hotbike

Quote:
"CHICAGO — Half of the people killed while riding their bicycles in Chicago in 2016 had four things in common, according data released by city officials Wednesday.

• They were not male — even though 70 percent of Chicago's regular bicyclists are men.

• They were younger than 30....."

Read More:

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/2017...il-vision-zero

howsteepisit

With only six fatalities it's doubtful that the sex breakdown has any meaning.

phoebeisis

Terrible to die so young
but what in the world would sex have to do with it?

Not sure what the writers of this article are suggesting-targeting females-or incompetent females?

Much more likely a statistical blip-just 6 deaths-3 and 3-can't make anything out of that-
what are the entire year entire country numbers?

Slight aside-years ago I had a job that required driving to different places(places I had never been to before)
and arriving at a specific time
I got in more wrecks(car) doing that than any other time in my life
The distraction of finding an address-and the time pressure-made me more dangerous

This might be why commercial drivers-who are normally more skilled- are more likely to kill a bike rider
of course their HUGE vehicle-with poor sight lines-makes them more dangerous to relatively hard to see riders

Yeah ride like they don't see you
because
THEY DON'T SEE YOU

Yeah big vehicles are more dangerous to bikes-especially in cities-they can't see you-no surprise
certainly they aren't targeting women-and unlikely women are less careful
Charlie

kickstart

It seems there have been some changes in certain driver risk groups according to the insurance industry from a radio program I was listening to. As I remember the biggest changes were that women are now almost on par with men in risk, teens are now a lower risk close to mature drivers, and millennials are the highest risk group.
I don't see why that wouldn't translate to cycling too.

howsteepisit

That may well be, however the article cited used one years data of 6 deaths which was used to make a statement about the relative risk being higher for women cyclists than for men. My comment was that that is insufficient data to make any kind of defensible statistical inference.

njkayaker

There are many motor vehicle collisions.
The data for those collisions are collected very reliably.

That's not the case for bicycle collision statistics.

Bicycling is a less common activity than driving. The person who opts to do an unusual activity might not be a typical driver (they might be a more safer driver).

kickstart

That may just be shoddy journalism jumping to exaggerated conclusions, but does that exclude the possibility it still reflects real and tangible changes?
It doesn't seem unreasonable that willingness to take risks would more likely be based on the person rather than the vehicle. It also doesn't seem unreasonable that as the gender gap continues to close, the similarities in behavior will continue to grow.

prathmann

Agreed that this is far too few incidents from which to draw valid statistical conclusions. But the conclusion is consistent with reports from London where women cyclists were seen to be over represented in cyclist fatalities resulting from being hooked by turning trucks. One possibility suggested was that women are more likely to remain stopped at red lights making them vulnerable to the turning truck when the light changes.
Why are female cyclists more vulnerable to London's lorries? | London Evening Standard

hotbike

Yes, this and several other articles, aside from the stories about the accidents as they occur, have led me to believe that females are more vulnerable, statiscally speaking, to rear wheel of the trailer crashes.

My own Daughter, keep in mind, works for a trucking company, and has been known to drive a Kenworth on occasions... We believe it has something to do with the notion that only boys are interested in toy trucks, and that girls don't receive any recognition or encouragement , with the Educational Toy known as a toy truck (feel free to explain the difference between a toy and a scale model, and/or a die-cast model) ... Society says these things are for boys... And let's not just consider dinky models, how about the kind of toy truck that kids can ride on?
A Garden Tractor can be a quarter-scale Kenworth, and the kids will have fun while learning a few things (just be sure to disengage the rotating blades, please...)

Oh, wait, I have to upload a photo...

hotbike

hotbike

Maybe Fiberglass Side Guards should be mandatory?
Truckers' Side Guards by AviationMetalSmith, on Flickr

kickstart

They will probably become nearly universal on vans, but they are incompatible with some forms of trucks such as tankers, dump, and container chassis.

canklecat

Sounds like more of an infrastructure design problem than gender related.

Overall data for cycling accident injuries and deaths are difficult to parse for trends like this, but NHTSA, NCBI and other data consistently indicate males are more likely than females to be injured and killed in cycling accidents.

I can speculate a few reasons why females might be more vulnerable to certain types of cycling injuries and deaths, but without better data it's impossible to verify. A sample hypthesis: Women's heads are comparable to men's in size and weight but they generally have less neck strength. This may leave them more vulnerable to head blows and injuries in falls. Now the challenge is to get the necessary data and study it to confirm or disprove that theory.

Another hypothesis: Chicago Divvy bike riders are mostly women who don't wear helmets. (I'm speculating based on observing casual city rental bike riders in my hometown, Fort Worth -- and my observations may be flawed or biased because of the route on which I see mostly young women riding city bikes while not wearing helmets.) Again, we'd need the data to determine whether this is true and relevant.

It's all just guesswork without data, statistically significant sampling and proper studies.

AlexCyclistRoch

Ahh...a twin-steer Foden!

AlexCyclistRoch

Those are strictly aerodynamic aids. You can still be run over by the trailer tandems, and those "side guards" have little structural integrity to them.

fietsbob

Europe actually has Guard rails on their trailers, and a Disc covering the bolts on the front wheels

American truckers put sharpened chrome spikes on their front wheel lug nuts..

howsteepisit

How about this, the hypothesis is not true - the one year sample is within normal variation and actually more men than wonmen are killed. you cannot draw any conclusion from the presented data. Guesses are simply hot air blown out the butt. Any hypothesis that is not based on an accurate conclusions is not worth the electrons it takes to post it. Frankly any "speculation that "females might be more vulnerable to certain types of cycling injuries and deaths" is in this case garbage because there is no was to discern that females might be more vulnerable to certain types of cycling injuries and deaths is in any way true.

canklecat

You restated what I already wrote. Golf clap.

kickstart

Most of the trailers I pull have them, and I can say for certain they are rigid enough to fend off a pedestrian or cyclist.

kickstart

Those silly looking things are actually snap on plastic covers that are basically harmless, if not safer than the lugs themselves. Odds are if one is close enough to a moving truck to contact them, they probably have a lot more to worry about.

Milton Keynes

I agree that a sample size of 6 isn't enough to make a correlation that gender has anything to do with likeliness to be a bicycle fatality. Maybe if they studied all fatalities across the entire country for the past 20 years or so, but even then it's not guaranteed that gender really matters, even if more females are victims.

njkayaker

It doesn't exclude the possibility that it doesn't reflect "real and tangible changes" either.

You don't know anything. Especially, if it's shoddy journalism.

Many (maybe, even most) people consider cycling in traffic much more dangerous than driving.

People who choose to cycle are (likely) a small percentage of drivers.

That (relatively) unusual behavior might mean their behavior as drivers is unusual.

Maybe, the degree of care taken by cyclists is different than the average driver.

Who knows! The data provided isn't sufficient to tell.

njkayaker

Who knows if females being run over by lorries in London has anything to do with people in Chicago. Are the females in Chicago being killed the same way?

coominya

Right you are professor. Lets wait until we have at least 100 corpses before we jump to conclusions.

njkayaker

Why jump to conclusions at all?

Why ignore the other 3 riders?