Re: BCGP and Bike Lanes

[Dennis Winters]

Mr. Wisdom (no pun intended!) holds no office in the Bicycle Coalition of
Greater Philadelphia nor does he in any way speak for the Coalition.

Dennis R. Winters, Secretary & Board Member
BCGP
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Clean Air Council
135 S. 19th Street, Suite 300
Philadelphia, PA  19103-4219
215.567.4004, x233      215.567.5791 fax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cleanair.org
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"I do not call one greater or one smaller, that which fills its period and
place is equal to any."


Walt Whitman
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Rosenfeld" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: BCGP and Bike Lanes


>
> >
> > On Tuesday, July 23, 2002, at 09:33 AM, Peter Rosenfeld wrote:
> >
> > > Where I draw the lines are facilities that increase or reinforce
> > > excessively dangerous activities. Due to the high potential of
> > > dooring in city areas, I feel that door zone bike lanes fit into
> > > this category. In such a case, I would call the facility an
"attractive
> > > nuisance" in the legal sense. I also feel there are ethical issues
> > > in knowingly designing a facility that gives a false sense of
security.
> >
> > Let's put it into numbers. How many dooring deaths, linked to use of
> > bike lanes, do you consider excessive? I think the benefits of bike
lanes
> > would be worth 10 deaths per state per year. So 500 deaths per year;
less
> > than one in a million. Can you make the case that there are anywhere
near
> > that many dooring deaths linked to bike lanes?
> >
> > Robert
> >
>
>
> Why would you think bike lanes are worth 500 excess deaths a year?
> Do you really mean this? Are you ready to go public with this statement?
Do you
> have an official capacity with BCGP or any other planning organization?
>
> Dooring deaths are hard to estimate due to the rarity of all bike deaths.
The
> example you gave of 500 excess deaths a year would be increasing the
number of
> deaths from around 800 to 1300, a 63% increase. If you think the political
aims
> of lanes are worth such a large number of deaths, I have nothing to say to
you
> and recommend that all planning organizations disassociate themselves from
you.
>
> Serious accidents are much more common. Recent studies indicate that in
urban
> areas with parallel parking, dooring injuries account for a significant
fraction
> of all car/bike collisions. In Santa Barbara such bike lanes seem to be
> associated with an increase of doorings from 7.4% of all car/bike
collisions to
> 16%. Other studies have indicated that dooring deaths are just as serious
as
> other car/bike collisions. So we are talking about a very significant
number of
> serious injuries.
>
> However, because nationally most bicyclists are not exposed to situations
that
> can result in dooring, they are not a common accident, accounting for
about 0.8%
> of all car/bike accidents.
>
> So for death numbers: Nationally, assuming doorings cause deaths in
proportion
> to their injury rate ( which seems reasonable given the injury severity)
you
> would expect dooring to result in less than 1 percent of deaths, on the
order of
> 8 deaths. Very low down in the noise.  In places like Santa Barbara,
Boston, and
> Philadelphia, maybe 7 to 16% of deaths. Since a place like Philadelphia
has,
> what, maybe 6 or 7  bike deaths a year, this would translate into one
extra
> death every 1 to 2 years if I worked the numbers correctly.
>
> -Peter Rosenfeld
>
> ----
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