{"id":54993003,"date":"2006-09-29T11:50:03","date_gmt":"2006-09-29T11:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=54993003"},"modified":"2006-09-29T11:50:03","modified_gmt":"2006-09-29T11:50:03","slug":"the-mountains-have-labored-and-given-birth-to-a-mouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=54993003","title":{"rendered":"The mountains have labored, and given birth to a mouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

– by Charles Komanoff and Michael Smith
\nNew York City just released its first-ever study of bicycle crashes. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that four City agencies — health, transportation, parks and police — admitted, finally, that bicycling is good for New York City, and pledged to expand the City’s cycling infrastructure. The study also didn’t indulge in the NYPD’s habitual victim-blaming in cycling fatalities — a significant though unacknowledged shift.
\nBut here’s the bad news: The study has many methodological flaws and misleading "findings," leading it to over-emphasize helmets and bike lanes and neglect the need for universal street safety. And the study completely neglects the fact that most fatal crashes are caused by aggressive, self-entitled drivers, and laissez-faire policing that allows motorists to literally get away with murder.
\n
\nThe study attributes 42% of all fatal bike-vehicle crashes to "bicycle factors," 20% to "vehicle factors" (i.e., drivers), and 36% jointly to both cyclists and drivers (another 2-3% of cases couldn’t be coded). That’s an improvement from the NYPD’s made-up "statistic" that 75-80% of biking fatalities are solely the cyclists’ fault. But it’s still deeply misleading.
\nOne of us (Komanoff) had the opportunity to review the NYPD’s cause-coding for three of the years studied (1996-98), and found them rife with errors. In one case, a driver ran a red light and struck and killed a cyclist proceeding lawfully through an intersection; NYPD gave the cause as "Bike Thru Red Traffic Signal Light And Struck By Vehicle" and actually assigned a Bike Factor of "Traffic Control Disregarded." In another case, a cyclist was crushed when a Mack truck made a right turn, from the cyclist’s left, directly into his path. NYPD said, "Unsafe Bike Operator Turned Into Vehicle And Was Struck By Turning Vehicle" and assigned a Bike Factor of "Unsafe Lane Changing."
\nIn all, Komanoff found that only 20% of the fatal bike-vehicle crashes could be attributed to "bicycle factors" (vs. the City’s 42%), while 44% were the exclusive result of "vehicle factors" (vs. the City’s 20%). The remaining 36% were the fault of both cyclists and drivers (the same as the City’s tally). In effect, the City’s "cause" factors invert reality.
\n(The rest of the article: https:\/\/www.rightofway.org\/littera-scripta\/bikestudy.html<\/a>)oldId.20060929115003937<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

– by Charles Komanoff and Michael Smith New York City just released its first-ever study of bicycle crashes. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that four City agencies — health, transportation, parks and police — admitted, finally, that bicycling is good for New York City, and pledged to expand the City’s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The mountains have labored, and given birth to a mouse”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54993003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54993003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54993003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54993003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54993003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54993003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54993003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}