livedarklions

That completely misses the point, and frankly the comparison is ridiculous. No one is saying don't advocate for bicyclists, we're questioning whether doing so by playing up the relatively small numbers of fatalities is scaring people away from riding. Anecdotally, I think there is a lot of reason to believe that might be the case.

This is a classic example of an issue where there is strength in numbers, where the political fights get easier as the numbers of cyclists increases, so a pr strategy that encourages people to associate bike riding with death strikes me as rather misguided.

jon c. 

Regardless of the tone and language, how much of this conversation reaches the general public? I never hear or see much of it outside of these pages. And certainly I don't hear the rhetoric described above anywhere else. Might be different in larger cities with more riders.

Daniel4

I had always noted that motorist fatalities are always 5x or more than cyclist fatalities.

But the response in Bike Forums is always one of these two: 1) I sound like a broken record; 2) statistics and data are manipulated and interpreted as one wants to have them interpreted.

livedarklions

The linked article in the OP was about a campaign directed precisely at a PR campaign aimed at the general public in seven cities. If their message isn't reaching the general public, that's all the more reason to be skeptical about its usefulness.

Notso_fastLane

Per mile driven? That's probably a difficult comparison to make because not all riders really track their mileage and would, at best, be able to only give a rough estimate. But I can be convinced by reasonably solid statistics.

I'd be curious to see a city by city comparison based on how well the city is 'graded' in terms of biking infrastructure.

I biked tens of thousands of miles in Tucson, which has a lot of great biking paths and well marked bike lanes. Unfortunately, it also has a huge influx of snowbirds in the winters that greatly congest the streets, don't know where they're going, and drive erratically. So the infrastructure may be overwhelmed by the horrible combination of drivers and very crowded streets (for commuting bicyclists). I would be inclined to take pleasure riders out of the statistics because if you crash or get injured on a MUP or bike path, it's not really the fault of the infrastructure, usually.

Maelochs

According to the data posted by the OP, the talk about cycling deaths has not had any effect. The OP claims that it Might have, but the data doesn't support even that. And for every anecdote ("Some guy at work saw me riding and he said he'd never do it because it is just too dangerous") we get how many new riders coming here asking questions? And this is just one bike site among how many hundred?

There is ZERO evidence that any one has even Noticed "Vision Zero," let alone that it has had any effect, positive or negative.

Also ... the idea behind Vision Zero is to Make Cycling Safer. The idea is not to get a lot of riders on the road to increase the number of collisions. Vision Zero wants to make cycling safer by making sure that Drivers (by far the major cause of cycling injuries and deaths) realize the gravity of their actions and are penalized appropriately---it isn't an "accident," it is reckless driving which led to a cycling fatality and thus negligent homicide, for instance.

Once drivers are not killing so many cyclists, cycling could naturally increase because it would actually be safer. Dumping a huge number of untrained commuters onto the roads today would of course result in more accidents---the riders haven't learned, and the driver are a phone-fixated as ever. Vision Zero want to Eliminate cycling fatalities a city at a time---at which time it would be easy to promote cycling---"Ride a bike to work---it will no longer kill you."

This short-sighted consultant with no clue about statistics and pretty limited understanding of anything else apparently, had muddled up a mistaken claim which should never have been made in the first place. Apparently this person doesn't understand statistics, cycling, Vision Zero, or much of anything related to the chosen topic.

Again: The goal is NOT to increase the number of cyclists. The goal is to Eliminate Fatalities. Once people see that cycling is safe, people will consider it as an option. Right now, even without Vision Zero, any fool can see that riding along the side of a busy road wearing nothing but underwear and maybe a Dixie cup on one's head while cars stream past at 50 mph is not safe .... Vision Zero wants to make it safe. People are already scared ....

The idea is to remove the cause of the fear, not to pretend it isn't real.

livedarklions

Lots of argument back and forth on whether "per mile" is a fair comparison because it automatically biases in favor of the faster vehicle just because the distance of the average trip is actually longer. I think it's probably a better measure to compare by "per hour", which gives you a better sense of the likelihood of being killed on any given use of the vehicle. Regardless of which numerator you use, though, the "hours of biking" and "miles of biking" are probably going to be wildly unreliable estimates.

More to the point, though, the absolute number of bicyclists killed in the U.S. every year is actually a very small number comparatively, such that the fluctuations in numbers on a city by city basis can't indicate meaningful trends. Low single-digit fluctuations from year to year are meaningless statistically.

livedarklions

Totally not buying any of that--the article describes the statistics and their limitations much better than you do, and the question is a lot more complex than you are making it to be. Your ad hominem against the author is pointless and unconvincing.

The premise of Vision Zero is flawed right from the name. Zero fatalities is an unobtainable goal in any city. Thus, on its own terms, it will never be able to say "ride a bike to work--it will no longer kill you." The chances you will be killed riding your bike to work are already pretty close to zero.

Second, regardless of the goal, if they are actually increasing fear among potential cyclists, they encourage it to remain a niche activity. This reduces the political clout of cyclists and makes it less likely that the legal changes you're describing will occur. I also think that yelling"murder" at drivers is probably not a particularly good strategy because the vast majority of them will then decide everything you have to say doesn't really apply to them--they're not thinking of themselves in those terms, and you're not going to be successful trying to get them to.

Third, you know who you need to convince that a bike death is a criminally negligent homicide? Jurors. Guess what? If there aren't a lot of bicyclists around, there aren't a lot of jurors who are bicyclists.

I never claimed that Vision Zero's goal is to increase cycling. But it's way more than plausible to me that using scare tactics that will cause people to overestimate the dangerousness of cycling will have unintended consequences that make enacting legal and infrastructure changes less likely.

Daniel4

Per mile ridden is of no relevance if one road has a whole bunch of cars going at 50mph compared to another road of the same distance with no cars.

Risk should be measured by per moving car.

Talk of cyclist deaths or pedestrian deaths have no effect on driving habits because talk of motorist deaths have no effect either - and that's themselves.