Fear and Loathing on a Bike in Gainesville
Fear and Loathing on a Bike in Gainesville, Florida
By James Thompson
Advocacy Director, Gainesville Cycling Club
If you Google any combination of “bicycle,” “safety,” “fatality,” “Alachua,” or “Gainesville” you won’t like the results. Read the Gainesville Sun (“Can Bike-Car Wrecks Be Eliminated?”) and their more recent “Gainesville Ranks High in Cycling and Pedestrian Deaths”. Now our local government is sanctioning a $5 million safe streets bike-ped overhaul because “Gainesville is the most dangerous” among towns its size in Florida to bike in.
Only by misinterpreting statistical data can we come to the conclusion that Gainesville is unsafe for bicycles. The problem is that the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) statistics (see below), count “crash” incidents per 100,000 citizens, not by ridership. This would give Gainesville a death rate of 2 per 100,000 and a serious injury rate of 17 per 100,000 each year. But as I prove below, taking into account the actual ridership rate makes Gainesville seem a lot safer. Taking into account our status as the seventh most bicycle riding city in the country (2010 census data), our incident rate is only .29 deaths and 2.4 serious injuries per 100,000.
We need to do an about-face in our approach to bike-ped in our community and encourage people to ride and walk, to engage in “active transit”. To do so we have to correctly represent statistics based on ridership, not population. Second, we need to build a critical mass of cyclists and pedestrians to truly make our community safer. Third, we need to quit focusing on perceived danger and fear, such as berating people about helmets and spreading anecdotal stories of carnage and injury.
Jeff Mapes’ Pedalling Revolutions shows how bike-ped has taken off across our country in some traditionally bike-unfriendly places (like Chicago and Miami). In each of those places experienced advocates have found it wise to temper safety campaigns with real bike advocacy, because that is what truly works.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
For my analysis I rely on the Federal Department of Transportation and the 2011 Florida Department of Transportation incident data. I’ll print out the full address in case your server will not translate my link.
The federal data can be found at:
http://www.doh.state.fl.us/DEMO/InjuryPrevention/BikeHelmet/NHTSA_BHSafetyFacts_2010.pdf.
The Florida data is at:
https://www.firesportal.com/Pages/Public/documents/2011CrashFacts/Official2011CrashFacts.pdf
I also use general statistical data from the 2010 U. S. census, which gives us ridership rates for Gainesville and other cities.
In Florida’s survey of cycling, pedestrian, motorcycle, and car accidents the primary measure of casualty is “incidents per 100,000 population.” This measure puts Alachua County (Gainesville Metro) as the most unsafe in towns its size.The 2011 bicycle data puts the death/injury rate per 100,000 people at 7.68 for bicycles in Alachua County. By comparison, the death/injury rate is 680.45 for motorcycles and mopeds and 7.28 for pedestrians. The worst County for bikes is Dixie (12.20), for motorcycles Columbia (1038.72), and for walkers Lafeyette (22.73). So, at a glance, Alachua looks even-keeled vis-a-vis the other 18 counties, even with the “bad” data I am about to correct.
Alachua, Duval, and St. Johns (at 247,000, 864,000, 191,000 population) are a valid comparison set across the lines on total injuries on bicycles, at 19, 25, and 13, respectively. Wait, you say, we have 19, and Duval has only 25, and yet they have almost three times the population? That makes it sound like Duval is safer than Alachua, which is really like saying that Jacksonville is safer than Gainesville.
But this is not true if you correct for actual ridership.
Yes, Gainesville Metro (Alachua County) may have 2 deaths, 17 serious injuries, and 19 total injuries per year, vs. the three-times-as-big Jacksonville Metro (Duval County) at 5, 20, and 25. But in Gainesville, 6.76% of the population (U. S. Census) uses bikes for transit to school, work, play, or church. That is 6 times the national average, 7-20 times the Florida average depending on size of the city. If we correct for ridership (using the multiple of 7 vs. the national and Florida average of less than 1% ridership), the numbers get whittled down to .29 deaths and 2.4 serious injuries per year.
