Monday, March 16, 2009

Scofflaw cyclists

I wish I had more time to write about it because I have much to say, but briefly:
  • From Streetsblog:
    "Having observed New York City traffic enforcement pretty closely these last three years as editor of Streetsblog, I can safely offer the following advice to would-be murderers: If you ever need to kill someone in New York City, do it with a car. "

  • Tom Vanderbilt on The Phantom Menace:
    This incredibly oft-repeated idea — that cyclists are some grave threat to the lives of pedestrians, not motorists — is one of my greatest sources of irritation, and also puzzlement. I don’t have the NYC stats at hand, but in London, for example, from 2001 to 2005 there were 535 pedestrians killed by automobile. The number killed by cyclists?

4 comments:

Tony Bullard said...

Mind fixing the link for the Tom Vanderbilt quote? I'd like to read the rest.

Yokota Fritz said...

Sorry! Fixed now --> http://www.howwedrive.com/2009/03/16/the-phantom-menace/

Mike said...

I just ran across this, and thought you might be interested. A quick and incomplete search of your site didn't mention it.

www.rightofway.org/research/kba_text.pdf

It was a study of the pedestrian/cycling deaths in NYC in the mid 1990's - you might want to shine a little light on it.

From their top ten list:
1 Motor vehicles killed 1,020 pedestrians and bicyclists in New York City
during the four-year period 1994-97; this toll was 25 percent greater than
the 800 motor vehicle users who died in crashes in the same period.
2 New Yorkers age 65 and older were more than twice as likely to be
killed by an automobile as to be murdered during 1994-97.
3 Drivers were largely or strictly culpable in 74 percent of pedestrian
fatalities and partly culpable in another 16 percent, meaning that drivers
were at least partly culpable in 90 percent of fatalities.
4 The most frequent causes of fatalities were vehicles turning into pedes-
trians in crosswalks, followed by speeding, and driving through a red light
or stop sign.

Yokota Fritz said...

Thanks Mike -- if I feature this to what website (if any) should I link in my hat tip?