Risky behavior putting bicyclists in ER
Labels: Cycling and Safety
posted by Rob Anderson @ 8:22 PM
3 comments
District 5 Diary
Rob Anderson's commentary on San Francisco politics from District 5
Saturday, July 25, 2015
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3 Comments:
Have you heard that there will be a "protest" at the Wiggle where bike riders will show their anger at being issued traffic citations for not stopping at stop signs? "We want to make the point that, in fact, requiring cyclists to come to full stops at every stop sign is a really terrible idea for everyone on the road." The whole protest idea reminds me of children who are upset for being caught breaking the rules so they just sit down and cry. (SFCitizen has a great story about this)
For anyone working at Tufts Medical Center, there are some obvious public health problems right on their doorstep: homeless people, drug addicts, and reckless cyclists. See, the hospital spans Washington Street where there is a subway station with a high pedestrian volume and radar activated crosswalk. Cyclists never stop for the red lights or the high volume of pedestrians right there in front of the ER and hospital main entrances! The neighborhood is also horrible for cyclist law compliance. A public health research institution would be a joke to not study what was in their face every day, and they only had to look out their window to record observations!
The UC Medical Center on Parnassus here in SF did a study on serious cycling accidents in the city between 2000 and 2009 and found that many---more than 1,300 by my reckoning---cycling accidents were not counted. Especially serious were what they called "cyclist-only" accidents that didn't involve another vehicle.
The obvious conclusion from the study: that riding a bike in San Francisco is a lot more dangerous than the Bicycle Coalition and City Hall have been telling us. Instead of drawing that conclusion, the MTA and City Hall came up with the deceptive Vision Zero campaign that essentially declares every busy street in the city "high-injury corridors." As part of that campaign of apparently deliberate deception, the MTA no longer publishes its annual Collisions Report, which used to analyze streets where most traffic accidents happen and tell us exactly what the city was doing to make those streets safer. It also used to tally the number of traffic accidents and fatalities on city streets.
Anything but admit that riding a bike in the city is more dangerous than they have been telling us! The city continues to encourage the unwary citizenry---many of whom are eager to be hip and with-it here in Progressive Land---to ride bikes on city streets---even the city's children!
No one in the local media---at least the print media that I monitor regularly---has done a story on that study, even though back in 2013 the New York Times did a story that featured the study.
Like the current immigration kerfuffle, it seems that public safety is again being sacrificed because of Political Correctness.
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