Advocacy & Safety - The "Idaho Stop" - Toronto Star

This front page article may have been a bit provocative.

What stop sign?
Do cyclists need to stop at a stop sign?

http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/c2/f3/ec94d97b44c7a93e528f209135dd.jpeg

(PHOTO: RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR
A cyclist cruises through a stop sign on Beverley Street. In Idaho, the law allows cyclists to treat stop signs like yield signs. )

We watched 159 cyclists approach a busy intersection. Only 21 came to a full stop

It drives motorists crazy, but some cyclists believe it's safer to ignore stop signs

Aug 02, 2009 04:30 AM
Dave Feschuk
Feature Writer
"Life," Albert Einstein once said, "is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." You don't need to be a genius to know that riders of bicycles in this city keep their balance in no end of illegal ways.

They keep moving steadily, for instance, through the four stop signs that decorate the intersection of Beverley and Baldwin Sts. On any given morning you can watch the streams of pedal-powered commuters approaching that four-way stop, most of them rolling downhill to the downtown core, almost all of them treating the four-letter word on the red octagon like an impolite suggestion.

Some of them, like the gent in the dirty jeans with the liquor-store bag dangling from the handlebars, blithely blow through the intersection as though it does not exist, no matter the steady stream of motor traffic flowing alongside that treats the stop signs with more respect.

Most of them, like the woman in the Hollywood-large sunglasses perched atop the of-the-moment army-green folding bike, pause from pedalling to survey the flow while coasting, resuming their rhythm when it's safe to proceed.

Only a very few actually, fully, stop. To obey the Highway Traffic Act to its letter, after all, would be to contravene other statutes.

"There's an unwritten law, the law of preservation of momentum, that all cyclists follow," said Yvonne Bambrick, the executive director of the Toronto Cyclists Union.

The rolling stop – or, in some cycling circles, the Idaho Stop – is as popular as it is illegal, and there are those who will tell you it's also perfectly safe. Bambrick, among other cycling supporters and bloggers, is advocating its legalization, citing common sense and a compelling precedent.

Cyclists in Idaho have been legally permitted to treat stop signs as yield signs since 1982. And though the Idaho law was brought in by legislators to help relieve the pressure on a crowded traffic-court system, cycling-savvy proponents of its further spread argue it would make cycling more efficient, more appealing and ultimately more popular. In places bent on curbing car usage, it's a compelling argument.

Writing new traffic laws for a community of cyclists notorious for shirking the ones already on the books, of course, is also an inflammatory argument. Before fed-up motorists clog the rant-radio phone lines in opposition, Bambrick begs a moment to explain.

"(The Idaho Stop) is not just blowing a stop sign," said Bambrick. "It's slowing down enough so that you could come to a stop if you needed to. You slow down, you look right, you look left, you look right again, you look ahead ... I really think it's something worth pursuing. It's been proven effective in Idaho for some 20 years. If they can do it down there, why can't we give it a try in Toronto?"

Indeed, rolling-stop advocates will tell you that Idaho's bicycle accidents decreased some 14 per cent in the year after the stop-sign law was enacted. Cyclists bent on preserving momentum are also intensely interested in preserving flesh and blood, after all, and because they're not shielded by the barriers of hood and windshield and door they are more aware of their surroundings than motorists. The argument has been made that a cyclist devoting energy to clear-eyed and open-eared awareness – rather than to the vagaries of gearing down and/or slowing down – puts safety top of mind.

Mind you, whether or not Idaho's example is relevant to Ontario – and any change to traffic law would be a provincial matter – is debatable. In 1982, the population of Boise, Idaho's biggest city, was about 100,000. Today, Boise's population is about double that, which means it's the size of Saskatoon, which means it is home to less than one-third of Scarborough's populace. In other words, if a bike rolls through a stop sign at an otherwise-deserted intersection, what's the harm?

In busier urban centres, meanwhile, other bike advocates worry that legalizing the rolling stop would lead to wider disregard of the signs on already chaotic streets.

"If you loosen up the rules too much, people will just barrel right through the stop sign and they'll get killed that way," said Brian Maclean, president of the Toronto Bicycling Network, a club for recreational cyclists. Said Charles Akben-Marchand, past president of Citizens for Safe Cycling, an Ottawa-based bike safety organization: "It could be something better left to the discretion of the enforcers, rather than the legislators. In Ottawa, it's against the law to ride a bike on the sidewalk, but I've talked to police officers who say they won't give a ticket to anyone under 12."

Still, enforcement of the letter of stop-sign law persists, at least in Toronto. June saw the Toronto police run its "Safe Cycling: Share the Responsibility" campaign, a one-week blitz that saw 669 cyclists ticketed for ignoring stop signs, an offence that comes with a $110 fine.

"Encouraging more bicycling as opposed to car use is a good thing," said Jim Baross, 62, a cycling safety advocate in California, where there have been low-level rumblings about adopting the Idaho stop. "But ... on a public roadway, everybody gets along more safely and more efficiently if we all follow the same rules."

submitted as a letter to the editor:

Dear Sirs:

Re: Do cyclists need to stop at a stop sign?, August 2, 2009.

