Bike Fun
From:
Robin Garwood
Date:
May 01 22:46 UTC
Short link
I agree with Jason and Matty's comments on the Idaho laws. They effectively
capture the rules that one should follow to safely and conscientiously operate
a bicycle on the street. We should absolutely adopt them here. Unfortunately,
I believe this would be a case where any potential Minneapolis ordinance would
be preempted by State law. It sounds like there is some interest in this issue
on the State level, however, so stay tuned.
I also second Jason's appreciation of the City's inestimable Don Pflaum. He's
a pleasure to work with.
Now on to the KSTP "news" story. Among the most frustrating aspects of this
shoddy piece of reporting (and there were many) is that they didn't get the
basic facts right.
The most important factual inaccuracy in the piece is the assertion credited to
“police in both St. Paul and Minneapolis” that “about half the time,” accidents
between bicyclists and drivers are caused by bicyclists failure to yield. This
is just not the case.
I've looked through the 2006 bike/car crash data collected by the City of
Minneapolis, and found that 120 of the 200 crashes (or 60%) for which fault can
be determined were caused by drivers, while only 80 (or 40%) were caused by
cyclists. This is far from “about half.” Rather, it is a clear indication
that driver error and violation of law is a significantly greater threat to
bicyclist safety than bicyclist error and violation of law.
I've written more on this topic on the Second Ward blog:
http://secondward.blogspot.com.
Robin Garwood
Policy Aide to Council Member Cam Gordon
Cooper
.