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After a summer packed with bicycling fatalities, the city seems to be getting the message-- after much prompting by Transportation Alternatives and other biking advocacy groups, a bunch of city agencies got together and released the "Bicyclist injury and fatality report", which apparently is the largest study of its kind ever produced in these United States.
The entire report will be up online in a couple of hours-- but we've gone through the various press releases and pulled out the interesting parts:
1. The report looked at "the deaths of 225 bicyclists during the past decade and the serious injuries of 3,462 bicyclists between 1996 and 2003."2. "bicyclist injuries declined by 46% between 1996 and 2003, death rates in the past decade remained steady at 2.8 deaths per million, per year."
3. "Bicycle death rates in New York City are similar to national rates. Two times as many New York City adults (6% vs. 3%) bicycle or walk to work compared to the national average."
4. The best way to avoid death or serious injury is to ride in a bike lane, while wearing a helmet: "Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet," and "Only one fatal crash with a motor vehicle occurred when a bicyclist was in a marked bike lane."
5. Most bicyclists are killed by cars or trucks (92%), with trucks doing nearly twice as much killing (compared to their frequency on the roads). 94% of deaths involved human error, and 89% were near intersections, so that's where you need to be most careful.
6. Bad news for dudes: 91% of fatalities were men.
7. Avoid midtown at all costs: that's where the densest clusters of death and injury seem to lurk.
The report concludes that more paths are needed, so 200 miles of new lanes are going to be built between now and 2009, along with 40 miles of greenways in the city parks. [Related: Streetsblog has some coverage of the press conference.]
Ghost bike from SuperEvilBrian's photostream on Flickr.
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Bad news for dudes? What if men account for 95% of all bicyclists? Then it's good news for dudes.
Accidents happen at intersections, like, where traffic comes together? Damn. Gotta write that down.
I was scrolling and I saw that headline, and I knew it immediately. That's Jake Dobkin's work. And I was right.
Seriously, though, as a cyclist I have to say, if you don't want to die on a bike, wear a helmet and stay off the iPod. You can't control what jackass drivers and clueless pedestrians do, but you can control what you do.
To me, the most interesting findings related to helmet use, an often-debated subject on Gothamist. The study noted:
- Almost three-quarters of fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
- Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
- Helmet use among those bicyclists with serious injuries was low (13%), but it was even lower among bicyclists killed (3%).
Just common sense. Not too many people die after falling on, and breaking their arm. But falling on your head and cracking your skull is another story. Be careful out there and wear a helmet!
Helmets are great, but they don't prevent crashes. safe streets with protect space for cyclist do. The study also found that over 10 years and 200 bike fatalities, only one occured in a bike lane.
i am all for studing this, but these results defy common sense. There must have been more non-helmet wearing fatalities. Helmets don't help if you get run over. and I am all for helmets. i am also all for bike lanes, but i can't believe there haven't been more fatal accidents in them. cars cut you off even worse in those bike lanes - often when you least expect it.
The one fatality in a bike lane bit is misleading. I know of TWO involving bikelanes, one on Broadway and another on 5th Ave.
Both people died while passing vehicles double parked in a bike lane, a VERY common occurence.
The statistic doesn't simply indicate that we need more bike lanes, but that existing bike lanes must be vigorously patrolled with stiff enforcement for violators.
yeah. did they also know that 100% of every pedestrian who was killed by a car did not wear a helmet? Helmets don't do jack if you are hit by a car whether it's a person riding a bike or walking on the street. Helmets are only good if a guy falls of his bike. And since clearly, all the deaths were by car hits. the point is moot.
Most bike accidents don't always involve being hit directly by a car. There are near misses, swerves to avoid open car doors, etc. Falling from your bicycle after swerving and landing on your head can kill you. It's still an accident involving a car, even if you aren't hit by one.
and the doctor who was killed on the west side bike path allegedy died when he was hit by a truck because his head hit the the truck's hood hard. a helmet MIGHT have helped, at least more than no helmet.
yeah. but what about pedestrians? how come you don't tell them to wear helmets? they are ten times more likely to get hit by a car!
everyone should be more than a little wary of the "statistics" being reported here as well. For example, if a rider is hit by a car in the bike lane and lands in the lane of traffic, where do think the police officer who arrives on the scene ten minutes later records that accident as having occured? If a person is hit by a car and is taken to the hospital and dies of "complications" in the hospital, is that death being counted as a traffic fatality? and seriously, the number of non-fatal accidents that occur between cars and cyclists, cars and pedestrians, and cyclists and pedestrians is so under-reported, that I wonder how valid this analysis of traffic safety can possibly be.
Oh and BTW, how bad must other cities be if a city as hostile as NYC can be rated on of the best bike cities in America?!?
my two cents. Now I'm going to go drive my hummer over some people in mid-town...
I encourage people to go to the TA website, which has a link to the formal report. The most interesting thing there is the "contributing factors" section (i.e. whose fault was it). They found a major disconnect between the death and injury data in favor of vehicles. What this means is that when a bicyclist is killed, the driver is often lying about the cause of the accident, and thus it is reported differently compared to when the cyclists is still alive to report the infraction. Also, the main thing is that when there is a cycling injury due to an interaction with a car, the car is responsible almost three times more frequently than the cyclist (13% vs. 35%). This is HUGE news! This is evidence from the city that cars are responsible for most car-bike crashes.
My guess is that helmets help, but not as much as that 97% figure suggests. There is probably also a "self-selection" issue that can't be discerned from that statistic - it would be reasonable to assume that those who don't wear helmets are also much more likely to take other risks that might get them killed.
You people have no clue. If we had no bike lanes in NYC, then zero of the 200 deaths in the last 10 years would have happened in bike lanes. The more bike lanes, the more deaths in bike lanes, see?
They have that same memorial on 5th Avenue in Park Slope - right outside of Miriam. I guess that's what Time's Up! does?
chicks don't get hit because when they ride bikes it's almost always totally hot. even the butch fixed gear girls.
no self-respecting, queens/new jersey-based, white box truck driver man would hit a girl on a bike.
This past May I was riding on the bike path along the Henry Hudson Parkway, when I skidded in mud, fell off the bike and my helmeted head slammed into the stone wall that parallels the path. End result? A broken arm bone--but NO DAMAGE to my head or spinal column. Without the helmet there is no doubt that I would have had serious, perhaps critical brain and/or spinal cord damage. IMHO I think that anyone who rides on city streets without a helmet (and gloves too) is CRAZY!!!