Whether intended or not, the article feeds the myth that cyclists disregard traffic laws to a greater degree than motorists do. However, the “Idaho Stop” (cruising through a stop sign at what the driver judges to be a “safe” speed) is the usual behaviour for motorists too. I wasn’t able to duplicate your experiment at Baldwin and Beverly Sts. this evening as there was too much pedestrian traffic, so I couldn’t tell if those car drivers that stopped completely did so out of good behaviour or because their right of way was blocked. However, at nearby Cecil and Huron Sts., over the course of a few minutes, only 2 out of 18 drivers brought their cars to a full stop. Also, the bulk of motorized traffic usually exceeds the speed limits on both city streets and highways, and you can routinely see drivers running red lights at any controlled intersection you choose. In short, motorists flout the law every bit as much as cyclists do.

The main difference is that the motorists are far more likely to kill somebody when they do it.

I bet if I watched 159 cars go through a stop sign, I wouldn't see many more than 21 come to a full stop either.

A related discussion in progress in the Vehicular Cycling sub-forum:

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=567904

submitted as a letter to the editor:

Dear Sirs:

Re: Do cyclists need to stop at a stop sign?, August 2, 2009.

Whether intended or not, the article feeds the myth that cyclists disregard traffic laws to a greater degree than motorists do. However, the “Idaho Stop” (cruising through a stop sign at what the driver judges to be a “safe” speed) is the usual behaviour for motorists too. I wasn’t able to duplicate your experiment at Baldwin and Beverly Sts. this evening as there was too much pedestrian traffic, so I couldn’t tell if those car drivers that stopped completely did so out of good behaviour or because their right of way was blocked. However, at nearby Cecil and Huron Sts., over the course of a few minutes, only 2 out of 18 drivers brought their cars to a full stop. Also, the bulk of motorized traffic usually exceeds the speed limits on both city streets and highways, and you can routinely see drivers running red lights at any controlled intersection you choose. In short, motorists flout the law every bit as much as cyclists do.

The main difference is that the motorists are far more likely to kill somebody when they do it.

:thumb:

No argument that motorists also disregard trafffic laws, and that they are much more likely to cause harm when they do so.

Based on my own observations where I ride, though, the rate of violations by cyclists is many times higher than that of motorists. I see many more cyclists blowing through controlled intersections with reckless disregard for their own safety and the right of way of others. I see many more cyclists travelling on the wrong side of the road. I see many more cyclists riding in the dark without illumination. And I am at the receiving end of the fear, anger, and disrespect this behavior engenders in those whom I rely upon to share the road safely with me.

What are the benefits vs. risks of maintaining two sets of rules for two classes of road users? Should we legalize potentially dangerous behavior simply because some will do it anyway?

.

Based on my own observations where I ride, though, the rate of violations by cyclists is many times higher than that of motorists. ?

I dislike stop sign runners -got hit by one a couple years ago- luckily only he was seriously hurt-

but, I will have to disagree with your statement.

Every single car on the road breaks the speed limit. Plus rolling stops and pushed red lights.

Most bikes run stop lights and sings, but few routinely break the speed limit.

You are right, the percentage of motorists who exceed the speed limits is very likely greater than the percentage of cyclists who violate all the traffic laws put together.

Proponents of the Idaho Stop Law have argued that this law simply codifies what most cyclists do anyway.

By the same argument, we should raise the speed limits for motorists, because so many of them exceed the speed limits. In fact, some state highway jurisdictions have done just that, raising the posted speed limits on aterial roads to a speed not exceeded on average by 80% of drivers. The result for cyclists is a greater speed differential between cars and bikes, and less pleasant, less safe cycling. Of course, as motorists continue to exceed the new higher speed limits, the cycle repeats.

....
Based on my own observations where I ride, though, the rate of violations by cyclists is many times higher than that of motorists. I see many more cyclists blowing through controlled intersections with reckless disregard for their own safety and the right of way of others. I see many more cyclists travelling on the wrong side of the road. I see many more cyclists riding in the dark without illumination. And I am at the receiving end of the fear, anger, and disrespect this behavior engenders in those whom I rely upon to share the road safely with me.

....


This a constant sore spot with me. I am not perfect...the Idaho stop makes sense in some sitiuations,etc...but the fact is, decades of careful riding skills and goodwill generated by cyclists is thrown away by careless riders, especially youngsters exploiting not only the bike but their age as well.

It is courtesy, not the law, which is the primary source of safety on the roadways. I'll bet that 99% of all violations of highway law...speeding, failure to yield, or stop at a light, tailgating, drunk driving, whatever...go undetected and unpunished. It is our sense of decency and courtesy that makes up comply. If cyclists fail to understand this, a pox on all our houses.

roughstuff

Very well said, Roughstuff. What you are describing sounds like the so-called "golden rule" (do onto others . . . ). In a perfect world, where that rule was observed by all, I suppose none of the others would be required.

but few [bicyclists] routinely break the speed limit.
But you know they want to!


