Re: New article on old study, cause of car bike crashes

On Sep 4, 4:42 pm, Jobst Brandt <jbra...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jay Drew wrote:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/who-causes-cyclists-...



Old study, but one I hadn't seen. The author of the referenced
paper (David Tomlinson) analyzed 2 years of crashes in Toronto
and concluded motorists were at fault 90% of the time. My
apologies if this is old news.
The discussion I'm reading among other knowledgeable cyclists
indicates a lot of skepticism of that report. IIRC, pretty much
every other study puts the split at much closer to 50/50 in terms
of cyclist/ motorist culpability.
FWIW, I'd prefer that society put the blame on motorists whenever
possible. I think a motorist should drive as carefully as, say, a
forklift operator who's in a "big box" hardware store, passing
customers. But I can't pretend that cyclists are that
blameless. For example, while the data's not solid, there have
been indications that roughly a quarter of fatally injured
cyclists had been drinking. Another large percentage are
nighttime fatalities with no bike lights. IIRC, both those were
using data from the southern U.S... Maybe Toronto is
different... but I'm still skeptical.
And on my bike commute today, I saw two wrong-way riders, two
sidewalk riders (it's illegal in the city), and three cyclists in
the dark with no lights. One wrong-way sidewalk guy did a
near-vertical wheelie through a crosswalk. Yesterday, my wife and
I saw six wrong way cyclists. In fact, I think I was the only
cyclist I saw these last two days who was actually riding legally
the whole time!
(OK, I admit, I rolled through two stop signs at about five miles
per hour. But so did the cars passing through ahead of me.)
Sounds like the moral of your story is that the deliberate garden
variety lawbreaking of sober adult bicyclists is overblown as a
safety concern. Maybe it's time to spread the Idaho Stop around
the nation.
What's the "Idaho Stop"? The opposite of the "California Stop"?

I don't know either whether it is an ordnance or not, but the gist is
that red lights and stop signs are yield signs for bicyclists,
something that is practiced by most big city bicycle messengers who
also ride on any part of public rights of way that meet their need.
That includes riding, gasp! "wrong way" on side walks, and opposite to
traffic on one way streets.

Been doing it for many years in SF, SJ and other SF Peninsula cities
as well as in European cities. I have not heard of any harm arising
from this practice or from my riding in that style. I suspect those
who are most annoyed at this practice are themselves afraid of what
might occur if they rode that way and don't want to see anyone else
get away with it.

It sounds much like people afraid of riding without a helmet, who
proselytize with bloody horror stories and publicly chastise riders
without helmets. They yell across downtown streets "where's your
helmet" as though calling to the public to stone the violator of the
helmet faith. It's the self righteous, one second, car horn syndrome:
"Look he's violating the law!"


Yesterday morning around 7:00 I was riding past the fairgrounds. The
fair is going on this week, but not this early in the morning. They
have this temporary 4-way stop set up for the fair traffic (stop signs
on old car rims that they can just roll out onto the street). I can
not only see that there is no* traffic, pedestians, etc. approaching
from any direction, but I can hear that there are no cars coming from
anywhere around there. *No traffic, that is, except for the city
Police car coming toward me in the opposite direction. He stops at
the 4-way, and I slow as I approach, stand up on the pedals, look and
listen in all directions. He pulls forward straight through the
intersection. Seeing him go straight through and our paths not in any
conflict, I roll on into the intersection and begin to speed back up.
Sgt Stedenko immediately whips a U-turn, hits the rollers, and toots
his horn at me. When I come to a stop (for the first time in over an
hour and a half of riding so far that morning), he walks up and starts
giving me the business about obeying the law and how you have to ride
your bike around as if life was some big championship game of
Parcheesi. I thanked him for taking the opportunity to educate me,
but I can still think of no reason whatsoever to stop in that
situation except maybe to impress Sgt Stedenko with my profound
respect for law and order. The whole time we're there straightening
me out for the good of society, we did not see or hear a single car
come anywhere near the intersection.

.

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