Originally Posted by
billridesbikes
It's not only bad drivers
per se. It's the entire crappy road design in most American cities and towns.
This type of 'accident', actually it's not an accident it's vehicle violence, would be much rarer if the roads didn't encourage high rates of speed and reckless driving in city and business centers.
One of the interesting statistics from the pandemic is that the number of miles driven by US drivers decreased but traffic fatalities increased.
The take away? US streets are fundamentally unsafe and encourage risky behavior from a large segment of drivers.
And only the fact that the roads are usually traffic-jammed and congested keeps more people from dying or driving into buildings.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...21-2021-09-02/
OK - rant over. I feel better.
It's the opposite for Toronto. With the number of drivers down and bike ridership up, in 2020 fatalities decreased by 27% and injuries by 46% amongst all road users combined.
Of course, during that time, Toronto had installed a lot more separated bike lanes and closed off some major streets on weekends, effectively further removing cars from roads where cyclists are.