======================

Ignoring excessive speeding, does speeding have the same risks as going through stop signs?

But you know they want to!


======================

Ignoring excessive speeding, does speeding have the same risks as going through stop signs?Much higher, simply because cars are inherently more far dangerous than bikes. Forty thousand Americans die in car crashes every year and people are blind to it.

Much higher, simply because cars are inherently more far dangerous than bikes. Forty thousand Americans die in car crashes every year and people are blind to it.
That statistic has nothing to do with the question I asked.

Anyway, there are many, many more people-miles for cars than there is for bicycles. The Forty thousand Americans die in car crashes every year doesn't prove that cars are more dangerous.

You'd have to have the figure of fatalities per miles traveled to do that.

How many of those fatalities are due to going over the speed limit (but not excessively)? What does your crystal ball say?

====================

It's quite possible that the number of fatalities would not change significantly if "moderate speeders" kept to the speed limit (again, I'm not talking about excessive speeding). (Of course, "excessive" is ambiguous.)

It certainly would not be too unexpected to see the number fatalities drop if cars where kept at a maximum speed of 25mph!
Well, that's about the speed limit for bikes so by your logic bikes must be safer!

I'll try to respond to your other points presently.

Very well said, Roughstuff. What you are describing sounds like the so-called "golden rule" (do onto others . . . ). In a perfect world, where that rule was observed by all, I suppose none of the others would be required.


Well, there is more to it than that. I mean plain and simple courtesy and perspective. I have had critical mazzholes ask me online...why should I move to the right so some stupid car can pass me in traffic? .

Very simple. Hundreds of cars, even in many cases when they did not need to do so (as when I am well inside an 8 foot bike lane/shoulder) move several feet to the left as they go by me on rt 20, or rt 57, or rt9, or rt 116, or rt 112, or rt 8, or....well, you get the picture....so to me it is nothing more than courtesy and payback on my part to move to the right when traffic conditions warrant it.

roughstuff

Here's a link to a recent study that suggested raising speed limits led to thousands of excess deaths.

http://www.businessfleet.com/News/Story/2009/07/Road-Fatalities-and-Injuries-Up-Since-55-MPH-Speed-Limit-Repealed.aspx

The same authors also cite evidence that increased traffic speed enforcement in England and Australia lowered fatalities.

As an Idaho resident I don't stop at every sign/light. The only ones I do blow through are going straight through 3 way stops, where a driver would have to aim for me on purpose. I stop at lights, but proceed through when its "safe". EG when a light is allowing people to turn, I proceed after everyones turned, but before the light changes.

Common sense would go a long way for most people that get hurt blowing through signs.

You'd have to have the figure of fatalities per miles traveled to do that.
It's impossible to do a fair comparison since cyclists and motorists don't necessarily do the same kind of miles, especially commuters. Drivers are much more likely to drive on a freeway, and to drive farther and also to add "elective" miles to their route. I bike to work, and if I want to shop on the way home I pick a store on my in-town route. If I were in the car, I'd likely take a much wider loop to to go to a store with parking so I'd put in extra miles. A lot of excess driving is done for that reason: "because I can," so it's unclear whether you should compare bike and car fatalities per mile or per trip.

According to Prof Ulrich, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1335210 citing earlier research, the operator fatality rate per mile for cycling is about 6 times higher than for driving, but I think we were also talking about the dangers of these modes of transport to other people, not just the driver/rider, so I'll have to look up those stats elsewhere. Also, many of those cyclists die in collisions with cars, so since I was talking about how dangerous the vehicles are (which is what you responded to), at least some of that risk has to be attributed to the cars. In contrast, very few car drivers are killled by bikes.

Anyway, there are many, many more people-miles for cars than there is for bicycles. The Forty thousand Americans die in car crashes every year doesn't prove that cars are more dangerous.

You'd have to have the figure of fatalities per miles traveled to do that.

So far I have seen no conclusive proof or correlation that cycling crashes or fatalities is related to the amount of miles or time out on a bike. That correlation has to be proved first before we can venture down the road you suggest.

Same old same old. It's a conundrum. As a cyclist, I prefer rolling stop. As a driver, sometimes I like to just rev the engine just to make the cyclist slow and hopefully stop and not ignore the motorist that has arrived at the intersection first. :D

I decided a few years ago that I couldn't feel smugly superior to motorists if I openly flouted the law. So I treat stop signs exactly the same when I'm biking or motoring. I come to a near stop if there's no other traffic to fully stop for.

Well, that's about the speed limit for bikes so by your logic bikes must be safer!

Incorrect. There isn't enough information to determine the relative safety of driving a car versus riding a bicycle.

It's possible that, at a maximum speed of 25mph, cars would be significantly safer than bicycles.


It's impossible to do a fair comparison since cyclists and motorists don't necessarily do the same kind of miles, especially commuters.
It's is very hard to do a fair comparision. Your "40 thousand deaths" is about the worst way of making the comparision!


