Koyote

You missed the entire point of the article and of the many linked studies.

FBinNY 

I must have, or you missed mine.

To be clear, if race is directly causative or implicated in higher fatalities (of any kind) then that's something to discuss on racial terms. If racial disparities are the secondary effects of things that have other causes, then those causes, and not race, are the issues at hand.

Koyote

You may find this interesting.

According to the US Census Bureau, 75.8% of the population is white; according to this data, white people make up 72.8% of cyclists. From the same sources, Black people are 13.6% of the population and represent 8.9% of cyclists. We can debate whether that suggests that "cycling in the black community is at similar levels to other demographic groups," but it does suggest that, contrary to your claims, there is not some cultural norm against cycling in that community.

Koyote

It's the former.

FBinNY 

Have it your way. I'm happy to discuss bicycle safety and advocacy, and save the racial, social and societal issues for other fora.

Koyote

You’re entitled to that preference, but it does not give you a right to misrepresent the article and the underlying studies… whether that misrepresentation arises from bias or laziness.

FBinNY 

No problem, I don't claim any special rights. I assume that anyone reading my posts can and will draw their own conclusions.

In any case, I prefer to differentiate between causality and correlation. I also have learned that even where there is VERY strong correlation, that alone doesn't imply causality


Of course, you may see the world differently, but I prefer to debate the issues themselves, rather than accuse strangers and folks I happen to disagree with of bias, laziness, or ignorance.

In any case, this thread straddles the grey zone between bicycle advocacy and politics. If one stays focused in the general safety and infrastructure considerations, that's advocacy. OTOH, if one is focused on the racial disparities, then, IMO, that's more political.

Zara Sp00k

Since some of you seem to have trouble connecting the dots, I'll ask another similar question:

Blacks in my state make up 8% of the population, yet account for over 70% of murder victims.
Racism? Is the KKK alive and well in my state?
that's a huge disparity, but when you look at the cause, over 90% of those murders are committed by black people

a simple correlation does not prove racism is at work

the premise is that a lacking infrastructure in black neighborhoods is the cause of more ped & bicycle deaths in those areas
a correlation proves nothing, what evidence is there for a lack of infrastructure in those neighborhoods leads to more ped & bicycle deaths?
and what infrastructure is actually lacking that leads to more deaths?

curbtender

Got to have a helmet study thrown in there...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...20respectively).

StanSeven

Good point. You all decide based upon posting. If the thread continues along safety and infrastructure it stays. If future posts continue on racial disparities, then it’s moved to P&R. Nothing wrong with either.

indyfabz

You don’t understand what you wrote previously. (You gave a reason for low participation rates.) Maybe English isn’t you first language?

indyfabz

I have to wonder if he even realizes he made that assertion. If he does, he certainly provided no support for the assertion.

In any event….He deserves no further attention from me.

livedarklions

Who's masking? That's absurd. There's no way that the available data is going to include social status. It's also not a given that there really isn't a racial disparity issue here. Not all urban neighborhoods are alike, and patterns of housing discrimination persist. And as to the NYT losing credibility, bs.

I get that there's a large segment of the white population that has adopted a "don't say race" approach to everything, but it's really intellectually indefensible.

Also, I don't think the data was broken down by region, so if you could show that the racial disparity was merely an east coast phenomenon, that would be a significant finding, not just something to assume.

livedarklions

​​​​Variables interact, the word "directly" isn't meaningful in this context.

livedarklions

You've made this same inane argument 3 times and keep ignoring the obvious answer. You're drawing a correlation between murder victims and traffic fatalities and insisting there must be a connection that puts the blame for traffic deaths on the black people.

Go ahead, if it isn't infrastructure, what is it then?

Koyote

It's a meaningful distinction if you're trying to avoid discussing a certain subject.

I-Like-To-Bike

Maybe excessive unsafe/irresponsible bicycling behavior and/or excessive unsafe/irresponsible motorist behavior in some communities should be investigated as a reason for excessive traffic deaths in those communities.

livedarklions

Have at it, then. How do you propose to study that? But you can't, as the poster I was responding to was doing, just assume it as the most likely explanation.

BTW, the bad infrastructure idea would actually incorporate exposure to bad irresponsible drivers.

curbtender

We have a local supervisor that has been hands on working in the poorer communities with bike infrastructure. I think the biggest plus is that locals have taken pride in these projects and community gardens have sprung up along the paths in vacant lots. They still have a lot of problems such as the large amount of commercial trucks and railroad tracks that crisscross the streets. One of the biggest problems I've noticed is the dual direction paths on one side of the street with parking pushed away from the curb. Vehicles making left turns across these often miss the fact that bikes are coming in both directions. I watched this recently where a driver fixed on a group coming toward them and started their left as they cleared the intersection, not taking into account in that time two riders coming from the opposite direction. So I'm going to say, in the US, people riding to the left of the street are more likely to get killed than those that ride to the right. Now, do people who have been alerted to this problem have a better chance of riding safely?

