Tour de Pothole?

 Once upon a time—when I was growing up in Brooklyn—one telephone area code covered not only the Borough of Hones and Churches, but also the other four boroughs of New York City.

Now there are seven.  Soon there will be eight. Someone suggested, only half-jokingly, that a pothole on Bushwick Avenue is getting the new area code all for itself.

If that were the cases, and every street crater got an area code, New York—and many other cities—would have too many area codes to 

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Members of the Nantwich Cycle Group are going to count all of the holes and cracks in their local streets —sort of. The Cheshire club is planning a ride to locate places where the pavement has split, heaved, collapsed or otherwise become a hazard. 

They hope to pressure the Cheshire Council East to make repairs.

Hmm…Maybe we should have a Five Boro Hole Tour here in New York City. I wonder, though, whether the Department of Transportation would pay any attention.

When We Become The “Other”

 What do you notice about this headline?:

Cyclist beats man with bike, critically injuring him on the Upper West Side

Leading with “cyclist,” to me, foments a bias—or sparks one some readers may have already had. I don’t recall news stories about cars hitting cyclists beginning with “Driver” or “Motorist.”

Now, some may argue about volition—the man who used his bicycle to attack another man seems to have intended it.  Why, I don’t know. 

While I suspect that the majority of car-bike collisions are caused by carelessness (such as the driver looking at a cell phone), confusion or poor conditions or infrastructure design, in more than a few instances, the person operating the vehicle clearly intended to cause harm.  Yet they are not identified first as drivers or motorists:  That person is portrayed as someone who just happened to use two tons of metal and a powerful engine to cause harm or worse to a cyclist or pedestrian.

Oh, and the way victimized cyclists are talked about—especially if they are dead—reminds me of how, not too long ago, rape and other sexual assault victims were thought about and treated: “What was she wearing?”“What was she doing out at that time of night?” “She had it coming to her.” And the perpetrator wasn’t identified as a rapist or predator, especially if there was a large gap in age or socio-economic status between him (I’m not being sexist; they usually were and are men) and the victim. That meant, too often, that he got off scot-free.

In other words, we, as cyclists, are subject to violence from people operating motor vehicles—or who throw debris in our paths, shove us off our bikes or attack us in other ways—far more often, I suspect, than we use our machines to cause harm.  Yet we are blamed when victimized—and “othered” when someone who probably doesn’t even ride regularly uses a bicycle to attack someone.

Why Is A Cyclist More 100 Times More Likely To Be Killed In Florida Than In New Hampshire?

Once again, Florida has more cycling fatalities per million residents than any other US state. The Sunshine State has 23.3 million residents, so its rate of 10.4 translates to 242 fatalities per year.

Florida's rate is 11 percent higher than that of second-deadliest Louisiana. New Mexico, South Carolina and Arizona round out the "top" five states for cycling rate fatalities.  At the other end of the table, the five "safest" states for cyclists-- Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, Rhode Island and New Hampshire--all have about the same rate (0.1 per million), or less than one percent of Florida's.

Do you notice some patterns?

The states with the lowest rates are in New England (Vermont, Rhode Island and New Hampshire) or are far-western (or northern) states (Wyoming and Alaska) where outdoor recreation is popular.  The deadliest states for cyclists are all car-centric and in the "Sunbelt."

To be fair, none of the "safest" states has a city comparable in size to, say, Miami, Phoenix or even New Orleans.  Then again, the New England states have small-to-medium-sized cities with significant populations of college students.  Those cities are also older cities , developed before the automobile.  

 So what, aside from geographical clustering and (to a lesser degree, demographics) do the least dangerous states have share?  And what traits do the most perilous states have in common?

From the website of Christopher G. Burns, Esq. 

According to an article in Legal Reader, the following are among the factors contribute to the relative calm or perilousness of cycling in a particular state:

--Infrastructure Deficiencies.  The authors of the article weren't talking about cycling infrastructure.  Rather, they refer to wide, high-speed roads that are common in the "deadly" states.  Perhaps more important, they also mention planning, in and out of urban areas, that is auto-centric. Thus--as I can attest from my experiences of cycling in Florida and South Carolina--it is all but impossible to go from one place to another without using a "stroad," which often have high-speed lanes connecting them to major highways.  Navigating one of those entry and exit points makes crossing Times Square seem like a stroll on a bridge over a theme-park "stream."

--Rural vs. Urban Risk Factors:  While urban areas account for 83 percent of total bike fatalities, rural areas actually have higher per-capita rates because of the factors I mentioned my previous paragraph.  One reason is that some large cities have at least a skeleton of bike infrastructure and--as I can attest from many years of cycling in New York--lower vehicle speeds make fatalities less likely:  A cyclist struck by a car traveling at 40 MPH (65 K/H) has an 85 percent chance of dying, but only 25 percent if the vehicle is going at 20 MPH (32.5 K/H). 

--Legal Frameworks:   States and other jurisdictions with lower fatality rates also tend to have laws that truly promote cycling safety, such as the Idaho Stop or its variants, and enforce other laws and policies such as those against distracted driving.  Also, some of the "safer" states have Vulnerable Road User laws, which impose stricter penalties for motorists who cause harm to cyclists and pedestrians.

In addition to better urban and suburban planning, bicycle infrastructure and better laws (and enforcement), the authors also call for, among other things, mandatory bicycle awareness education in drivers' licensing programs.  I think it's a good idea because one difference I notice between cycling in the US (even in "bicycle friendly" places) and Europe is that drivers are more conscious of, and courteous to, cyclists.  Some countries have the bicycle awareness training the authors call for, but even in the places that don't, motorists see us differently because many are also cyclists, or were in their recent pasts.