{"id":116,"date":"2009-09-01T17:26:07","date_gmt":"2009-09-01T22:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2009\/09\/01\/090901_cyclingdeaths\/"},"modified":"2022-03-13T18:38:51","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T23:38:51","slug":"090901_cyclingdeaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2009\/09\/01\/090901_cyclingdeaths\/","title":{"rendered":"Newsflash: Motorists are hazardous to bicyclists’ health"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post<\/a> at the Freakonomics blog cites a Canadian study<\/a> that found that 90% of accidents involving bicyclists in its sample were caused by “clumsy or inattentive driving” by motorists.<\/p>\n

The only surprise about this is that the author is apparently surprised, writing: When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem to assume\u00a0that such accidents are usually the cyclist’s fault — a result of\u00a0reckless or aggressive riding.<\/i><\/p>\n

Really? Perhaps he runs with a cycling crowd with a heightened feeling of invincibility or an enhanced death wish, but pretty much every bicyclist I know hits the road with the fear that it and its motorized occupants will hit back. In addition, that 90% figure stated above is probably accurate with respect to the accidents leading to cyclist deaths in our area. Many of them occurred on flat straight roads with no visibility issues; the drivers just veered over and struck the cyclists from behind.<\/p>\n

Findings like these are all the more reason why a safe passing law is needed in Texas<\/a>, especially if accompanied by an education campaign.<\/p>\n

An interesting footnote to the study is the finding that the third leading cause of cyclist accidents in the study was from drivers opening their car doors in the path of the bicyclists. I find this interesting because I don’t personally know of a local bicyclist who has experienced this. I guess it’s a function of cycling in a heavy urban area with lots of on-the-street parking. On the other hand, I suspect that at least a few of these “accidents” were actually caused by frustrated drivers stuck in gridlock who noticed cyclists moving through the line of cars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post at the Freakonomics blog cites a Canadian study that found that 90% of accidents involving bicyclists in its sample were caused by “clumsy or inattentive driving” by motorists. The only surprise about this is that the author is apparently surprised, writing: When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem… Continue reading Newsflash: Motorists are hazardous to bicyclists’ health<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-society-culture","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8725,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/8725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}