Bikes Vs. Cars - Who's To Blame?

According to an informal study by a Bay Area TV news station, it's bikes:

No matter how much bicyclists try to blame drivers for problems on the road, here's the headline -- in collisions involving a bike and a car, the cyclist is most often at fault.

Well that's stating the conclusions with the adequate amount of scientific caution. The results are based on the CHP's collision database:

All that data, where the collision happened, why it happened, time of day, all the factors that were part of that collision go into a big database.

Out of 11,456 collisions, bike riders were at fault almost 7,000 times. The CHP database also shows the cyclists' top mistakes that led to accidents:

Riding on the wrong side of the road

Refusing to yield to an automobile's right of way

Unsafe speed

Ignoring traffic signals and signs

There's another surprising fact in the CHP data on those who cause car-bike collisions. Cyclists are nearly three times more likely to be under the influence of alcohol, compared to drivers.

Despite the story's definitive lead in there is room to question the facts:

There's another surprising fact in the CHP data on those who cause car-bike collisions. Cyclists are nearly three times more likely to be under the influence of alcohol, compared to drivers.

I think there may be an issue with the police quite frankly not fully understanding bicyclists' rights and responsibilities, sometimes assuming who's in the right. I think that's something we need to work on.

But the police claim they have no bias... without explaining how they drew that conclusion. I looked at the data and hoped to be able to determine the rate of blame in situations where the cyclist died and where they didn't (suspecting that when the cyclist died they were much more likely to be found at fault) but the stats didn't include that data. I remain skepticle.

Comments

[Jan]

Data like this would seem very suspect, in any city. I've talked to half a dozen riders at least who have stated at some time that they were in a collision with a car, but were not injured enough to require a hospital visit, and no serious damage to car or bicycle was done, and a police report was not filed. To me this would seem to indicate that a large number of collisions go unreported - and hence the data might be biased to those where only a police report was filed. Of those collision reports I have heard, all the riders said the drivers were at fault. Those types of collisions really must be counted before anyone can really say who is more to blame.