Jacksonville, on the other hand, has one of the lowest ridership rates, typical of big Southern U. S. cities, at under 1%. Let’s round up to 1% to make it easy to understand, and to give Jacksonville an advantage. I say again, Jacksonville is at 1% ridership (generously), Gainesville Metro is at almost 7% ridership. Gainesville’s incidents, deaths, and injuries would have to be seven times that of Jacksonville for us even to compare safety in these two metro areas.
While no actual mileage data is available, we can assume a relationship between bicycle ridership and mileage. If anything, this favors other communities over Gainesville, since we have the most active transportation and recreation cycling club in the country according to the most recent statistics from the League of American Cyclists’ National Bike Challenge. We lead much larger cities and clubs across the nation in both transit and recreational mileage.
In fact, the U. S. Census and various insurance organizations cite Jacksonville as one of the most dangerous places to get hurt and die on a bicycle. Gainesville doesn't even register attention. But to read the data on a “per population” basis alone gives us the opposite impression.
The Theory of Critical Mass: Making More Cyclists Makes Cycling Safe
What the above statistics confirm at the local level is a global phenomenon called the theory of critical mass. When motorists, cyclists and pedestrians expect to interfere, compete, and co-exist with one another, they tend to practice defensive driving and experience lower fatalities and injuries. Gainesville’s relatively high saturation of cyclists means that cars expect them to be there and deal with them more responsibly. In Jacksonville and other low-saturation cities, the injury rates are higher because bicycles are not a normal part of the traffic landscape.
The extreme example of this principle is Holland, where bicycle-motorist interactions are radically high and ridership in major cities can hover around 50%. Enter the United States, where only 1% of the population uses a bicycle with any frequency. Holland registers no significant fatalities yearly among the largely helmet-free population. The U. S. registers at least 600 per year.
Another factor in achieving critical mass is bike-ped infrastructure, which Gainesville Metro residents regularly cite as their first or second most desired facilities improvement in City surveys, and which national studies put at between 40-60% of what residents most want to help them ride and walk more.
Our metro bike-ped infrastructure was awesome fifteen years ago, but relatively speaking we are slowly getting behind the curve. Simply adding bike lanes is no longer the answer. Ciclovias (temporarily shutting down sections of bike-ped high use areas to cars), alternative paths (segregated multi-use), and even the compromising 'sharrow' (signage and pavement markings that yell out “Hey, bikes are here!”) have found their way into the most unlikely places (L.A., Chicago, New York, Houston, Miami). Gainesville is headed in the right direction, but a safety-oriented campaign of fear will not help us reach a more critical mass of riders.
Make Getting on a Bike a Priority, Then Let’s Talk Safety.
In Pucher and Buehler’s City Cycling: Urban and Industrial Environments, the number one reason people won’t ride or won’t ride more is perceived danger, not actual statistical danger. Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in Gainesville.
It’s no surprise. After all, by focusing almost exclusively on helmets, and not on cycling as a skill or discipline, the first thing we teach kids about bikes is that they are dangerous. The Florida Bicycle Association has an in-school multi-part teaching curriculum that is slowly taking root in our bigger cities, but we don’t yet have a state-wide, state-funded curriculum like we do for drivers.
I proudly participate, as does my employer, in the federally funded family helmet giveaway at the Sweet Dream’s Touch-a-Truck event each year. This year, with the help of City staff, Gator Cycle, and the Gainesville Cycling Club, we gave away 700 helmets. Yet, I have to wonder, did we really encourage anyone to go ride?
