On 9/9/2018 2:31 AM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 09 Sep 2018 00:02:17 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 16:24:45 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

I take that to indicate that a large number of bicyclists deaths are
the homeless or nearly homeless, drunk or nearly so, and riding
probably at night with no lights.

Or the driver of the motor vehicle was drunk or nearly so.

As for homeless/nearly homeless and/or riding at night without lights,
you are reading into the small amount of information Jute provided.
Perhaps there is more detail in the NHTSA link he provided, which I have
not yet looked at.

A number of surveys of bicycle accidents indicate that as many as
half, or more, involve the cyclist disobeying one traffic regulation,
or another and reports from autopsies of cyclists killed in accidents
showed that (in New York) as many as 21% had been drinking (6% of auto
drivers who were involved in a auto - bicycle accident had been
drinking).

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/...v22-story.html
https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2...d-bike-deaths/

It might be noted that these reports are not of the "Well, it is
estimated..." or "It seems as though...", but are statistics, for
example:

"in 2011, officers determined fault in 701 crashes between a bicyclist
and a motorist in which a cyclist was hurt or killed, according to the
reports, submitted to California's Statewide Integrated Traffic
Records System. Cyclists were found to be the party most at fault in
390 of those crashes, or 56 percent of the time, the records show."

It seems odd, to say the least, that these facts, and facts they are,
are never mentioned by bicycle safety advocates.

As Pogo said, "we have met the enemy... and he is us."
(at least 56% of the time)

Year after year, it's been consistently shown that a quarter of dead
bicyclists have been drinking.

Back in 2007 or 2008, Dr. David Crocker of Austin Texas tried a new
tactic in his long-running campaign to get an all-ages mandatory helmet
law enacted. He tracked 200 bicyclists admitted to the local hospital
trauma center. He wanted to prove the relationship between helmet use
and traumatic brain injury (TBI). He also tracked alcohol use.

To his disappointment, he found that alcohol use was strongly correlated
with TBI, but that the presence or absence of a helmet was not
correlated with TBI in a statistically significantly way.

Those who brag about carrying growlers of beer on their bikes should
probably pay attention.


--
- Frank Krygowski