Cyclists are portrayed in debates about bike lanes as younger, athletic people. Berkeley's Commission on Aging recommended against supporting the city's current bike lane project (#Hopkins), apparently thinking bike lanes were not for older people.
And yet, over the past eleven years, the median age of the six cyclists and pedestrians severely injured or killed on Hopkins is 69. Only one of those people was under 50. The oldest was 78.
The stereotypes are wrong.
At the risk of buying in to stereotypes:
The composition of that graph arguably may serve as an illustration of the relative degrees of common sense and healthy risk-aversion of females vs. males, given the shockingly lousy job we're doing with prioritizing safety of cyclists and pedestrians on streets.
And/or some other things, such as women get stuck with the car full of kids being shuttled hither and thither, etc., as we well know.
Stark disparity, anyway.
That is an -excellently- reported article. A wealth of information, exposes a lot of questions to be investigated more fully, has a few possible hints toward workarounds in an environment of lethal disparities.
And most of all, "It's not simple, simple answers won't do," if we're not able to separate these traffic flows.
One wonders about alternate separation of roadways akin to one-way schemes, in cities with amenable grids.
Thanks so much.
@Doug_Bostrom @marcprecipice
Within a few miles of my house in Glasgow, the last just a few weeks ago, 2 young female cyclists have been killed by HGV's.
Will anything happen as a result? Will the city spring into action & install safe cycle facilities? Will it restrict urban traffic? I doubt it.
I am gutted by these tragedies ☹️.
Yes.
As I tell people who'd prefer to refuse to wear lifevests, "the misery is only starting when the dying is done."
We do not use our fine imaginations as much as we ought. These poor young women leave expanding ripples of grief. If we could all work harder to picture that, perhaps we'd figure out how not to drop such heavy rocks into our lives.
Marc Hedlund
Bob Downie
Doug Bostrom