So far I have seen no conclusive proof or correlation that cycling crashes or fatalities is related to the amount of miles or time out on a bike. That correlation has to be proved first before we can venture down the road you suggest.
My point is that an absolute number of car fatalities is meaningless in determining whether cars are "more dangerous" than bicycles. Cars (in the US) are driven by many more people. many more times, for many more hours, and for many more miles than bicycles are ridden.

Anyway, if the same cyclist rides more frequently in the same traffic, it isn't reasonable to expect that the risk of being in an accident increases?


Also, many of those cyclists die in collisions with cars, so since I was talking about how dangerous the vehicles are (which is what you responded to), at least some of that risk has to be attributed to the cars.
The simple comparision is driving a car in traffic versus riding a bike in traffic. The traffic can't be eliminated.

=====================


Here's a link to a recent study that suggested raising speed limits led to thousands of excess deaths.
http://www.businessfleet.com/News/Story/2009/07/Road-Fatalities-and-Injuries-Up-Since-55-MPH-Speed-Limit-Repealed.aspx
"The study found that over the 10-year period following the repeal of the National Maximum Speed Law, about 12,500 deaths took place due to the increased speed limits across the U.S."
That's 1,250 per year or an increase of about 1,250/46,000 per year or 2.7%.

The same authors also cite evidence that increased traffic speed enforcement in England and Australia lowered fatalities.
Is this changing the number of people who are excessively speeding or people who are moderately speeding?

I decided a few years ago that I couldn't feel smugly superior to motorists if I openly flouted the law. So I treat stop signs exactly the same when I'm biking or motoring. I come to a near stop if there's no other traffic to fully stop for.

This is a reasonable position to take.

===============

I have a bit of a problem with some cyclists saying that they have a right to use the road and have a right to pick the laws that they want to follow.

It's is very hard to do a fair comparision. Your "40 thousand deaths" is about the worst way of making the comparision!

If cars did not exist, and bikes were the only transportation, do you honestly believe 40,000 people would die in traffic every year? There are countries around the world that can provide stats on that. The car-based transportation system is a dangerous system. People like cars and appreciate the mobility (or in some cases, illusion of mobility) they provide, and tend to shut the harmful side out of their consciousness, but once you face it, it is pretty obvious. Cars kill a ****load of people. You may think that the benefits outweigh all that carnage, but you can't deny it exists.

My point is that an absolute number of car fatalities is meaningless in determining whether cars are "more dangerous" than bicycles. Cars (in the US) are driven by many more people. many more times, for many more hours, and for many more miles than bicycles are ridden.

Anyway, if the same cyclist rides more frequently in the same traffic, it isn't reasonable to expect that the risk of being in an accident increases?

Ya sure just like every time a coin toss comes up heads the chances of it coming up tails on the next toss increases. Sorry statistics fail.

With cars they can run off the road and someone dies or they can hit someone else and they die so there is a relationship between the time spent in car and fatalities. But in a world without cars cyclists would very rarely die so the risk of riding a bicycle is much like the risk of being struck by lightening. If there are a 1000 people outside during a thunderstorm the odds are 1:1000 someone might get hit by lightening. Double the number of people outside and the odds become 1:2000 not 2:1000. This generally fits with what we observe. As over the last decade I have watch the local cycling numbers swell with no increase in fatalities.

Ya sure just like every time a coin toss comes up heads the chances of it coming up tails on the next toss increases. Sorry statistics fail.
Analogy fail.

He's not saying that the more time you spend riding, the more you will get hit per set amount of time. He's saying that the more time you spend riding, the more likely you will, at some point, be hit. The proper analogy for his theory would be that every time a coin toss comes up, the chance of one of the results being tails increases...which is in fact the case.

If there are a 1000 people outside during a thunderstorm the odds are 1:1000 someone might get hit by lightening. Double the number of people outside and the odds become 1:2000 not 2:1000. This generally fits with what we observe. As over the last decade I have watch the local cycling numbers swell with no increase in fatalities.

I see what you're saying, but you're assuming that if there are X people outside and lightning strikes, the lightning will always hit exactly one person, so the odds would be 1/X. In reality, lightning strikes rarely hit anyone. Having more people outside increases the likelihood that SOMEONE will get hit. If those 2000 people occupy the same area that 1000 people did previously, and assuming that they're not attracting any extra lightning to the area, then I think the odds DO increase; the odds were not 1/1000 before, assuming equal distribution of people within the area, the odds were (area within which the assumed lightning strike would cause harm) / (distance between people) IE if a strike will harm someone within 10 feet of it, and the people are 50 feet apart from one another, the odds of ANYONE getting hit are 1/5, and the odds of any GIVEN person getting hit are 1/5000.

Double the number of people to 2000 in the same area (in our analogy, the same number of miles of roads), and the people are now 35 feet apart (50 * sqrt 1000 / sqrt 2000), so the odds are now 1/3.5 of SOMEONE getting hit, and 1/7000 of any one person getting hit.

So yeah, any one person's odds of getting hit are a lot lower, but the odds of SOMEONE getting hit are a lot higher.

