Bicycle Austin forum

MichaelBluejay

Webmaster

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,455

Website

Austin just as dangerous as NYC and L.A. for pedestrians and cyclists

Some illuminating and sobering statistics:

* NYC traffic fatalities:  50% pedestrians, 6% bicyclists

* Austin:  40% peds, 1.9% bicyclists (2011)
              50% peds (2012, 1st 10 weeks),  3.6% bicyclists (2012)

* L.A. traffic fatalities:  ~33% pedestrians, 3% bicyclists

* U.S. national average:  11.4%, 1.7%

So Austin is on par with the two largest cities in America for the danger to peds and cyclists, and is far worse than the national average.  But there's that sign on the bridge declaring Austin to be a "bike-friendly city".  Maybe when we stop killing such a disproportionate number of walkers and cyclists will we actually earn it.

Also of note:  The rate of hit-and-runs in Austin is FIFTY PERCENT above the national average!

Our work is clearly not done.

Sources:

(1) LA & NYC:  http://www.latimes.com/business/money/l … k=lat-pick
(2) Austin peds 2012:  http://www.statesman.com/news/news/spec … i-1/nRmHp/
(3) Austin all other:  I called APD's public information office, which told me that 1 out of 54 fatalities in 2011 was a cyclist, vs. 2 out of 56 in 2012.

dougmc

Administrator

Registered: 2008-06-01

Posts: 623

Re: Austin just as dangerous as NYC and L.A. for pedestrians and cyclists

* Austin:  40% peds, 1.9% bicyclists (2011)
              50% peds (2012, 1st 10 weeks),  3.6% bicyclists (2012)
...
So Austin is on par with the two largest cities in America for the danger to peds and cyclists, and is far worse than the national average.

Of course, the statistics you've chosen seem to be based on the percentages of all traffic fatalities that are motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.

So if we had a city with ten million people in it, and *no* cars at all, and let's say two cyclists and one pedestrian die this year -- that gives us 67% and 33%.  According to your metric, this would be the most dangerous city for cyclists ever!

And of course the city with no cyclists at all would be the safest.  As would the big city with only *one* cyclist -- who just got killed.  100% of the cyclists in this town are now dead, and this particular metric would say this city is safer than Austin, NYC, etc.  Does that make sense?

If we quadrupled the number of motorists killed in Austin but left the number of cyclists and pedestrians killed the same, that would greatly improve your metric.  Would these additional deaths make Austin more bike friendly or safer for cyclists?

I don't think this is the right metric to use if you want to give a "honest" view of what's going on.  More useful metrics would be injuries/deaths per hour/mile/trip.

But there's that sign on the bridge declaring Austin to be a "bike-friendly city".

Note that this sign says 2007-2009 if I recall correctly.  Either we're not so friendly any more, or they just haven't bothered to update the sign.

Also of note:  The rate of hit-and-runs in Austin is FIFTY PERCENT above the national average!

It certainly seems bad.  Do you have a citation for this?

Our work is clearly not done.

This is the sort of work that's *never* done.

(3) Austin all other:  I called APD's public information office, which told me that 1 out of 54 fatalities in 2011 was a cyclist, vs. 2 out of 56 in 2012.

Unfortunately, these numbers are really too small to come to any statistically relevant conclusions with.

That said, the national average ratio of cyclists killed to motorists killed is about 1:37 -- for 2010 (the most recent year in FARS), it's 23,303 motorists and 614 cyclists killed, giving a ratio of 1:38.  If we figure out the ratio for 2011 and 2012 in Austin (and ignore the fact that three cyclists deaths is too small to really use statistics properly) -- that gives us a ratio of 1:37.

Considering that Austin has roughly twice the number of trips made by bicycle as the national average (1.0% vs. 0.55% was the estimate I seem to recall) -- it would seem that cycling in Austin is *safer* than average, not worse, at least if using these ratios.  (But better would be to compare fatalities (and injuries, if the data is available) to total population and how many hours/miles/trips people spend using their mode of transportation of choice.)

MichaelBluejay

Webmaster

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,455

Website

Re: Austin just as dangerous as NYC and L.A. for pedestrians and cyclists

Point taken about doing an apples-to-apples comparison properly.  But I'm still skeptical that comparing Austin by hour or by mile to L.A. and NYC would yield much different conclusions.

As for sources, clearly cited in my original post.

ret3

Member

From: Gracywoods, Austin, Texas

Registered: 2010-11-24

Posts: 6

Website

Re: Austin just as dangerous as NYC and L.A. for pedestrians and cyclists

The national average stats are also rather questionable. The LA Times only cites an unnamed NHTSA study. Give the scope, the 1.7% of fatalities which are bicycle riders could well include all of the US, including areas with very little opportunity for car/bicycle collisions due to exceedingly few bicycles, which would reduce the national average and make even rather bike-friendly cities look far more dangerous.

dougmc

Administrator

Registered: 2008-06-01

Posts: 623

Re: Austin just as dangerous as NYC and L.A. for pedestrians and cyclists

Point taken about doing an apples-to-apples comparison properly.  But I'm still skeptical that comparing Austin by hour or by mile to L.A. and NYC would yield much different conclusions.

Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't.  One wouldn't know until they checked.  And really, are NYC and LA somehow exceptionally dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists?  What's special about these cities?

But certainly, this metric doesn't really say anything about how "safe" cycling is here compared to other places except that maybe there's more cyclists here than average here (though I don't know about how popular LA and NYC are for cyclists), and so using it to say "Austin just as dangerous as NYC and L.A. for pedestrians and cyclists" is misleading at best.  (And really, study after study after study has said that having more cyclists in an area makes it safer for cyclists, not more dangerous.)

The only real problem with doing comparisons per hour, mile or trip is that such things are somewhat difficult to measure, especially for cyclists.  For motorists, you can make an educated guess by looking at the fuel sold and vehicles registered (to figure average fuel efficiency) and go from there.  For cyclists, all you can really do is give people surveys, or measure the cycling traffic in specific areas and then attempt to extrapolate to the entire city.  But that said, at least least the idea attempts to measure the right things, and the hours/miles/trips figures are probably fairly accurate for motorists and in the ballpark for cyclists.

As for sources, clearly cited in my original post.

Yeah, I missed it the first time.  I wonder what's special about Austin to have such a higher percentage of hit and run cases?  I can make some guesses, but ultimately they'd be just that -- guesses.

dougmc

Administrator

Registered: 2008-06-01

Posts: 623

Re: Austin just as dangerous as NYC and L.A. for pedestrians and cyclists

The national average stats are also rather questionable. The LA Times only cites an unnamed NHTSA study. Give the scope, the 1.7% of fatalities which are bicycle riders could well include all of the US, including areas with very little opportunity for car/bicycle collisions due to exceedingly few bicycles, which would reduce the national average and make even rather bike-friendly cities look far more dangerous.

Well, if all they're doing is comparing traffic fatalities in a specific area based on their mode of transportation (and that seems to be all they've done), they don't really need a study for that -- they just need to learn how to extract data from FARS.  (And since FARS is run by NHTSA, it may be that this unnamed study was mostly them doing just that.)

FARS is good [read: complicated, hard to learn, but it does have lots of data if you can extract it] at what it's designed to do -- give information on fatalities -- but the reality is that determining if something is "safe" requires more data than simply how many people have died doing it in a certain area during a certain period of time.

For example, only a handful of people die playing Russian Roulette in the US  each year, but hundreds die while bicycling -- so does that mean that Russian Roulette is safer than bicycling?