Who Causes Cyclists’ Deaths?

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

by cwan • 17 years ago

40 71 17 years ago

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com

chaosmachine• 17 years ago

This data matches my personal experience pretty well. I've been hit twice by careless drivers.

I was hoping this article would have some data on helmet vs non-helmet deaths.

burnout1540• 17 years ago

The data doesn't match my personal experience. I've only come close to hitting a bicyclist once and that's because he suddenly decided to take a left turn from the right lane, at night, while it was raining, without looking.

Anyway, it's no surprise that most accidents are caused by the drivers: 1. A bike can make small maneuvers and brake much more quickly than a car can. 2. Bikes usually aren't going as fast as cars. 3. Bicyclists are also more likely to get hurt in an auto vs. bike collision. 4. Bicyclists are a bunch of morons who almost never stop at stop signs or lights, which most likely bothers drivers so much that they vow to run over the next bicyclist they see.

cgs• 17 years ago

I used to tend to agree with 4) until I became a cyclist. You can follow the spirit of the law without following the letter of the law. If you're on a bike and you're trying to get somewhere in the city in a reasonable amount of time, it is highly impractical to come to a complete stop at every stop sign. Should you slow down and be ready to stop? Yes. Should you stop if there's traffic? Definitely yes. If the streets are deserted is it OK to coast through? With caution. Ride a couple miles in cyclists shoes and things look very different.

Please don't assume all cyclists are assholes. Sure, some cyclists are complete douchebags. Idiocy abounds here in Chicago. I recently saw a guy on the Lake Shore trail in Chicago talking on his phone and smoking a cigarette. And don't get me started on the hipsters riding their fixies with their iPods cranked up. Trust me, I want to punch them myself - but not all cyclists are to blame.

petewarden• 17 years ago

If there's nobody around, I'll often roll through a stop sign on my bike. Back in the UK, there's almost no stop signs, instead everything's yields or 'roundabouts', which seem more efficient and safer, since they require more situational awareness.

There's definitely suicidal bikers around blowing through stop lights and weaving through traffic, but I don't think that if they were gone, car drivers would be perfectly happy sharing the road with bikes. We're slow and a pain to pass, plus there's the occasional aura of moral superiority. :)

thismat• 17 years ago

>4. Bicyclists are a bunch of morons who almost never stop at stop signs or lights, which most likely bothers drivers so much that they vow to run over the next bicyclist they see.

Funny you say this, I worked in San Antonio for a while and there is a pretty popular area for hardcore cyclists, due to the hill-country style roads. One of the guys I worked with constantly reminded us how much he couldn't stand cyclists because even if they had plenty of room to let someone pass, they would hold up traffic simply because it was their right.

I honestly loved seeing the cyclists, it looked like fun and they seem to have quite a community. His reaction was still pretty funny and somewhat horrifying when he'd talk about his dislike of them though, got so worked up when I mentioned I was thinking of biking to and from work.

antonovka3• 17 years ago

You've only ever come close to hitting a bicyclist once -- perhaps that's due to your attention to driving?

I both drive and bicycle, and as a careful driver, I've never had a risky incident with a bicycle. However, I have been hit by a cars twice while riding my bicycle, both in cases where the inattentive driver engaged in illegal behavior.

One of the incidents sent me to the emergency room.

Observing automobile drivers over the years, I wouldn't hesitate to say that most people are barely qualified to operate a Segway, much less pilot a 4+ thousand pound automobile at 30+ miles per hour on a mixed-used road.

Lastly, your invective is misplaced. After writing three sentences on how bicycles are nothing like cars, you call them morons for not rigidly following the exact same rules as automobiles.

anthonyb2• 17 years ago

Bikes brake more slowly than a car. I've been hit by a car while riding in the past, where they've pulled in front, overtaken and slammed on the brakes.

See this, too: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=459119

and then the driver turns out to be a crackpot: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pack-pileup-driver-accus...

but still got off pretty much scot free: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cycle-pack-crash-driver-...

jrockway14• 17 years ago

Incidentally, I've almost been hit by a car who suddenly decided to take a left turn from the right lane. Bad drivers are dangerous regardless of which vehicle they happen to be piloting.

zargon2• 17 years ago

Traffic signaling designed for cars makes drivers lazy. This would help: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533248/Is-this-the-e...

Semiapies3• 17 years ago

US roadsways, driving laws, driver education, and even drivers' habits are all based around cars interacting with cars. A quick glance that will catch a car-sized object will miss a cyclist. A collision that would be a fender-bender will do far more damage to a cyclist.

I honestly don't know what would possess people to ride a bicycle on a busy street, bike lane or no.

antonovka3• 17 years ago

I honestly don't know what would possess people to ride a bicycle on a busy street, bike lane or no.

Quality of life -- I do it so that I don't have to deal with the anger, frustration, and sunk time and money that seems to be inherent in driving (and owning) a car.

I haven't died yet. Knock on wood

Semiapies3• 17 years ago

Here's to further not-dying!

ldh• 17 years ago

Those are all facts, but not necessarily a condemnation of peoples' choice to ride a bicycle. One could just as easily see it as a critique of our car-centric culture.

