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safety

Sensing a common theme: “can’t we get along?”

05.08.13
0

Rodney King’s quote might continue to live on. I am sensing a common new theme this spring centered around education and other efforts to encourage bicycles and cars to “get along.” This theme certainly comports with my developing theory of the importance of autos and cars being able to better “co-mingle” in downtown (and other environments). See: (1) the New York bike sharing folks are holding classes to help educate cyclists about riding with cars around and (2) the creative Bikes Belong video of the month, encouraging the modes to “roll together.”

 

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Pedestrians and cyclists can get hurt even on NYC sidewalks, but the heavier ones less so

04.03.13
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The NY Times reports on an article re: pedestrian and cyclist safety from the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.

-Gathering data from 1,400 people who have been injured is impressive.

-That pedestrians are most vulnerable in crosswalks is not surprising; it is where the pedestrians are–the whole “exposure” aspect.

-But now, we finally have a partial silver lining to the obesity epidemic in the US: excessive weight may prove a boon for pedestrians in a collision. Victims with an above-normal body mass index were found to have less severe injuries than their counterparts. “It is not implausible that a greater proportion of torso and extremity fat may protect against injury”

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Minneapolis bike crash report

02.06.13
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Bicyclist-Motorist Crash RateMinneapolis recently released a new report examining bicycle crashes. It is based off of 10+ years of DPS crash data which is pretty limited to begin with. I am pretty sure there is not much new in this report that we did not uncover back in 2006 or 2007 with our analysis of the same data; but, that was not commissioned in-house by Public Works and it was not done by Public Works. So, it is more important for them to be able to listen to themselves.

The Atlantic Cities article covers some popular press elements of the descriptive stats. They claim to see, again, an attribution of or mention of safety in numbers, directionality, and causality. But, as has been pointed out by others, there little to suggest we have anything here other than more people riding and crash rates staying level.

What really is needed is to figure out how to use the count data to uncover more reliable and geographic measures of exposure.

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Helmetless

10.01.12
1

The helmetless debate ensues, this time in the NYTimes. 

Where should we come down on this matter? Here is what I want to know:

(1) Where helmetless behavior reigns strong, what is the average speed of the cyclist?

(2) Where helmetless behavior reigns strong, what is the average speed of the auto?

Nothing ever talks about these matters. I imagine both are substantially slower than in most US settings. Here’s a proposition: bring down the speeds of both and helmetless behavior might not be such a big deal.

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Mineta report on promoting bicycle safety

03.21.12
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The research reports keep coming in. Here is another one with lots of secondary data and sources, prepared in a manner that crosses between advocacy and research, and is pretty accessible. The focus in the title suggests safety but it is a bit broader in its coverage. Warning: it is a big long. 


Just released: The Mineta Transportation Institute recently published a report that leverages literature review and case studies in the San Francisco Bay area and Portland OR to recommend ways to improve safety for bicycle commuters. Promoting Bicycle Commuter Safety includes chapters on risks, application of social psychology to bike safety, dimensions of effective practices, and more. The report also includes illustrative tables and photos. Principal investigator was Asbjorn Osland, PhD, with several chapter contributors. The 157-page report is available for free PDF download from transweb.sjsu.edu/project/2927.html  
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Bicycle helmet and safety research

02.13.12
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The whole issue of cycling, safety, and helmet use is pretty vast–too vast to go into all the various dimensions here and now. But, a pretty thorough report on bicycle helmet research  recently came across my desk. It covers a lot of ground, albeit with a Queensland Australia focus, and is pretty detailed in the later chapters. It was commissioned by the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads to review the national and international
literature regarding the health outcomes of cycling and bicycle helmets and examine crash and hospital data. It is the closest one-stop shopping for helmet research that is of high quality I have come across.

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