Bicycle Safety

For most New Yorkers the official end of summer is Labor Day which, this year, fell on Monday, September 4, 2006. For astronomers, pagans and Daniel Libeskind's "Wedge of Light," the end of summer is the Autumnal Equinox, the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator from north to south. By that measure, Fall begins on Saturday, September 23 at 12:03 am this year. But for those who commute by bike along the northern end of Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the end of summer will be the day that New York City's Department of Transportation creates bike safety improvements along this stretch of avenue recently identified as one of the city's top three bicyclist fatality areas. At the moment, there is no end in sight.

There's an old saying: "There's lies, damn lies and then there's statistics". But it's not the data that lie, if properly collected, it's how you interpret the data that matters.

Ryan Russo is the New York City Department of Transportation's Director for Street Management and Safety, a newly-created job that he started in July. Previously, Russo worked as DOT's Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Coordinator where he was instrumental in designing and developing a number of improvements for pedestrians, cyclists and more livable streets (PDF file) over the last three years. Streetsblog caught up with Russo on Tuesday, a few hours after the City's big bike safety announcement:

It was noted on the Brian Lehrer show this morning that the City's Bicyclist Fatality and Injury Report (PDF file) identifies three specific locations or "clusters" where bicycle fatalities were unusually common between 1996 and 2005. A "cluster" is defined as "three or more fatalities within 1,000 feet." The three densest clusters were found on the east side of Manhattan north of Midtown, Park Slope in Brooklyn and Hunts Point in the Bronx. From page 11 of the  report:

We are certainly still going to be wearing our helmets when we ride bikes on New York City streets, but here is an interesting study by Dr. Ian Walker a "traffic psychologist" from Bath University in Great Britain. Walker found that motorists drove more safely and carefully when passing cyclists who were not wearing helmets. These findings are similar to some of the ideas put forward by David Engwicht in his book, "Mental Speed Bumps: The Smarter Way to Tame Traffic," a very interesting read if you haven't already picked it up.

Charles Komanoff at Right of Way has churned out an initial analysis of the City's bicycle injury and fatality study. Here is his take:

(Photo by Will Sherman of Transportation Alternatives)

On Monday Streetsblog wrote that the New York Times had under-reported the number of New York City bicycle fatalities in 2005. A correction appeared in the Times today: