Bike: 16.6
The rain tried to scare me today. I said no. On my way to the MPO-CAC it spit on me. I said no. I won.
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The Boy 11 had an in class assignment today. Something about pretending to be an insurance investigator identifying fault in a car/bike collision. I pressed him for details.
The details of the collision include the old standby explanation from the auto driver saying “He came out of nowhere.” Just once I’d like to hear of a driver that says, “He came out over there.”
I encouraged The Boy to look at the details again to be sure he’s not siding with the cyclists simply because many of his favorite people are one. Then we drew pictures of intersections and talked about lane positioning. Then I drew pictures of a recent close encounter with a truck.
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The City has reported their occasional counts of bike trail usage. The report indicates a sharp increase in usage. In 2009, for the first time, weekday usage was more frequent than weekend usage. I rose up from my creamed chicken and shouted, “THAT’S BIKE COMMUTERS.”
Well, it might not be. A better breakdown of data is necessary. But it IS more butts on bikes on weekdays.
Rollerblade usage sees a sharp decline. :-)
Helmet usage percentage increases every year they report it:
1998: 25%
1999: 26%
2000: 31%
2005: 33%
2009: 40%
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Speaking of numbers: 2,861 people have run the red light at the camera controlled intersection in 2009, that’s 357 a month, 11 a day. In August, the highest month so far in 2009, 16 ran it each day.
Then there’s this nugget from The City’s website: “During a recent observational study of a high-traffic intersection in Sioux Falls at peak traffic hours, 17 drivers ran red lights in a 1-hour period. That is 1 driver every 4 minutes violating traffic laws and endangering occupants of other vehicles and pedestrians.”
3 comments:
Nice work getting the boy to work on more details about the accident. I've been in a car vs bike accident which was TOTALLY the driver's fault, and of course he said.. "He came out of nowhere." Grr.
The graph, which I presume comes from the city, tells a skewed story, although its point is the same. The x-axis is not even; early the data points are one year apart; in the middle they are two years apart, and in the end, they are four years apart. The slope is, therefore, exagerated, making its point more dramatic than it actually is.
The line and its slope is misleading, too. The line is there to make the data points (the snapshots) visible. It does not describe what happened between the data points.
Car drivers are so unobservant about anything actually. I'm surprised there aren't more bike/car accidents.
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