Think about other dangerous behaviors we participate in, and how we introduce youth to them. When we teach our kids to swim, we don’t say, “Hey you might drown.” We say, “Don’t worry, you can do it.” When we watch football on television, we don’t say to our kids “Hey, a lot of those guys are at risk of early dementia, depression, and early death because of this game.” We say, “Go Gators!” We don’t yell at the toddler “You might fall!” We say “C’mon, you can walk!” Yet with cycling, the first thing we say to kids and adults is “You might get hurt.”
According to 2010 U. S. census data almost half of teen and young adult deaths are from unintentional injuries, 73% of those are car wrecks (or “automobile accidents” as the industry gingerly puts it). About 3% are from “land transport”, a mix of walking and cycling or busses or trains. To scare people off of their bikes because they might get hurt is like telling people not to go to the gym because they might pull a muscle.
Oddly, no one is trying to keep our kids out of cars. It would seem the easiest way to reduce youth fatalities, and adult fatalities, would be to make kids ride bikes instead of cars. Where is the clamor, the great momentum, the outspokenness on this issue?
The “helmet-righteous” are some of the worst examples of fear-mongering in our own cycling community. Every time I see a motorist roll down their window and yell at some well-meaning cyclist to “wear a helmet” I cringe. Although it is not a law for an adult to wear a helmet, the media regularly includes “the cyclist was not wearing a helmet” at the end of articles, even where the driver of a car was at fault. More fear-mongering, and self-loathing.
The real facts are that between 1995 and 2010, bicycle deaths across the U. S. have fallen by 18%, and injuries have fallen 37%. During about that same period, helmet use has been stagnant or increased slightly. The reduction in injuries is far more likely from more people riding their bikes, which they largely do without helmets on.
The helmet industry and its puppet research agencies cite statistics which show fewer people with helmets dying from bike wrecks, but they don’t take into account the fact that, well, few people wear helmets at all.
According to Florida’s DOT, in 2011 only 8.5% of “no injury” riders in reported cycling incidents were wearing their helmets, 78.6% were not. Among the helmeted/unhelmeted numbers for “possible injury” was 9.5% and 83.8%. For “capacitating” injuries the numbers were 12.5% and 80.3%. Fatality rates were 11.67% and 78.3%, respectively. The bad numbers for helmet wearers is probably due to the fact that helmeted cyclists ride more than non-helmeted cyclists and are more prone to incidents.
At any rate, one thing is clear. No helmet has ever prevented anyone from crashing. Our first defense against that is good cycling.
What helmets can do, when wielded by the self-righteous and the fear-mongering, is perpetuate nasty myths about cycling that most advocates are trying to overcome. We set an example to kids and adults first by riding our bikes and by getting others to ride, not by pointing our fingers at the 90% of riders who don't wear helmets. Once we get people on bicycles, then it is time to share with them the benefits of wearing helmets, which can sometimes prevent catastrophic injuries.
Do Not Fear
We need to redirect a good portion of the proposed $5 million safety upgrade package proposed by the City of Gainesville to actually getting people to walk and ride bikes, not protecting them from unfounded dangers. I find it difficult to speak out against a multi-million dollar “safety” package, certainly not the portions of it that benefit our vibrant senior, disabled and pedestrian communities. But such a large funding package is built in part around misplaced anxieties and poor research into what truly benefits our citizens and makes for smart streets. That is not the intention of such forward thinking projects as Smart Growth America, some of whose plans the City has already adopted directly and implicitly.
We will increase safety, not by spreading fear, but by increasing the number of walkers and riders on “smart streets”. Let’s use a good portion of that money on education about the health, environmental, psychological, and economic benefits of bike-ped, not just on expensive safety features.
Cycling in Gainesville is safe. To say otherwise is to keep people off of their bikes, in their cars, and on a collision course with bad health, a weak fuel-based economy, and a suffering environment.
James can be reached at jtexconsult@gmail.com, or join him on a group ride with the Gainesville Cycling Club (where he always wears his helmet). The club is at www.gccfla.org. Membership is only $15/year family and $20/year family.