Also, this is assuming that people are not grouped together, so that when the event occurs, more than one person might get hit. This will increase both odds but I don't know how to calculate that.

Similarly, inattentive drivers do things all the time, probably every mile of road has someone drift into the shoulder or cross the yellow line every day. Call these lightning strikes. The vast majority of these incidents never result in any damage because nobody's there.

If you take a million incidents every day and only one results in damage because nobody's there in the other 999,999 cases, and then you double the number of people riding bikes, you've just doubled the odds of something happening in each case, and odds are that 2 cyclists will get hit every day. The same inattentive drivers will likely (but not inevitably) drift off onto the shoulder just as often, it's just twice as likely that there will be a cyclist there to get hit if there are twice the cyclists on the road (it scales linearly for this type of event since the road is one-dimensional).

Again, twice as likely that ANYONE will get hit, less likely that YOU will get hit, but also again, assuming that only one person ever gets hit. I don't think that's a good assumption; cyclists do tend to clump together.

Eventually this analogy breaks down, because with enough cyclists on the roads, motorists will hopefully be more attentive. It's unlikely that if a lot of people started going outside in thunderstorms that lightning would stop striking as often. Perhaps it's also too much to expect more than that from motorists.

Analogy fail.

He's not saying that the more time you spend riding, the more you will get hit per set amount of time. He's saying that the more time you spend riding, the more likely you will, at some point, be hit. The proper analogy for his theory would be that every time a coin toss comes up, the chance of one of the results being tails increases...which is in fact the case.

The offensive words here are "more likely" and "you." The longer you live the more likely you will be hit by lightening, the more you eat the more likely you will die from choking on food, are all invalided assertions. All that we can predict is that someone will die from lightning and someone will die from choking on food and the odds of that happening are fairly consistent within a large population.

In Baltimore we average a bit less then one cycling fatality per year and that just happened this week to a poor fellow who hardly ever rides on the street out for a short errand. If our exposure had something to do with it, it should have been a bike messenger or a bike commuter not this poor fellow. But again all we can say is the odds are someone on a bike will die in Baltimore.

I see what you're saying, but you're assuming ...

The point of my post was to get people to start looking at the problem differently and that certainly qualifies. ;)

Ya sure just like every time a coin toss comes up heads the chances of it coming up tails on the next toss increases. Sorry statistics fail.
I'm not saying that. It's a silly interpretation.


If there are a 1000 people outside during a thunderstorm the odds are 1:1000 someone might get hit by lightening. Double the number of people outside and the odds become 1:2000 not 2:1000.
Why are there more per-capital lightning strikes in FL? The probablity that somebody will get struck increases. As you pack the field in which lighting is striking with people, the probability that one person will get struck approaches 100%. Indeed, as the density of people increases, the number of people struck per lightning strike increase too.

It's possible that this simple behavior would not describe what happens with large increases in the number of cyclists since cycling in traffic isn't an activity completely governed by randomness.


But in a world without cars cyclists would very rarely die so the risk of riding a bicycle is much like the risk of being struck by lightening.

Where is this "world without cars"?


If cars did not exist, and bikes were the only transportation, do you honestly believe 40,000 people would die in traffic every year? There are countries around the world that can provide stats on that. The car-based transportation system is a dangerous system. People like cars and appreciate the mobility (or in some cases, illusion of mobility) they provide, and tend to shut the harmful side out of their consciousness, but once you face it, it is pretty obvious. Cars kill a ****load of people. You may think that the benefits outweigh all that carnage, but you can't deny it exists.

Where is this "world without cars"?


(I have no doubt that the number of bicycle fatalities would be many-fold smaller without there being cars.)



http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30

Note that this moved alcohol-related car deaths to the alcohol-related category.

What's interesting is that many more people spend more time driving than using fire-arms or committing homicides but those latter activities produced 49,000 deaths in 2006.

A major contribution to the number of vehicle deaths is related to shear number of people who participate in that activity.

==============================


The offensive words here are "more likely" and "you." The longer you live the more likely you will be hit by lightening, the more you eat the more likely you will die from choking on food, are all invalided assertions. All that we can predict is that someone will die from lightning and someone will die from choking on food and the odds of that happening are fairly consistent within a large population.
You mean, if I roll a dice many times, it would not be "more likely" to hit a six that it would be doing it once?


The cumulative risk certainly increases on an individual basis. For very-rare events, the cumulative risk remains very small, which means that one cannot "predict" that a person will die by any particular means (but no one is making such a "prediction".)



In Baltimore we average a bit less then one cycling fatality per year and that just happened this week to a poor fellow who hardly ever rides on the street out for a short errand. If our exposure had something to do with it, it should have been a bike messenger or a bike commuter not this poor fellow. But again all we can say is the odds are someone on a bike will die in Baltimore.
Well, no. Sometimes you roll a six the first time. Anyway, it's certain that "exposure" had something to do with the death. If he hadn't been bicycling, he would not have had a bicycling accident.

