Steel Charlie

Looks like Florida is maybe not the best place. Others try but .....

https://www.yahoo.com/news/central-valley-county-among-most-130000661.html

Rick

I lived in Polk County Florida for over 17 years. The instance of harassment with things like objects being thrown at me and others riding bicycles were quite frequent. Punishment passes, being brake checked and being yelled at were all to common. The local Sherriff on several occasions would comment in articles in the paper about how bicyclists should not be riding down the same road both directions. It seemed to me that people misbehaving toward bicyclists was not only expected but condoned. I rode a bicycle to work and on bicycle club rides. I had some good times there. I now live in California and don't miss having to watch my back.

wheelreason

Polk county should be part of Mississippi...

XxHaimBondxX

There's nothing to see in Florida anyway.

CrimsonEclipse

Indy: "Don't Look at it Miriam!!!"

Nazi: *looks* "it's beautiful..... i-----AAARrrrraarhhjjjfjkleiu;dsfkjJ!!!!!

icemilkcoffee 

I don't know how useful these 'cyclist deaths per 100k population' statistics are. Some places have more cyclists and some places fewer. You need to normalize it to something like cyclist deaths per mile traveled to make a valid comparison.

Pratt

Or posts per cyclist death per mile perhaps?

mstateglfr 

say more on this.

wheelreason

Not so, plenty to see and do, but it is mostly in and around a couple of places, the rest of the state is a swamp, and the Don Pan ride is a trip, if a bit scary at times.

Dan Burkhart 

I am actually camping in Polk county right now but so far just riding within the park.
Maybe I will continue to do so.

calamarichris

Can't I just skip the miserable part and die?
Lol, jk. I've motorcycled (on a Harley no less) through Floriduh on my way to Key West, What a ****HOLE, and it wasn't even Daytona weekend. WTF is wrong with people there?
They almost made Texas seem a civil society by comparison, (a low bar, indeed.)

Fahrenheit531 

Bath salt zombie face eater guy could've told you this long ago.

jon c. 

You just need to ride in the right part of Florida. I have endless miles of tree lined country roads with rolling hills and very few cars. And the drivers here are very friendly and accommodating. I get a close pass only a couple times a year.

fishboat

We have a place in FL and spend much of the winter there. (like now) I knew cycle-safety wasn't great here, but I didn't realize it was this bad.

Fortunately we have access to an extensive amount of trail-miles right from our front door. It wouldn't be hard to put together a 100 mile day in at least two different directions with about 98% on dedicated MUPs or within(through) subdivisions connecting to other trails. We do cross some busy intersections with our eyes wide open and with pedestrian lights on.

While we have come across a couple dedicated rednecks, the drivers here don't appear to be terrible(in general..certainly no worse than driving around the Chicago metro area ..the problem is that there are just a large number of people on the roads. The main "industry" is people living here and the second "industry" is businesses that support people living here. People drive fast(as they do in most places these days, it seems), traffic can be heavy at times, and no doubt cyclists get lost in the blur of activity. They have lots of actual marked bike lanes on roads that I would no more ride than fly(45mph+ and two-three lanes in each direction)...yet you'll see experienced cyclists young and old ride the roads, while ignoring a 7 foot wide, glass smooth, deserted MUP twenty feet to their right. I know roadies prefer roads, but wisdom has a place in the world too.

And remember, during snowbird season, a significant portion of the driving population is all you folks (and us) that are not from FL.

I agree with the comment above about a better way to normalize this data(and I crunched large data for a living pre-retirement). While fatalities/100,000 people is a common metric, it lacks quite a bit in helping one to understand the real risks/data.

On the plus side..and it's a big plus, we can have a great day riding, day after day, in 65-75 degree weather on glass smooth trails, in January, February, March... after 60+ years of WI winters..this is not such a bad thing.

ymmv

(the view out the back of our condo right now..I know what the view looks like up north, lived there my whole life and still do)

tcs

Florida C2C Trail

https://fdotwww.blob.core.windows.ne...vrsn=866b008_1

_ForceD_

LOL…You had me until you said this. There are no hills unless you’re riding over a bridge. My rides, in any part of the state, frequently end with “0 ft” elevation gain, and always much less than 10’ per ten miles. But…nice try.

Dan

BlazingPedals

Florida has always been dangerous for cyclists. Probably due to such a high number of old, incompetent drivers; but also busy roads and lax judges. Remember the guy who killed 6 cyclists, and got off because he claimed narcolepsy? I really hoped he got some consequences that weren't covered by the press.

