Cyclists are People, Too

With summer in full swing now, it’s hard not to notice the increased number of motorcyclist and bicyclist sharing the roadways. Or is it? Statistics compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would suggest that maybe we, as drivers, aren’t noticing the cyclists often as we should be.

The NHTSA recently published a report that the fatalities related to traffic crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled decreased from 1.36 in 2007 to 1.25 in 2008. While the total number of fatal crashes on American roadways decreased from 2007 to 2008, the opposite trend is true for cyclist. Fatalities of both bicyclist (716) and motorcyclist (5,290) increased over 2% in that time period. Going along with those statistics are the additional 52,000 bicyclists and 96,000 motorcyclists that were injured in traffic crashes. Bicyclists fatalities make up 2% of all traffic crash fatalities, while motorcyclists fatalities make up nearly 16% of the total fatalities. This is just plain too many, especially when you consider that only 3% of all registered vehicles are motorcycles. These numbers are truly unfortunate, because what better way is there to get out and enjoy the beauty this country has to offer than to ride across town, or the country, on your bike? Just ask Tony.

There is some encouraging news though. Agencies from the federal government to small private organizations are pushing harder and harder for cyclist awareness both on the roadway and in the design stage. The first part of that can be done by all of us, so please, look twice for bike riders. The second part is up to the civil engineers. We need to start (or continue) to design bicycle and motorcycle friendly roadways. Whether it is including a bicycle only lane in our roadway cross section, considering the extra time it takes a bicyclist to get through an intersection when designing the yellow and all red clearance interval, or including at our intersections more effective detection, it shouldn’t be an option, it should be a no-question absolutely have to do thing. The engineers need to understand how, what, why, and when cyclists use our roadways and intersections and incorporate that into our designs.

For example, motorcyclists tend to not ride in the center of the drive lane, so we typically don’t need to concentrate our motorcycle detection efforts there. Whatever your solution, the important thing is to consider these smaller, lighter vehicles in the design. Like everything else, there is no one right answer, but there is a wrong one: Continuing to ignore the fact that cyclists use the same roadway as the rest of us do is a fatal error.

So as we celebrate the 234th birthday of this great country, let us all make an extra effort to help make this a better country for everyone no matter what your mode of transportation is.