Leisesturm

Their argument isn't that inane on its face. It is nasty, vile and contemptuous and overtly racist in its tone, and I'm kind of shocked that none of those posts have been pulled. But the study and all of the well meant point-counterpoint you and others have engaged in has failed to explain what about the poor infrastructure of ... poor areas, contributes to the 4.5x higher death rate! 35mph arterials run through white areas too. I get that walking at night in areas that are poorly lit may contribute somewhat to pedestrian deaths, but ... cars carry lighting with them. Even if some don't ... even if many don't. Creesh we are talking about death disparities of hundreds of percent.

You give that poster an opening a mile wide to spew racist bile if you don't plug the hole with a better explanation of 'infrastructure'. I risked the inevitable pounding I was going to get by climbing into this cage match. I really didn't want to. But the discussion just keeps circling the obvious. This is a cycling forum. Let's talk about cyclists. Cyclists do not really ride at night all that much. The study did not have a category for 'cycling at night'. Probably for just that reason. It flies in the face of Occam's Razor to imagine a 4.5x increase in cyclist deaths can be put down to poor infrastructure in certain areas. The pedestrian deaths, possibly. The other poster at least knows that much.

livedarklions

Ok, this is a lot more reasonable than you usually post, you're raising a fair point.

I have focused on infrastructure because this being a cycling advocacy forum, it seems an appropriate topic and I'm trying not to get this thread locked by going off on broader social issues that have less direct relationships to cycling. The original article doesn't actually isolate a single cause and is actually more of a set of hypotheses for further study:

"Possible explanations to consider include systemic underinvestment in pedestrian and cycling infrastructure in communities of color, disparities in emergency response, quality of care and outcomes, access to medical insurance, and economic constraints. Some have also suggested that disparities in traffic fatalities by race/ethnicity may be the product of risky behavior, for example alcohol consumption. It is notable that liquor stores are disproportionately concentrated in communities of color and may be considered another component of structural racism in society. Furthermore, more recent evidence suggests that the share of pedestrian and cycling fatalities where alcohol is a contributing factor is declining.". Footnotes omitted.

Thank you for calling out the overt racism. TBH, I was avoiding doing that as clearly because I thought it might bring the lock, but in hindsight, I think that was poor priorities on my part.


BTW, I think the cycling at night not being covered was an acknowledged lack in the available data, not some nefarious attempt to hide something.

So, yeah, monocausal explanations are unlikely to fully explain a disparity that big, but I do think it takes some special blinders not to notice that some neighborhoods are a hell of a lot more dangerous to ride through than others, and that the patterns don't appear to be random.

Not sure how Occam's Razor fits into this, which explanation requires the fewest assumptions?

Koyote

You and I have found common ground. Agree 100%.

​​​​​​The article and some of the linked support materials do indeed explain the infrastructure issues...And please note that there may be differences in how many 35mph arterials run through Black vs white areas -- and how well-designed they are vis-a-vis pedestrian and cyclist traffic. (It might help if people actually READ the article and the linked material BEFORE posting opinions; but this is where we're at, as a society: people feel entitled to express strong opinions which arise from ignorance.)

Zara Sp00k

As someone who bikes to work and bikes for pleasure, I am certainly interested in making it safer.
But the only way to make biking safer is to understand what is the cause. If people are dying of head injuries, wear a helmet makes sense,and will likely lower the death rate.
But to just look at a number of deaths and propose that infrastructure is the cause ....
If somebody dies from a car running a stop sign, that's not infrastructure.
If someone dies from not being seen at night, did the biker have lights? Did the biker wear light colored clothes? Did the bike have reflective tires and front and rear reflectors? Yes? then perhaps better street lighting would have prevented it.
But unless you look at the cause of the death, you are just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.

In my city they spent bags of money to redesign a street to make it a bike corridor, ... safer for bikes.
They have to re-do it because they found that they could not plow the street in winter.
Imagine! overlooking snow in Minnesota, it NEVER snows here.
That is what happens when people don't critically look at the problem and then apply a solution that will cure the problem.
Often people suggest solutions without even understanding what the cause of the problem is.

But if it saves just one life!
no, if they had done it right the first time, then all the money that is going to be spent on the second time could be spent on another street.

Pratt

It sounds like it would be instructive (although possibly destructive to some of the arguments advanced) if the causes of the fatalities were tabulated.

Paul Barnard

I don't know if this is a factor or not, but it certainly could be. When I ride through the part of town where I see the most black bicyclists, I also smell weed wafting out of the windows of a shocking number of vehicles.