(There certainly is an experience/skill component to the risk level. Which is what I suppose you are alluding to. And which no one is denying.)

==============================

From the article:


Indeed, rolling-stop advocates will tell you that Idaho's bicycle accidents decreased some 14 per cent in the year after the stop-sign law was enacted. Cyclists bent on preserving momentum are also intensely interested in preserving flesh and blood, after all, and because they're not shielded by the barriers of hood and windshield and door they are more aware of their surroundings than motorists. The argument has been made that a cyclist devoting energy to clear-eyed and open-eared awareness – rather than to the vagaries of gearing down and/or slowing down – puts safety top of mind.

Decreased 14%? How many fatalities were there? 7 one year and 6 the next? There's a lot of of theorizing going on with not a lot of good data (it seems).

You mean, if I roll a dice many times, it would not be "more likely" to hit a six that it would be doing it once?
I mean that you are just as likely to roll a six on your first roll as you are on your 1,000 the roll. If you rolled a 6 3 times in a row you still have the same chance of rolling a six on your next roll as you did on the previous rolls.



The cumulative risk certainly increases on an individual basis. For very-rare events, the cumulative risk remains very small, which means that one cannot "predict" that a person will die by any particular means (but no one is making such a "prediction".)

I will agree that life time odds of dying by an event is greater then the yearly odds (Ref: http://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20061207130021353 ) but what we do as individuals has very little effect on the total number that die in a given year by a given cause.


Well, no. Sometimes you roll a six the first time. Anyway, it's certain that "exposure" had something to do with the death. If he hadn't been bicycling, he would not have had a bicycling accident.

(There certainly is an experience/skill component to the risk level. Which is what I suppose you are alluding to. And which no one is denying.)

The problem is this is not like a single dice throw it' s more like throwing a problematic location die, somebody doing something stupid die, experience in avoiding accidents die, car being in the wrong place at the wrong time die, time of day/week/year die and all of these have to roll a six simultaneously. Not to mention that there is only a set number of throws per year. So ya you have a point if we start accumulating years but within a given year there is not much one individual can do to increase or decrease total fatalities per cause per year. I don't care how many times you stand under a tree in a thunderstorm or if you are always inside, you are not going to change the number of fatalities by lightning in a given year.

The next issue is if they are not biking then what? Taking the car? Here are MD's odds of dying:
Fatalities: Population
Cars 394:2,351,561 reduced 1:5,968
Bikes 7:842,359 reduced 1:120,337
Collateral damage of cars 213 so adding that in we have:
Cars 607:2,351,561 reduced 1:3874

It comes down to we all live life, whether in a car or on a bike, car deaths correlate to car millage and cycling deaths are just basically flat with no coloration that we can determine. So no mater what I do on a bike, my odds of dying in any given year is 1:120,337 which is better then if I drove and if I drove I stand a chance of increasing the total fatalities which makes the chance of someone dying even easier then before.

Where is this "world without cars"?
(I have no doubt that the number of bicycle fatalities would be many-fold smaller without there being cars.).
You asked me why I claimed that cars were inherently more dangerous than bikes, and now you are agreeing with me that it is obvious.

That statistic has nothing to do with the question I asked.

Anyway, there are many, many more people-miles for cars than there is for bicycles. The Forty thousand Americans die in car crashes every year doesn't prove that cars are more dangerous.

You'd have to have the figure of fatalities per miles traveled to do that.

How many of those fatalities are due to going over the speed limit (but not excessively)? What does your crystal ball say?

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It's quite possible that the number of fatalities would not change significantly if "moderate speeders" kept to the speed limit (again, I'm not talking about excessive speeding). (Of course, "excessive" is ambiguous.)

There are SO many factors involved that you couldn't accurately determine which is safer with statistics. You don't have information on what caused the crash, what the conditions were like, nor do you have information on demographics. Are you counting fatalities as just those who die in a car or on a bicycle? Are you counting fatalities on the roadway only, because some cyclist ride on trails and can quite easily fall down ditches and die. What are the demographics... are you going by city, state, nation, the world? How does vehicular manslaughter figure into your fatalities? Why don't we look at walking? If you look at the amount of fatalities divided by the number of miles traveled, I would expect to see walking be incredibly dangerous in some places...

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/trn_aut_acc_ped_fat_as_per_of_tot-accidents-pedestrian-fatalities-percent-total

as you add vehicles (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians) to the roadway, the chances for an accident goes up. The faster people are going, regardless of what vehicle they use, the higher the risk of an accident: The faster you travel, the more distance you need to stop, the less time you have to react, and the more force you're traveling with (which, while it may not necessarily raise the amount of accidents per se, it does increase the likelihood of a fatality). Throw distractions (like cell phones, billboards, flashy signs), and emotion/frustration, and it gets even worse. Remember: STATISTICS ARE MISLEADING... there's even a book out there called:

"How to Lie With Statisitics" By Darrell Huff

I'm not about to let statistics govern, or even influence, what I do.