Rick

Nope not mostly the old people. I was there for over seventeen years. When there is very little or no penalty for a crime and a large portion of the public condones bad behavior and this includes law enforcement at times then mayhem occurs. 7 of the deadliest counties are in Florida. BikinginLA reported 14 of the 20 deadliest counties are in Florida and 2 of them are in California.

jon c. 

You need to get up to the panhandle. I'm 30 miles from the Georgia border. We don't have any long climbs as the elevations range between 0 and 200' but we have a lot of rolling hills and an occasional climb that can be pretty steep for a quarter mile or so. Elevation change usually runs 250' to 300' over 10 miles. Not exactly demanding, but they are hills.

Calsun

During the 1970's I would often get harassed by motorists, and especially by the truckers. In the 1980's there was a new generation of drivers that were more mello and more accepting of bicyclists. Now in the Trump era people's attitudes are more self centered and less tolerant of anyone on the road, whether they are in a motor vehicle or riding a bicycle.

Motor vehicle accident rates have increased dramatically and the experts put this down to the use of cell phones while driving. A person using a cell phone has the reaction time of a drunk driver and unfortunately the laws that do exist for hands free driving are never enforced by law enforcement officers.

I live in one of the most beautiful areas in the country for bicycling but it is no longer safe to do and instead I drive with our bikes to a coastal bike path. Many hard core riders my age are doing the same.

Maelochs

A side note .... I was tuck in the Greater Orlando area for a couple of decades and did full-on car-free daily riding .... lots of miles in every conceivable condition. I can attest that back then throwing stuff at cyclists was indeed considered a virtuous act, and running riders off the road was similar. Coal-rolling hadn't been invented---yay, progress!---so i didn't experience that until later, but every other thing .... and still there really aren't a huge amount of deaths particularly given that a lot of Florida has cycling clubs and teams doing frequent group rides year-round.

People make it sound worse than it is, is what I am saying. And whether anyone else accepts what i say or not, I know that I rode the worst, most densely trafficked roads often, because there were no better routes .... 441, Highway 50, 436 from South Orlando to Altamonte .... stupid drivers, no bike lanes or bike lanes designed by people who had never ridden a bike ... terrible road surfaces, and drivers who didn't think even other cars should be on the road, and cyclists were less than cockroaches.

Somewhere after the turn of the century Mayor Glenda Hood came into office (I might have dates and names wrong ... it's a long time ago) and started a serious "Share the road" program which spread throughout Central Florida. Over the course of a couple decades, until I escaped the area, things improved a Lot.

Tampa and Orlando (based on reports not experience) are still pretty sketchy, with drivers not looking for bikes and not liking it when they see them, but pretty survivable by a heads-up cyclist.

South Florida is different because there is a Lot more pack riding, and when a single driver hits a peloton, multiple injuries are guaranteed. And yes, (though I am not sure it is different elsewhere) drivers never get stuck with Mayhem, manslaughter, Aggravated Battery .... usually just minor traffic violations. One lady plowed through a group, killing some, and had her license suspended. Not a joke. I won't post a link because I have posted it here before ... time for others to do research. In early January an elderly lady crossed the yellow line and wiped out a peloton, killing a couple ... as of now, I cannot find a report of charges filed ... Any charges .... ...

But it is like plane crashes. People see airline disasters, and forget that per mile, you are safer by far flying than driving ....

Not saying I would ever want to ride daily in the Orlando or Tampa areas ever again .... but there are a lot of places in the state where most of the drivers are respectful and even cooperative, and riding solo or in a group, I felt completely safe. There are always going to be a few losers in any crowd (even in crowds of cyclists) but i don't focus on the outliers but on the main mass of data points ....

cb400bill

Thread moved from General Cycling to A&S.

plumberroy

I lived in the Orlando area in the late eighties for a while bicycle was only transportation. . I really had no issues. I did see one bicycle cause accident. Woman one a road bike but you could have made her entire outfit out of a bandana with material left over. Guy rear ended another because he wasn't watching the road

Paul Barnard

Without a measure of cyclist's exposure hours and motor vehicle traffic counts, raw numbers aren't very meaningful.

Rick

A per capita study is meaning enough. Florida is the death capital for bicyclists in the US. Florida Also has the largest number of lightning strikes in the US. Another thing they have a lot of is serial killers.