As a person who honed his commuting skills in Greater Orlando before it had bike lanes, and for a while thereafter .... The problems in Florida (IMO) come from severely distracted drivers trapped in gridlock on a badly conceived road system completely insufficient to handle the volume of traffic, along with a significant population of transients (not homeless, but rather low-income people who come for a short time looking for mostly labor jobs,) and a Huge seasonal population of elderly snowbirds and tourists as well as a large population of year-round elderly.

None of these people know the roads, and many of them are extremely marginal drivers. The workers tend to be more distracted/impaired (based on my time traveling in their cars as well as riding among them,) the elderly are often limited in vision and reaction time, and are frankly a bit overwhelmed by everything---fine keeping it between the lines but not able to respond to sudden unexpected road obstacles. The tourists are stressed and lost and trying to cope with spouses, kids, maps, GPS, other bad drivers, and multiple choke points on poorly designed roads.

Throw in some cyclists, a little general stupidity, and the occasional excessively angry/tired/confused/distracted driver or two ... and cars drive into each other in 5-mph stop-and-go traffic, or 55-mph stop-and-go traffic, make unscheduled, unsignalled, and often illegal driving maneuvers, and also simply are too self-absorbed and overloaded by the environment to even think "There might be cyclists."

Maybe Some parts of Florida are like the Netherlands ... but the major urban/suburban areas are madhouses.

Things were getting better when I left, but I see St. Pete/Tampa still has some of the top fatality rates.

Of course, added to all the substandard drivers, there are also a lot of low-income transport cyclists riding salmon with no lights and four bags of groceries hanging off the bars and banging the wheels, and young, stupid cyclists (such as I used to be) trying to squeeze through every hole and weave through cars like the riders are indestructible.

But yeah .. Florida is not "cycling Nirvana" nor is it "The U.S. Netherlands." The hinterlands offer some very nice cycling, though it is pretty flat, but the populated areas are actually pretty bad. And please note, whatever the statewide numbers might be ... the cities are pretty dangerous. I am sure there are some number of fatalities on the back roads, same as anywhere---people on two-lane twisters not expecting a cyclist and such---but I'd wager it is the cities where most of the bad stuff happens. I know that regardless of what the statewide totals might be, the big Central Florida urban areas---major tourist destinations, Land of the Theme Parks---are always at the top of the Deadliest Cities list. Tourists in rental cars, in a hurry, on unfamiliar roads, combined with doddering elderly drivers and frustrated locals trying to get to work .....