Tri-State Transportation Campaign releases its Northern New Jersey’s Most Dangerous Roads for Biking report

Despite New Jersey's already great cycling and our states potential to be truly exceptional amongst its peers, the unfortunate reality is that the number of bicycle / motor vehicle crashes remains all too high.   The Tri-State Transportation Campaign took a simple and objective look at these crash numbers in northern New Jersey in a new report released this past Tuesday.  From the TSTC's blog:

TSTC’s new analysis, Northern New Jersey’s Most Dangerous Roads for Biking, highlights the 19,551 bicycle (bicycle and motor vehicle) crashes in 13 Northern New Jersey counties (Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union and Warren) that occurred from 2001 through 2011. Of these, 81 were confirmed fatal. The analysis supplements the 2011 TSTC report, Southern New Jersey’s Most Dangerous Roads for Biking.

The brilliance of this report is that it does nothing but simply map out the crash locations in each of the northern 13 New Jersey counties and lets the patterns speak for themselves.
   

Bergen County Bicycle Crashes 2001 - 2011.  TSTC.

From the TSTC's analysis it would seem that the crash rate correlates very closely with the population density of each county.

Also, as TSTC noted, a large percentage of these bicycle / motor vehicle crashes are on arterial roadways whether that might be in Essex or Hunterdon County and all others in between. This is something that most experienced cyclists know instinctively and try to avoid those roadways whenever possible, even in the most sparsely populated parts of the state.

This report is solid evidence that two things should be happening to make bicycle transportation in New Jersey much more safe:

1 – When at all possible, efforts must be made to make these arterial roadways safe for cycling whether that be shoulders, bike lanes, road-diets, cycletracks, etc. As for road diets, a good number four-lane roadways simply do not have the traffic volume to warrant the need for four lanes.  These could very easily be put on a road diet and bike lanes installed.  Elsewhere, other solutions will need to be explored.

2 – Wherever practicable, bicycle routes should be created that guide cyclists off of the arterial roadways and onto safer rural tertiary and urban residential roadways. New Jersey, unlike most other states, has great interconnected residential and rural tertiary roadway networks. Experienced cyclists know this and use this network to safely navigate all around the state. A well thought out and marked, MUTCD compliant bicycle route network could aid less experienced cyclists and those new or just traveling through New Jersey, to find safer routes off the major arterials, that still provide reasonably direct routes to their final destinations.

Again, thank you Tri-State for crunching and geo-coding the statistics.

PS - Could you use red push pins to highlight the fatalities next time?

Are more cyclists getting hit from behind than ever before?

The following story first appeared on the Bike Delaware Blog and appears here with the author's permission.


Who is telling the truth?

Is it this one, claiming that 7% of bicycle-related accidents are hit from behind, or this one, saying cars run into bicyclists from behind only 3.8% of the time, or this one telling us getting hit from behind is extremely unlikely?

Or, is the League of American Bicyclists latest fact finding initiative “Every Bicyclist Counts” going to prove them all wrong, with current statistics showing that 1 in 4 crashes involve drivers hitting bicyclists from behind?

Since there is little about this on-line or in LAB’s website as of yet (nothing searchable, anyway) below is page 3 of a letter that came in the mail today, appealing for funds:

 

 

We already know how woefully inadequate the police and media are at reporting these tragedies. Do they accurately reconstruct the accident or crime scene before defaulting to bicyclist at fault? Most often, a hate-filled verdict is already delivered against the bicyclist in the comments section of a newspaper, even if the evidence clearly shows otherwise.

In reviewing the materials and website, we applaud the League for taking on this enormous challenge, to bring these depressing statistics up to date.

Reminder:  May 16th, 2012 is the Ride of Silence. The mission of the world wide Ride of Silence is to honor bicyclists killed by motorists, promote sharing the road, and provide awareness of bicycling safety.

Important Bike Advocacy news from the Midwest

A couple interesting bits of bicycle advocacy news came out of two Midwestern States this week.

First in Kansas, their governor just signed into law and three-foot passing law that ALSO clarifies the legality of passing a bicyclist in marked no-passing zones.  Along with this, a different part of this new legislation now allows both bicyclist and motorcyclists to go through a "Dead Red" traffic signal when it is safe to do so.  Dead Reds are signals that do not change green because the sensors used to detect traffic are not calibrated properly to detect anything smaller than a car.  For comparison, New Jersey Title 39 DOES NOT address any of these three issues, leaving best on-road practices ambiguous at best and deadly at worst!  See the details of Kansas' new law from the Kansas Cyclists blog here.