Simple; if I have a stop sign ahead, I look for traffic. I slow for the sign, stop for traffic. I WILL NOT run a red light. {I feel like I have to demonstrate to drivers that I know wtf I'm doing on the bike, so they will (1% chance...)realize they can share a little bit.** Getting from A to B as fast as possible just isn't on the list. If it WAS, I'd simply ride the 2 miles straight in to work, instead of the 5-9 that I do, depending on time and mood.....

I have been caught 'directing' traffic @ 4-ways stops....

One aspect that is never gets enough attention is the approach speed. I find autos will approach at a much higher rate than a bike that is going to slowly roll through the stop sign.

The offensive words here are "more likely" and "you." The longer you live the more likely you will be hit by lightening, the more you eat the more likely you will die from choking on food, are all invalided assertions. All that we can predict is that someone will die from lightning and someone will die from choking on food and the odds of that happening are fairly consistent within a large population.

In Baltimore we average a bit less then one cycling fatality per year and that just happened this week to a poor fellow who hardly ever rides on the street out for a short errand. If our exposure had something to do with it, it should have been a bike messenger or a bike commuter not this poor fellow. But again all we can say is the odds are someone on a bike will die in Baltimore.
Face. Palm. Go back to school and take a statistics class, please.

If there is a given number of cycling fatalities per year (ie. your "a bit less than one"/year), there is also a (smaller) given number of cycling fatalities per hour. Given such a statistic - a consistent average of cycling fatalities per hour - it stands to reason that someone who is on a bike for more hours in a given time period is testing the odds more times in said given time period; exactly how someone who flips a coin twice is more likely to obtain a single tails than someone who only flips once (75% chance vs. 50% chance).

Face. Palm. Go back to school and take a statistics class, please.

If there is a given number of cycling fatalities per year (ie. your "a bit less than one"/year), there is also a (smaller) given number of cycling fatalities per hour. Given such a statistic - a consistent average of cycling fatalities per hour - it stands to reason that someone who is on a bike for more hours in a given time period is testing the odds more times in said given time period; exactly how someone who flips a coin twice is more likely to obtain a single tails than someone who only flips once (75% chance vs. 50% chance).

Face. Palm. Go back to school and take a statistics class, please.

If there is a given number of lightning fatalities per year (ie. your "a bit less than one"/year), there is also a (smaller) given number of lightning fatalities per hour. Given such a statistic - a consistent average of lightning fatalities per hour - it stands to reason that someone who is on a outside for more hours in a given time period is testing the odds more times in said given time period; exactly how someone who flips a coin twice is more likely to obtain a single tails than someone who only flips once (75% chance vs. 50% chance).

:roflmao2:

You are trying to show a correlation that more time on a bike causes more fatalities on a bike just as more time outside causes more lightening fatalities. The trick here is not showing off your mathematical prowess but in showing data that the more people are out biking the more fatalities there are. That is unless you are asserting statistics does not need any supporting data. :twitchy:

There are SO many factors involved that you couldn't accurately determine which is safer with statistics.
I basically agree. That was my point in complaining about the "40,000" number being used to establish that cycling is safer.


I mean that you are just as likely to roll a six on your first roll as you are on your 1,000 the roll. If you rolled a 6 3 times in a row you still have the same chance of rolling a six on your next roll as you did on the previous rolls.
That's obvious. (I'm not arguing otherwise.)


I will agree that life time odds of dying by an event is greater then the yearly odds (Ref: http://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20061207130021353 ) but what we do as individuals has very little effect on the total number that die in a given year by a given cause.
I don't dispute that (and I wasn't making any comments about that).


So no mater what I do on a bike, my odds of dying in any given year is 1:120,337 which is better then if I drove and if I drove I stand a chance of increasing the total fatalities which makes the chance of someone dying even easier then before.
Your odds aren't 1:120,337. It's probably much, much higher! The 7 cycling deaths is (probably) a reliable number but the 842,359 isn't (is it counting the number bicycles? the number of bicycles that are used? bicycle commuters?). (Keep in mind that most drivers use their cars regularly and most bicyclists use their bikes for infrequent recreation.)

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I wasn't arguing that cycling was less safe than driving. I was only saying that the "40,000 car deaths" very-clearly isn't evidence that it's safer.

Anyway, I ride a bicycle too!

Your odds aren't 1:120,337. It's probably much, much higher! The 7 cycling deaths is (probably) a reliable number but the 842,359 isn't (is it counting the number bicycles? the number of bicycles that are used? bicycle commuters?). (Keep in mind that most drivers use their cars regularly and most bicyclists use their bikes for infrequent recreation.)

That is the question what's a good number that we have to use as a comparison? Currently there is no "really good" number for cyclists. But my point in all this whatever that number is, increasing that number does not appear to increase the fatalities.

I assume any car approaching or at a stop sign or stop light will blow through it at any second and keep going. Based on that idea I will either stop, slow down or just blow it. I never all out blow red lights but I have done an Idaho stop on some before.