Semiapies3• 17 years ago

Facts must be weighed. It's one thing to say "this should be safer" and another to say "this is safe".

mhb• 17 years ago

many people seem to assume that such accidents are usually the cyclist’s fault

Really? Of everything in this content-less article, this is the one I find surprising and for which I would be interested in some data. Other than New Yorkers witnessing crazy bike messenger antics, who thinks that bicycle riders are usually at fault in bike-car interactions?

dkarl• 17 years ago

If you lived in a town with a bunch of college kids thinking, "The reasonable man stops at red lights, the unreasonable man changes the world and stops global warming," or with grim-faced yuppies thinking, "I woke up at 4am so I could ride a century today, and any lazy jerk who didn't should be prepared to slam on his brakes and yield priority to my unstoppable 90 RPM," then you might feel differently. Even if they account for 5% of the riders on the road, they account for approximately 90% of public perception of cyclists. Cyclists are just like drivers -- if they're polite and responsible, they don't make any impression. Assholes are memorable. Most people don't know many cyclists personally, so it's the assholes who determine the public image.

laut• 17 years ago

Maybe it's a US thing. The roads and traffic culture isn't good for cycling there.

jrockway14• 17 years ago

Depends on where you are. In redneck country, maybe. In any major city, not really a problem.

I am sure Europe is very similar.

(As an aside, I noticed while in Copenhagen that they have laws to prevent cyclists from riding safely. In some places, you are forced to ride on the sidewalk, sometimes separated from the street by trees, which leads to dangerous encounters at intersections where the cars are turning across the flow of forward-moving bicycle traffic. This is where most accidents happen, and is why it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk in the US... in many places, anyway.)

JshWright• 17 years ago

Anecdotally, every bicyle related accident I've been involved with (as a FF/EMT) has been the drivers fault.

However, as a motorist, I am often very annoyed at the cyclists (including the ones all dressed up like they should know what they are doing) who seem to think they can ignore things like stop signs, red lights, and other traffic warning devices. If you're gonna ride on the road, and expect me to follow the rules, you should too.

~JW

rudle• 17 years ago

Note that the stats are from Toronto, ON. Having lived there, I can comment on how dangerous some patches of road are to ride on. Many sections of bike lane are directly in the "door zone" and the lanes themselves are often obstructed by illegally parked cars. Despite the lively cycling community, the city is not geared (pardon the pun) towards cyclists.

veqon• 17 years ago

I am an avid bicyclist who has been hit twice by motorists. Once when a car pulled out of a driveway right in front of me and once when a car pulled into a driveway right in front of me. But the most interesting incident was when a van almost ran into me. I caught up to the driver and asked if she was trying to hit me and she said "you're on a bicycle, you have to get out of my way". Rather than enlighten as to the law I looked at her two children in the back seat and said "you better hope other drivers are more courteous".

cduan• 17 years ago

I made myself a credit-card sized copy of the relevant bike laws for my state (California), so I can pull it out and read/give it to people like this. I've only actually done it once, but it sure shut the guy up fast.

jrockway14• 17 years ago

I would just call the police. Leaving the scene of an accident? Enjoy your time in jail.

unlinkedlist• 17 years ago

Can you post a link?

onreact-com• 17 years ago

I strongly advise you to follow the link to the source which reveals many more astounding data tidbits like "U.S. cyclists are three times more likely to be killed than German cyclists and six times more than Dutch cyclists, whether compared per-trip or per-distance traveled"

http://www.projectfreeride.org/team/cycling_health_and_safet...

tdonia• 17 years ago

this is interesting, from the parent: "As levels of pedestrian and bicyclist activity rise their per capita risk falls. Drivers adapt their behavior in the presence of increased cycling and walking (17)." (17) Jacobsen P. Safety in numbers: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and bicycling. 2003.

natrius6• 17 years ago

This is exactly why I proselytize.

clt• 17 years ago

I started commuting by bike about 3 years ago and it was then that I realized how many bad motorists are on the street...and how many bad cyclists are on the street. I believe that every vehicle on the road, no matter the number of wheels, should follow the rules of the road. I think of traffic laws as a protocol. If some one doesn't follow the protocol, then there's ambiguity. And ambiguity will lead to accidents.

jrockway14• 17 years ago

This is true. But it is clear that licensing doesn't help anything; automobile drivers are required to know the rules of the road, but they violate them anyway.

The best solution I can think of is to drastically reduce speed limits in areas where bicycles, cars, and pedestrians are going to be using the roads. Nothing moving faster than 20mph, and the once-fatal accidents become mere annoyances.

It will never happen, though, because people would have to take public transportation to get to work quickly. The horror!

