike McGinn (whom he gleefully points out is referred to as mayor McSchwinn by his political foes. Get it? it rhymes with McGinn) of Seattle worked to block the building of some car-based project; later claims that “Seattleites say they want to save the planet from global warming, but in their personal lives they want safe streets…”.

The disconnect Kaminski, and others of his ideological ilk, is this; that somehow streets can be made safer by ever-expanding the number and speed of privately operated motor vehicles. But this is simply not possible. Faster and more always equals more dead; mostly more motorists, but also more dead peds, and more dead bicyclists. The numbers are stark; comparing e.g. Phoenix with Seattle (metro areas), the Dangerous by Design survey estimates Phoenix to be FOUR TIMES more deadly to pedestrians than Seattle. The number spills over not just in pedestrian deaths, but also cyclists deaths, and also to MOTORISTS deaths; see e.g. Beyond Safety in Numbers: why bike friendly cities are safer (for everybody).

Thus Kaminski rejects car-user-fees as hair-brained; yet motorists are the source of enormous externalities — economic impacts that aren’t paid for by their users — from air pollution (never mind ‘global warming’), to mayhem, to free parking.

By the way, McGinn has only been mayor for the past two years; I’m not suggesting that McGinn has made it safer. It was already safe, relatively speaking — due in no small part to its general overall “anti-car” culture.

Addendum

Seattle DOT (SDOT) puts out a fancy traffic safety report (every year, i imagine), e.g. here is  2011. Note the “speed studies”, p 7-7… their major streets are posted speed limits of mostly 35, with a few at 30, and one at 45. The 85th percentile speeds were running in the high 30’s.

 

FARS and PBcat

Commencing with the recently-released 2010 data FARS (The USDOT’s Fatality Analysis and Reporting System) will have far more specialized detail on Pedestrian and Bicyclists crashes.

“Motorist Failure to Yield — signed intersection” One of several dozen crash types defined by PBCAT

618 cyclists (person type 6 bicyclist, and 7 other pedalcyclist) were killed in 2010 in traffic collisions — and as noted at the link above, only collisions with motor vehicles in-transport are tracked by FARS. So for example, a bicyclist who lost control and died as a result of crashing into a tree would not be tracked here, nor would a bicyclist who strikes a parked motor vehicle. Continue reading “FARS and PBcat”

Camelback Road Diet and Buffered Bike Lane

Here are some city documents:

The Diet

The diet part of the plan seems like a slam dunk… Normally any road diet is opposed becasue of fears that the lane removal will increase automobile congestion. In this particular case, that isn’t possible because of the unusual circumatance that this 1-mile stretch of 3 through lanes in each direction, is bounded on both ends by 2 through lanes. I.e. both north of Bethany Home Road, and south of Camelback Road is already only two lanes.

The Buffered Bike Lane

The “problem” then became what to do with “extra” space? A generously wide bike lane, including gutter is only 6′ wide, and the diet meant that 12′ of space had to be filled (in both directions). The answer came in the form of placing a 6′ buffer between the bike lane and the rightmost traffic lane. A.k.a a Buffered Bike Lane, see e.g. nacto.org.

I am somewhat skeptical of placing space between cyclists and overtaking vehicles. While this is presented as an un-alloyed good thing by many facilities advocates, it clearly has safety drawbacks which usually go unmentioned. here is a more balanced view, as presented in the Feb 2010 (the latest) Draft AASHTO Guide, p.78 (my emphasis):

Striped buffers may be used to provide increased separation between a bike lane and another adjacent lane that may present conflicts, such as a parking lane with high‐turnover or a higher speed travel lane. The benefits of additional lateral separation should be weighed against the disadvantages; a buffer between the bike lane and the adjacent motor vehicle travel lanes places cyclists further from the normal sight lines of motorists, who are primarily looking for vehicles in the normal travel lanes, and buffers between the travel lane and bike lane reduce the natural “sweeping” effect of passing motor vehicles, potentially requiring more frequent maintenance.

 That all being said, I objected to the original design which called for the outer buffer stripe to gradually arc into the intersection. This seemed to me to be a recipe for extra right-hooks. City staff readily agreed to my and Gene’s suggestion to end the buffer ahead of each intersection, and then a bit of dashed line; which is incidentally, as shown in the NACTO guide as recommended. (so thanks to Kerry Wilcoxon, and Joe Perez).

This should make the buffer “not bad” at intersections, yet doesn’t do anything for the many driveways. In other words, it should be no worse than a standard bike lane at intersections, but I fear it will raise risks at driveways relative to bike lane. So anyway, I’m reserving my judgement on the whole buffered bike lane thing. The hope is that it will encourage/entice cyclists off the sidewalks, where most collisions occur. However that doesn’t help those of us who are already legally using the roadway, and in fact may well be putting us in more danger.

The re-striping

The striping project apparently happened on schedule 4AM Saturday morning 1/7/2012, there are some pics on P4’s Facebook page (f.b. login required to view). TBAG has listed a ride to visit the new work on 1/8/2010.

 

Is Bicycling Safe? Is Bicycling Dangerous?

Short answer: As with all modes of transportation, it entails some danger.

Longer answer: yes, similar to the risk of motoring — perhaps twice as risky. but how to measure? (per mile, per trip?). Bike-MV collisions are currently running 2% of all in AZ. Bicycling represents perhaps 1%, i.e. twice the risk.

For the moment, this is going to be a catch-all for links and related info on the topic. Links:

Continue reading “Is Bicycling Safe? Is Bicycling Dangerous?”

DZBLs and Bicycle Facility Advocacy

For those who might not be aware of the problems created when a cyclist rides too closely to parked cars; this video is a powerful graphic illustration of what happens when a cyclist collides with an opened door of a parked car.

Not only are the injuries from striking the door potentially serious, the physics of the situation immutably means that the cyclist ends up being thrown into traffic. This last part is something that I had not been aware of…. so please watch the video…. Continue reading “DZBLs and Bicycle Facility Advocacy”