richardmasoner

I might guess Portland on a per capita basis just because they have so many cyclists per capita.

Which brings up another point: per-capita cyclist deaths is a useless measure. Deaths per hour or distance of activity is much more useful number.

JoseE5

Nothing wrong with riding in 90 degree 90 percent humidity .Ii ride all the time on weekends and try and commute to work a few times a week . If you enjoy riding and love it nothing will stop you . Thats just me.

-=(8)=-

In all the places Ive lived/spent time in on the East Coast,
Florida drivers are absolutely the worst, hands down !
Makes Jersey look like Vt. !
Im quite sure the most rabid anti-lane antagonist would
be a little more open minded about them after a few miles
in any major S. Fl city.

Best would be Vermont, by far....
Most likely to be purposely assaulted would be Philly, Pa...
But Florida..a number of factors make this a very dangerous
place to be a cyclist

Has its good points though, A1A, etc......

Pat

Not true on populations. In 2005, CA had an estimated population of 36,000,000 and FL had an estimated population of 18,000,000.


As for fatalities, CA recently had 141 vs 132 for FL. That makes FL about twice as bad as CA per capita.

There is a reason for this though. FL has a tendency to take away drivers licenses of DUI offenders. Usually, this happens to men who are rather poor (a big surprise this, how many rich corporate lawyers lose their drivers licenses?). These guys then use bicycles as means of transportation often riding at night without lights sometimes while intoxicated.

As for the fatality rate of recreational road cyclists, I have the impression that CA is might be worse than FL. Like me, my brother is an avid cyclist. He knows a fair number of riders who ended up as cycling fatalities. I don't know any even though I belong to a couple of large cycling clubs. Of course, this is an impression based on no decent data. I don't know of any data base that tracks the accident rates of competent recreational cyclists.

Pat

You have a good point here. I am an avid cyclist and have lived in MI and FL. I have ridden year round in both places. But functionally, the MI cycling season starts in April (for the hard core riders) and ends in September or October. In central FL it is year round. Cyclists in FL have twice the amount of cycling time to seek their demise as those in MI.

However, MI has a superior rural road net compared to FL. MI was part of the old Northwest Terr. It was set up on a grid system. MI has roads laid out in a grid and often there is a paved road going east and west or north and south every couple of miles. FL's rural roads tend to be far fewer and as a result have more traffic on them. I would think cycling in higher traffic densities increases one's risk to fatality. You are just giving more people a shot at you.

genec

But since Portland did not come up high on any of the higher death per capita lists of cyclists (as poor as the stats are) perhaps that says something about Portland.

commuterBOBbie

It's instructive to take a look at the causes and factors in bicycle crashes and fatalities. It's easy to blame bad drivers because we have all witnessed plenty of bad driving. But the stats don't necessarily play out that way.

Orlando Fatalities from 2003 & 2004

On page 10 it breaks down the 17 fatalities. "Only two of the crashes involved overtaking motorists, and those also involved intoxicated cyclists, and both were also at night. The bicyclist was at fault in all but one crash, in which a motorist left the roadway and hit the cyclist on the sidewalk."

On page 12 - "At Least 64.1% of All Bicyclist-Motorist Crashes Involved an Unsafe Choice on the Part of the Bicyclist " Not included in the report's list of unsafe choices is "riding too close to the curb," but this also can lead to overtaking errors, reduced visibility to crossing traffic and right-hooks. If they analyzed lane position, that percentage would probably be higher.

There are some lousy drivers in Orlando, no doubt. But even in a place with less than ideal traffic culture, cyclists still cause most of their own problems. Even crashes caused by motorists can be mitigated by cyclists understanding traffic dynamics, maintaining good lane position and learning simple crash avoidance skills.

The best method for making cycling safer is not infrastructure or even motorist education (though it would be nice!), it's actually cyclist education.

HiYoSilver

Al,

This is interesting but also leads me to question the data. Broomfield county is not listed, so closest are Boulder and Jefferson. Jefferson shows a much lower rate than Boulder, but it also has about 1/10th the cyclists on the road.

Maybe good data just does not exist.

EnigManiac

These types of generalizations without statistical evidence to support them are meaningless. Toronto, for instance, is very similar to Detroit and Chicago (the 3rd largest US city): it is located on the Great Lakes, has a less-temperate climate and is Canadian which, to many Americans---though not all---means snow year-round (like Michigan---sheesh!). Yet Toronto has a cycling population of about 400,000 from May-Sep and varying numbers (although drastically increasing) through the winter for a total accumulative number of about 12+ million riders through a calendar year. Yet, with a population of 2.5 (official) million, we have just 3 fatalities (2007).

I would wager that most, if not all, smaller cities in the sun belt of the US that have the weather for cycling have a greater number of motorists than cyclists per capita than Toronto.