EDIT: also the statistical correlation presented above because it doesn't really seem to take into account a riders skill. If I cyclist rides for 9 hours per day versus his friends 1, yes the first is more likely to get into an accident, but he is probably also more skilled at avoiding situations which would cause an accident.

submitted as a letter to the editor:

Dear Sirs:

Re: Do cyclists need to stop at a stop sign?, August 2, 2009.

Whether intended or not, the article feeds the myth that cyclists disregard traffic laws to a greater degree than motorists do. However, the “Idaho Stop” (cruising through a stop sign at what the driver judges to be a “safe” speed) is the usual behaviour for motorists too. I wasn’t able to duplicate your experiment at Baldwin and Beverly Sts. this evening as there was too much pedestrian traffic, so I couldn’t tell if those car drivers that stopped completely did so out of good behaviour or because their right of way was blocked. However, at nearby Cecil and Huron Sts., over the course of a few minutes, only 2 out of 18 drivers brought their cars to a full stop. Also, the bulk of motorized traffic usually exceeds the speed limits on both city streets and highways, and you can routinely see drivers running red lights at any controlled intersection you choose. In short, motorists flout the law every bit as much as cyclists do.

The main difference is that the motorists are far more likely to kill somebody when they do it.

Good response :)

There are Arret (stop) signs outside the Bistro where I take my morning coffee. One day I decided to count how many cars stopped for the sign. I gave up counting after 62 cars went through without coming to a full stop. It is a difference of perception. A car that slows from 30 mph to 3 mph looks like it is stopping, while a bike that slows from 10 mph to 3 mph looks like it is blowing through the stop sign.

If there is a given number of cycling fatalities per year (ie. your "a bit less than one"/year), there is also a (smaller) given number of cycling fatalities per hour. Given such a statistic - a consistent average of cycling fatalities per hour - it stands to reason that someone who is on a bike for more hours in a given time period is testing the odds more times in said given time period; exactly how someone who flips a coin twice is more likely to obtain a single tails than someone who only flips once (75% chance vs. 50% chance). Human Car, nevertheless, has a point. Longer exposure also means that you're getting experience, so the longer you ride, the lower your personal chances of dying per hour.

Consider, for instance, the following statistic (numbers are obviously unreasonable, but they illustrate the point). Let's say you have two groups of people: call them Novices and Pros. Here are some made up stats:

# of Novices: 50
# of Pros: 50

# of hours each Pro rode last year: 498
# of hours each Novice rode last year: 2

# of Pros who died riding a bike last year: 1
# of Novices who died riding a bike last year: 9

From the above data we conclude the following:

fatalities per hour = (1+9)/(50*498+50*2) = 0.0004

Now if we just take that stat and apply it to both Pros and Novices, we'll find that we were "supposed" to have about 9.96 fatalities among the pros and 0.04 fatalities among the Novices (in other words, all ten dead cyclists should have been the Pros, since they got way more exposure). The truth, however, is that the rate of fatalities per hour for pros is only 1/(50*498) or approximately 0.00004, while for novices that figure is 9/(50*2) = 0.09.

Of course, they had to survive the Novice stage to get here and, unlike other Novices who survived the Novice stage and then stopped riding, the Pros are continuing to subject themselves to risk. However, the point is that the more exposure you have, the less dangerous, in general, the exposure becomes. It's not like a coin, in which is throw is independent of each other and the odds of tails is 50% every time. It's like a coin in which the odds of getting tails gets smaller with each subsequent throw.

Longer exposure also means that you're getting experience, so the longer you ride, the lower your personal chances of dying per hour.
People driving cars show this effect. Anyway, one might expect that the value of experience plateaus.

Part of the problem with using bicyclist fatalities as a measure of a phenomenon is that there are so few of them!

Anyway, one might expect that the value of experience plateaus. It's probably not a linear relationship between total experience and chances of dying in the next hour of exposure. Also, there are too many other variables: you can read BFs to learn about riding strategies, think about your riding and decide to ride smart, you can choose your routes... and so on and so forth. However, if there is a plateau of experience, I know I personally am not anywhere near it. I'm continuing to learn things. And many cyclists more experienced than I told me on more than one occasion that it's the same for them.


Part of the problem with using bicyclist fatalities as a measure of a phenomenon is that there are so few of them! That's true. Even in a city of several million there aren't enough cycling fatalities to draw significant statistical conclusions (which, of course, is a very good thing). One year we in Toronto might have five cycling fatalities, another year - only one. It doesn't mean though that the city became five times safer to cycle in.

I read a study somewhere that examined cycling crashes per mile. Crashes are much more common and, if one can properly track them, can paint a much more complete picture. Novices/casual riders were on one extreme, long-time cyclists who have taken a safety course were on the other. The difference between them was quite dramatic. Unfortunately, I don't remember what the study was or where the data came from.

City of Toronto also once did a study of reporting cycling crashes from one year. It's somewhat useful in some respects, but there is some important data missing. For example, it showed that 30% of crashes happened to sidewalk cyclists. However, the authors of the study do not know what percentage of cycling in the city is done on the sidewalk, so the figure is completely meaningless...