When the Safety of Bicycling is Taken Seriously
Posted by Steve in News, Thoughts on February 11th, 2011 – 2 CommentsWatch how dangerous drivers are handled in The Netherlands:
In Oregon, most bike/car crashes are a non-event to the general public, and often we see blame put toward the cyclist for such incidents. Rarely are drivers cited, and bike crashes that don’t involve a trip to the hospital or total $1500+ in damages are not reported. When we don’t keep accurate traffic crash reports that take into account ALL modes of travel, we don’t provide our transportation engineers the right data to make our streets safer.
Want to see crash reporting and blame-the-victim policies change? Write your representatives.
I find it interesting that the headline reads “When the Safety of Bicycling is Taken Seriously”, yet almost none of the bicyclists in the related video are wearing helmets. Even in incidents where automobiles are not involved, at times accidents do happen where heads hit the pavement. Ignorance is bliss.
I disagree with your sentiment here. There are many cultural differences between The Netherlands and the United States, and helmet usage is one of them. In Portland, the goal is no longer 100% helmet usage, it’s 0% — but I’ll be the first to admit we have a long way to go before our streets are safer for people on bicycles.
We want to decrease the barriers to bicycling, and that includes making a street culture that doesn’t require special safety gear just to arrive alive. The real danger on our roads are the very type of driving we see portrayed in the video above. If we rose to the level of dismay and outrage in the USA, which the Dutch have in this case, we would stop pointing our finger at the cyclist who is not wearing a helmet to the inattentive driver and the poorly conceived designs of our roadways.