PBOT confirms last year’s record low traffic crash, fatality numbers

and not one single cycle-track necessary, how about that?

Certainly good news. I’m sure the high cost of gas last summer that reduced the number of people driving contributed to these numbers.

No way to make definitive causal relationships, but I’ll venture to say that increased bike use and decreased car use led to the improved numbers. All of which could be reversed by opening up the 12-lane floodgates from the Columbia!

Let’s all show up on Sunday at Waterfront Park at noon, and fight this thing!

This is great news!

I think it would be a great idea for the city to run an advertising campaign thanking its citizens (and particularly its cycling and pedestrian citizens) for making the city a safer, more livable place. I think it’s important for people to hear that kind of thing, and important for people to know what it really is like out on the streets – that it’s getting less dangerous all the time.

Keep it up everyone, maybe eventually people will start to realize that cycling as transportation is not dangerous 🙂

I love soccer as much as the average person, but I don’t want to spend $70M on it.

I’d like to ride my bike over to Vancouver as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to spend $4B+ on it.

Now, I like not dying on the road, and I’d spend a few bucks to increase the likelyhood that this doesn’t happen.

Great news

Surely that Idaho stop law would increase those bike fatality numbers by 200% or more. 😉

For the last decade, this number has only swung up or down within a margin of 10 instances. This is statistically insignificant, though obviously the closer to zero the better.

I just don’t see why anyone should be patting themselves on the back. These numbers have been trending downward since the 1930’s, and have been statistically stable for the last 2 decades.

Woohoo, it must be the tireless work of bike boxes and the safe routes/non-profit welfare crowd. Let’s give them some more money.

Wow, Steve.

I’m still happy. For whatever reason, no cyclists died on our watch. I think that deserves a huge pat on the back. Maybe even a back rub.

steve:

I’m in agreement with you that our year-to-year fatality numbers are likely to move up and down between 0 and 10 regardless of our efforts. That having been said, I *like* the bike boxes, I like the extra visibility they give cyclists, and I’m glad the city has installed them. They’re a relatively cost-effective way of making intersections a smidge safer than they used to be. That’s not a bad thing, is it?

I love the caption.

Mayor Adams, who has a great track record of good judgement, credits bike boxes as one reason for the low number.

LOL

Second to Todd…

Or can find the bridge access…

Maybe Steve is reflecting what I feel about it. (And I preface this saying this is a personal issue.) It’s a good thing no one died obviously, but maybe “no fatalities” isn’t a very good measure of success anymore–statistically or otherwise.

I’ll be interested in following the links to see if the study included how many cyclists were hit, how many were injured seriously or were life-threatening, what were the causes of the accident, who was at fault and what was the state of driver/cyclist. I think those things would give more information to go on.

Todd and John:

I’m all over the trip to the Van! Just saying I don’t want to spent my grandchildrens’ inheritance on a stupid bridge to get a fancy new bike lane, is all.

I’m actually more curious to know about what we can learn from the non-fatal crashes, which I’m pretty sure are still relatively common

2007 MVA deaths from the NHTSA

Occupants
Passenger cars 16,520
Light trucks 12,413
Large trucks 802
Buses 37
Other/Unknown 629
—————————–
TOTAL Occupants 30,401

MotorCyclist 5,154

NonMotorist
Pedestrian 4,654
Pedal-Cyclist 698
Other/Unknown 152
———————————-
Total NonMotorist 5,504

Grand Total 41,059

% of MVA deaths that are cyclists 1.69%

Peejay-

Go tell some fighter pilots about your ‘sensory input’ and reaction time hypothesis. While you are at it go do some reading about all the head trauma sustained from simply falling on ones head from a standing position. No extra velocity is needed. I know a woman who spent 2 weeks in the hospital after simply falling from a bicycle she was dismounting in a parking lot.

I agree we should lower many speed limits, but your reasons for doing so are borderline ridiculous.

steve:

Fighter pilots’ abilities to do what they do has as much relevance to the average person as the ball-handling abilities of NBA superstars. They’re a highly selected group of individuals whom the military spends millions of dollars each to train, and they perform at the level they do for a relatively short time in their lives.

I’m sorry about your friend, but she’s what is known as a statistical anomaly. Sure, people get injured below the human speed limit, and people survive collisions above it. But the overwhelming data show an inflection point of rapidly increasing serious injuries and deaths at 20mph.

And, seriously, what’s so ridiculous about my theory? (Not my theory, either. I read it in some traffic theory literature.) Evolution, while continuous, operates on a long time scale. The human brain gained powers to create technologies that then snowballed into an environment that the human body is unprepared for. We manage, but we die in large numbers, because we’ve never needed to survive in a world such as this until very recently.

As for the practical implications of the 20mph speed limit, it makes sense in all neighborhood streets, and most places where cars, bikes, and pedestrians can come into contact. It puts us all on an even footing.