Bike Accident Stats

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Permalink Reply by Melanie K on April 7, 2012 at 11:07am

Strangely enough, I read at the bottom what sources this firm used to get the statistics, and it seemed all of them were other personal injury lawyer blogs, except for one CBS reference and what looked to be a  San Francisco community blog. I think the chart is interesting, but somewhere along the line I would be more inclined to believe it if it actually cited some primary sources other than blogs. 

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Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on April 7, 2012 at 12:17pm

Great link, but I definitely would not trust those stats (or at least not take them at face value.)

I've looked at some of this data via other sources (also California specific) and found that the driver is deemed to be at fault about 50% of the time when the cyclist lives to tell their side of the story, but somehow the bicyclist is at fault pretty close to 100% of the time when they don't.

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Short 2.9 on April 8, 2012 at 12:08am

In Illinois, the data collection is so piss poor, the worst Chicago Police Report is still better. That's a fact. If an officer only wrote down your names and the time and day of an incident, IDOT would figure out how to report less.

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Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on April 8, 2012 at 7:53am

HAHAHA

To answer the question, I'll ask another question: Does the CPD or IDOT assign fault? I haven't seen it in all the crash data I've looked at. 

BTW, Charlie, I was talking to Abe E. from your office at this event and I showed him my CPD crash report, he immediately found an error. The police officer gave it a collision type of 10 (left turn) instead of 3 (pedalcyclist). I looked it up in the IDOT data and found they had corrected it. Abe estimated that 60% of the crash reports have at least one inaccuracy (excluding missing information). 

For more crash data, check out http://gridchicago.com/tag/crash-data

Charlie Short said:

In Illinois, the data collection is so piss poor, the worst Chicago Police Report is still better. That's a fact. If an officer only wrote down your names and the time and day of an incident, IDOT would figure out how to report less.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on April 10, 2012 at 9:50am

This just adds to the farce of accident reporting we've previous discussed off-list.  The saying "your mileage may vary" certainly applies here.  I wish it didn't.  Do you think we can get accurate crash reporting in our lifetime?

Steven Vance said:

HAHAHA

To answer the question, I'll ask another question: Does the CPD or IDOT assign fault? I haven't seen it in all the crash data I've looked at. 

BTW, Charlie, I was talking to Abe E. from your office at this event and I showed him my CPD crash report, he immediately found an error. The police officer gave it a collision type of 10 (left turn) instead of 3 (pedalcyclist). I looked it up in the IDOT data and found they had corrected it. Abe estimated that 60% of the crash reports have at least one inaccuracy (excluding missing information). 

For more crash data, check out http://gridchicago.com/tag/crash-data

Charlie Short said:

In Illinois, the data collection is so piss poor, the worst Chicago Police Report is still better. That's a fact. If an officer only wrote down your names and the time and day of an incident, IDOT would figure out how to report less.

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Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on April 10, 2012 at 2:46pm

Speaking of accurate reporting, New York City police were not using motor vehicle crash reports to track crashes between bicycles and automobiles. They are starting to do that this month. They will also be tracking crashes between bicycles and pedestrians. I assume they will be tracking crashes between bicycles and bicycles. I'd like to see those types of crashes collected as well as bicycle crashes with fixed objects (like a curb or pothole). 

Anne Alt said:

This just adds to the farce of accident reporting we've previous discussed off-list.  The saying "your mileage may vary" certainly applies here.  I wish it didn't.  Do you think we can get accurate crash reporting in our lifetime?

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