I would be very curious to see this type of study done in an area - especially a city - where bicycling is considered fairly "normal," such as Madison, Victoria, Portland, San Francisco, or even Minneapolis or New York. (OK, New York might not be such a great idea, because both the motorists and the bicyclists can be a little crazy.)
Oh, and I just got back from a week in New Orleans, and was both amazed and encouraged to see the number of people biking for transportation. Of course, New Orleans is in some ways the perfect place to bike: flat as a pancake, crowded, and warm year round. One criticism of the British study was that helmet use is fairly rare among transportation cyclists, so motorists seem to perceive helmet use as indicative of both more experience and also sport vs. transportation cycling. Florida has a reputation as one of the worst states to cycle in the US, at least as far as safety, and with the exception of Key West, transportation cycling is not very high, in my observation. Would the results be different where drivers see bicyclists every day, or where they know people that bike? If more women, older people, children, professional people, and generally "normal" people biked in the community, would the behavior be different? We already know that the safety of the average individual bicyclist increases as the overall number of bicyclists increases, so does the behavior of motorists also change as they realize that any person on a bike could be either very experienced or very novice, and the type of bike or gender does not necessarily indicate "sport vs. transportation?" Robbie Webber
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