In Illinois, Governor Pat Quinn ordered that the vehicle "crash" report form be modified to include a method of reporting "dooring" as a cause of a crash.  More details can be found in this Chicago Tribune article and even more in this article from WBEX 91.5 - Chicago Public Media.  It is unknown if the New Jersey vehicle crash report form (probably officially called a "motor vehicle accident form" here) has any standardized way to record this type of crash causation.

Pedestrians: It’s that time of year to be scared again

If you thought last weekend was scary walking around with all those ghouls, goblins and ghosts wandering the streets, think again! This coming Sunday morning marks the end of Daylight Savings Time and with it comes an annual significant spike in pedestrian crashes (likely bicyclist crashes too).

This unfortunate trend is due to the end of usable daylight between 5 and 6pm and the continuation of relatively warm weather that makes walking around rather comfortable well into the evening. It is also probable that the shock of coming out and finding it dark by 5pm leaves both pedestrians and drivers a little out of phase and unaccustomed to the earlier darkness.

This crash phenomenon is one of the reasons why Daylight Savings Times now lasts so late into the Fall. Going back to Standard Time the week after Halloween gives all the trick-or-treaters more daylight to roam the streets on Halloween and all those other days and evenings in October.

Take note and take precautions whether you’ll be on two feet or two wheels.

News Flash! Bad driving NOT bad biking the cause of most bike-car crashes

A report published this week by the U.K. Transport Research Laboratory finds that reckless or irresponsible cycling was the cause of less than 7% of car-bike crashes in the U.K. according the to coverage published in the Guardian. In 2% of crashes a rider disobeyed a stop sign or traffic light, wearing dark clothing at night was seen as a potential cause in about 2.5% of cases, and failure to use lights was mentioned 2% of the time.

Furthermore, with crashes involving adult cyclists U.K. police found the driver solely responsible in about 60%-75% of all cases, and riders solely at fault 17%-25% of the time.

According to Cycle Touring Club (a.k.a. CTC - the equivalent of the League of American Bicyclists in the U.K.) spokesman Chris Peck, "We believe this report strongly supports our view that the biggest problem for cyclists is bad driving. With that in mind we are greatly concerned that the (U.K.) government still seems fascinated with analysing and promoting cycle helmets, the value of which appears to be inconclusive. We believe that the government should now focus on tackling the causes of injury which appears to be mainly inconsiderate and dangerous driving. Reduced speed limits, stronger traffic law enforcement and cycle-friendly road design are the solutions."

For more on this see the complete coverage from the Guardian. Also check out the coverage from the U.K. online road cycling site road.cc. Finally the complete report can be downloaded for free (but requires registration) directly from the Transport Research Laboratory.

Extra Deadly / Dangerous Week for Peds & Bikes

This has been an exceptionally deadly week for pedestrians on New Jersey's roads. A total of 6 Deaths! Most disgusting is the first story about how thieves used a stolen car to rundown and kill an 87yo man for his hard earned money. The rest aren't any better (if they ever could).


Garfield man dies from head injuries in hit-and-run robbery
Jersey Journal • Friday, December 12, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/6nyvhh

Rahway woman, 92, struck Monday by SUV backing out of driveway dies
Home News Tribune • Wednesday, December 17, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/496nnu

Pedestrian dies in Morristown hit-and-run crash, driver charged
The Star-Ledger • Sunday, December 14, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/5o84kz

Woman hit by school bus in Lacey dies
Asbury Park Press • Wednesday, December 17, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/3ktwoj

North Plainfield police trying to ID accident victim
The Star-Ledger • Friday, December 12, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/5hht92

Galloway Township woman killed by car while walking along Moss Mill Road
The Press of Atlantic City • Friday, December 12, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/4z7c7f

Man is seriously injured in hit-and-run in Newark
The Star-Ledger • Sunday, December 14, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/6oj7nw

Disabled Man and His Dog Victims of Hit and Run
NBC News 10 Philadelphia • Monday, December 15, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/4su3bj

Egg Harbor Township Car hits bicyclist along Zion Road (1st article)
&
Pedestrians hit in crosswalk (2nd article)
The Press of Atlantic City • Monday, December 15, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/5xnbrt

Pedestrian hit in Chatham
Daily Record • Saturday, December 13, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/3qmzz8


And BTW. All stories have been gathered by the New Jersey Bicycle and Pedestrian Resource Center and are released via email listserve at least once a week in their New Jersey Bicycle and Pedestrian News Digest. It's a great resource for those who want to stay abreast of all that is bike/ped in New Jersey (along with our blog of course) and signing up is very easy.

To give you an idea the latest digest covers the past six days, had 42 articles / links, 31 of which are New Jersey only stories. Nearly every digest is as comprehensive.