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Concern Over Nationwide Increase in Bike Accidents

Stoptional, No Helmet

On Friday, MSNBC ran a story documenting the increase in accidents as more people switch from bicycles to cars in the wake of rising oil prices.

[I]n the months since motorists began pedaling in droves, it has become clear that all those cyclists on the streets pose a significant problem: all those cyclists on the streets.

There are no nationwide statistics on bicycle-related injuries and deaths for the first half of 2008. But authorities across the country say they are seeing a sharp rise in the number of accidents involving bicyclists.

We have consistently called for more safety studies on bicycles. If we’re interested in protecting cyclists, we need to know what the root cause of these accidents is.

“Last year in New Jersey 12 bikers, bicyclists, were killed in motor vehicle crashes,” said Pam Fischer, director of the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety. “So far this year — and we’re at the middle of the summer, July 15 — we have already lost 11 bicyclists.”

After the Seminole County, Fla., sheriff’s office recently began fielding scores of complaints from drivers that bicyclists were clogging major streets, it sent out deputies with video cameras. The cameras revealed large groups of bike riders illegally disrupting traffic.

Fischer said that “in almost every case, the bicycle was doing something that put them at significant risk.”

The problem is that so many new riders create road hazards because they don’t know the rules, police say. Too often, inexperienced riders take traffic signs as suggestions, not commands.

There seems to be a growing consensus among law enforcement – bicyclists fully or partially cause most of the accidents they are involved in. This should compel us to consider mandatory licensing and registration for cyclists.

Mandatory licensing and registration in densely populated urban areas would have several benefits:

- It will ensure that everyone using the roads knows, understands, and has an incentive to obey the rules of the road – which will help decrease accidents.

- It would allow everyone on the road to anticipate how everyone else will act – which will also decrease accidents.

- It could serve as a way to mandate the education for road users, regardless of the vehicle they choose.

- It would allow some mechanism to enforce laws and penalize unsafe behavior from all parties – this wouldn’t just go against bicyclists – if their rules of the road were codified, drivers who break them could be held to account for it in situations where they now walk away. This could help bicyclists recover for damages in accidents.

- If integrated with bicycle registration, it would help prevent bicycle theft, and help to return stolen bikes to their owners.

Bicyclists have their own views about what is causing these accidents – drivers.

“I believe it’s definitely going to cause some problems, because people don’t know how to share the road with cyclists,” said Kirk Hendricks, director of advocacy for the group Idaho Cycling Enthusiasts. “[Drivers] need to know that we have as much right as an automobile even though we’re not as big.”

New riders also aren’t fully prepared for the inconveniences they can face — the worst one, experienced riders say, being drivers who also don’t know the rules or are too frustrated to observe them.

“Most of the crashes that we’ve seen are a result of inattentive driving,” said Rob Sadowsky, executive director of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation.

To be fair to the bicyclists, this is often true.

In the same video survey that found dangerous biking, Seminole County deputies also recorded a shocking level of rude and aggressive behavior by drivers.

This conduct is certainly unacceptable on the part of drivers. However, this study points to bicyclists as the main offenders. Bicyclists deny this, but whom should we believe? Bicyclists with a vested self-interest in doing what they want and forcing the negative externalities of their conduct onto the rest of us, or the law enforcement officials charged with the impartial duty of protecting all citizens and enforcing the law?

Whatever the true extent of this problem, the mandatory licensing of bicyclists would help to eliminate all of this. It would legitimize bicycles as vehicles that are entitled to the roads, and it would help drivers to anticipate how bicyclists will act in traffic. Drivers aren’t just rude to bicyclists – they’re rude to each other too. This is often the result of people deviating from the accepted rules of the road – when more people follow the rules, you have less incidents of road rage. The same should hold true for cyclists.

It’s clear that a realignment of transportation choices is underway, but the extent still remains unclear.

Cycling advocates point to a host of other longstanding problems that they say are becoming critical now that so many new riders are hitting the streets: too many potholes and poorly maintained streets, too few bicycle lanes, too few places to securely park a bike, too few places to wash up after a long ride to work.

It is a valid point that the government should expand capacity to meet this new demand. And bicyclists who need more space for transport or parking should pay for their share of it. As less people drive and pay the tolls and taxes that fund road maintenance, it’s only fair to ask the riders who are shifting over to bikes to pay for the infrastructure that they require too.

Transit officials in numerous cities report that more people taking their bikes along when the catch the bus or the train — in Houston, the number rose 33 percent in May alone, officials said. Those bikes take up passenger space, and that puts the squeeze on all paying customers.

The Utah Transit Authority said it would probably have to rip out seats in its FrontRunner commuter trains between Ogden and Salt Lake City to make room for more bicycles. Each car now has straps to hold two bicycles, but James House of Layton, a regular commuter, said he had seen as many as 15 in each car, blocking the aisles.

“Given the explosive growth in bikes, we’ll never have enough capacity on transit to accommodate every bike, especially during rush hour,” said Mary Fetch, a spokeswoman for the TriMet light rail system in the Portland, Ore., region, where 1 in 10 transit riders totes along a bicycle.

Deborah Ulinger of Beaverton often cycles to a TriMet station and hops the train with her bike. But late last month, security guards began kicking cyclists off bike-crowded trains at the perpetually packed 185th station and wouldn’t let any board unless there were empty bike racks.

Bike advocates love to point out how space friendly and low impact their cycles are. According to this article it appears that “not so much” is the appropriate response.

“It’s frustrating, because we have places to go and things to do,” Ulinger said. “I know it’s a safety issue, but if they could provide more spaces for bikes it would be great.”

People in cars have the same concerns. To date they have been paying the way for cyclists’ free rides. If cyclists want extra space and facilities, I’m all on board. It’s time for them to start paying their way, and acting safe. Mandatory licensing and registration for cyclists in densely populated urban areas are steps in the right direction to both of those ends.