WhyIsThisOnHN• 17 years ago

Why is this on Hacker News?

n8agrin• 17 years ago

Even though I'm an avid biker I have the same question as you and, I'm assuming, share the same sentiment about the stories that have been appearing here lately. Still, I have to question your reasoning behind creating an account called "WhyIsThisOnHN". That's just trollish. Earn enough karma and flag posts that seem irrelevant.

lurkinglurker• 17 years ago

Avid biker and long time lurker here, and I believe that (a) this article belongs on reddit, not on HN, (b) there has been a recent flurry of submissions with no connection to hacking or hackers and a low barrier to entry that generates inane discussions, (c) telling someone to downvote is itself trollish, because to rely solely on the downvote to express one's opinion is to expect them to remain silent and accept the opinion of the masses, and I suspect the parent is making a statement about the recent voting by the masses on HN.

karzeem• 17 years ago

This makes intuitive sense. A car vs. bike accident is fer worse for the cyclist than for the motorist, so it makes sense that the cyclist would be paying more attention on the road.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

I hate road bicyclists. Not the guy just trying to get somewhere on his bike, the guys wearing special suits and riding in packs blocking traffic. get a mountain bike or get a motorcycle you morons. I have to deal with these guys every day and I am sick of them engaging in ridiculously unsafe behavior that I will get fucking blamed for if I kill one of them.

jrockway14• 17 years ago

You do know that you sweat just as much on a mountain bike and therefore would need to wear the same "special suits", right?

Anyway, my advice is to calm down a bit and drive slower. You'll make the roads safer for everyone, "special suit" or not.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

I think i hate the fact that everyone finds their behavior perfectly acceptable more than I hate them. I don't know about where you live, but around here they act like children. intentionally blocking cars, running full speed through intersections causing cars to slam on the brakes, and worst of all taking pride in all this by vilifying people who are just trying to get to work with annoying slogans. I ride a motorcycle, I know exactly how annoying people in cars can be, but If I did what they do i would deserve to get hit.

rjurney• 17 years ago

A critical masshole nearly bowled over the two guys ahead of me at a crosswalk today, while doing a super cool track stand, running a redlight, while we were crossing on a green cross signal. He topped it off by calling the gentleman he almost hit a 'bitch.' Classy masshole hipsterism at its best.

Wanting respect by cars is one thing, but pedestrian hostile cyclists deserve to get clotheslined.

jsz0• 17 years ago

My local problem with cyclists are ones who ride on the shoulder of fast narrow roads. Most of them are dressed up like they are cycling for the sake of cycling -- not trying to get somewhere. This behavior makes the automobile drivers less safe by causing them to move closer to oncoming traffic in the other lane. I may be able to see them and give them room but it doesn't mean the oncoming traffic understands what's going on -- especially when the roads are curvy. In those situations I feel like side swiping the cyclist would be preferable to a head-on collusion with an oncoming vehicle.

natrius6• 17 years ago

Car drivers go on joyrides too. Are spans of straight road that few and far between? You don't have to pass immediately.

It seems like it would be harder to pass a car going 5 mph under the speed limit, which I presume happens more often. More people need to recognize how humans tend to perceive the actions of minorities and adjust their sentiments accordingly.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem to assume that such accidents are usually the cyclist’s fault

Well, there's a context-free assertion. but that's OK, because it means we can fill up that Important Daily Blog Post with a rather obvious and unsurprising statistic. It might have been interesting to correlate accident levels with surveys of driving manners in different cities - I hear New Yorkers are famously discourteous drivers, which may have prompted the quote above - but this didn't happen. Indeed, the discussion here, even among people who consider this irrelevant, has been considerably more education than the trite little article that inspired it, and for which I hope the writer was paid a mere pittance.

natrius6• 17 years ago

"Well, there's a context-free assertion."

Read the comments on any newspaper article about a car-bike collision. Hard data would've been nice, but it's still a fact.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

I know the view exists, but I slighted it as 'context-free' because I don't know what constitutes 'many people', especially given that commenters are self-selected and thus not statistically representative of the general population. Here in San Francisco, for example, the main newspaper (the moderate-liberal Chronicle) is awash in conservative reader commentary, but this vocal contingent's influence on election results seems to be marginal. So perhaps all the above tells us is that (for example) drivers are more likely to read newspapers as well as owning valuable vehicles, which cyclists are more likely to chat on blogs, in keeping with their lower economic outlay.

I know I'm being pedantic here. Perhaps an interesting freakonomics post would examine different perceptions of few, some, man,y most, all and other such terms, the softness of which is often abused in public discourse.

gojomo• 17 years ago

I think some cyclists -- because they are in the open air, with full peripheral vision and hearing, looking through no windshield, totally in tune with the environment -- expect all other vehicles on the road to have the same awareness.

But the same total awareness is impossible in a car, even among the vigilant. That's why the visibility aids, legal/customary traffic rhythms, and assigned places for different travelers on shared paths are so important.

The cyclists who scare the crap out of me seem to believe that everyone will see them even though they're in dark clothes, at dusk, with a dim taillight if anything at all, and traveling in an unexpected place (like against traffic, in crosswalks/from sidewalks as if they were pedestrians, or making turns at places or angles where other vehicles don't). I tend to see them -- though never as soon as if they were in normal flows -- but it only takes one momentarily inattentive driver for disaster to strike.

(And don't even get me started about joggers who prefer to jog in the street, often with headphones on or in dark clothes at dusk, when there's a sidewalk right there. I think the "runner's high" impairs judgment as much as some other highs.)

Who Causes Cyclists’ Deaths?

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