Archive for June 8th, 2009

On heels of some recent findings in NYC that the cycle fatality rate has declined, I came across this report from CTC with a few other interesting stats:

1. London has seen a 91% increase in cycling since 2000 and a 33% fall in cycle casualties since 1994-98. This means that cycling in the city is 2.9 times safer than it was previously.

2. The Netherlands has witnessed a 45% increase in cycling from 1980-2005 and a 58% decrease in cyclist fatalities.

3. Copenhagen, 1995-2006: 44% increase in cycling, 60% decrease in KSIs, with cycle to work modal share rising from 31% to 36%.5.

An empty truck takes twice as long to stop as a full one. From 55 mph, a cargo-laden, 80,000-pound truck requires more than the length of a football field to stop on dry pavement. But the stopping distance doubles for an empty truck under the same conditions. “The braking systems on big rigs require both friction and traction,” explains Durant. “With an empty trailer, the braking capacity diminishes, and you lose traction. The rig could begin to bounce, or it might jackknife.

The whole piece, which contains a few other survival tips for driving among big rigs, is here.

There has been much written about the recent drops in traffic fatalities being a result of the bad economy, or the efforts of traffic safety campaigns (which, however laudatory, sometimes doesn’t explain the full picture; Massachusetts has the lowest seat-belt-wearing rate in the country and also, paradoxically, has the nation’s lowest per-mile fatality rate).

A new brief paper by Michael Sivak, “Mechanisms involved in the recent large reductions in US road fatalities,” published in the latest issue of Injury Prevention, makes the case, as shown in the above graph, that road fatalities have dropped more than miles driven, suggesting it’s more than a mere “exposure” issue. “The reduction in road fatalities,” he argues, “is the result of a change not only in the amount of driving, but also in the type of driving.”

What’s changed? While miles traveled have dropped across the board, rural miles driven — which are more dangerous than urban miles driven — have had a particularly steep drop (probably because rural incomes are lower and thus more affected by the economy/higher fuel prices). Sivak also suggests, though this is more logical supposition than empirical fact, that discretionary driving (e.g., the trips we don’t have to make) has been the first to go in the national mileage profile. Discretionary driving is riskier than things like commuting to work, Sivak notes, as it tends to be marked by “higher speeds, greater involvement of alcohol, and more night-time driving.”

In other words, while the recent drops in fatalities are to be welcomed, it does not necessarily follow that they would hold once the money (and fuel) started flowing again.

Some random things on a too-busy Monday morning:

I’m briefly quoted in this piece about the ins-and-outs of parallel parking.

I also show up briefly and (seemingly) unidentified in this Good Morning America piece about Iain Couzin and ant traffic.

More on the theoretical physics of traffic. “A traffic jam starts with two vehicles and keeps on growing,” says Morris Flynn of the University of Alberta.

Why you shouldn’t help direct traffic at a crash site or similar situation.

New Mexico five-year-old sentenced for not wearing seat belt.

Roadguy ponders: Are shopping-mall stop signs optional?

Black-market parking: “Rogue valets” exposed in Los Angeles

As this blog has noted before, the news media seems to go out of its way to avoid ascribing personal responsibility in any sort of traffic crash (I am now calling this segment ‘The Accidental Journalist’). I just came across this weird doozy of a sentence in this article, about a “problem” intersection in Georgia:

On Deans Bridge Road at Gordon Highway, rear-end accidents are occurring in the right-turn lanes.

Drivers are stopping at the yield sign and causing accidents for those not paying attention behind them. Mr. Cassell said officials are looking at correcting the problem with new lane striping.

Let me get this straight. Drivers are stopping at the yield sign, which they are required to do when there is approaching traffic, and thus “causing accidents” to the poor sods (or “causing accidents for,” in this article’s odd wording) behind them who are not, uh, paying attention. I propose this wording: Inattentive drivers are crashing into the unsuspecting behinds of law-abiding folk.

I’m also not sure how you fix rear-end crashes with lane striping, FWIW.