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Terrible way to get the data, but it does support other studies and my own experience that obeying the law strictly is more dangerous than idaho stops, or getting ahead of traffic at a red light. I'd rather be an intact "scofflaw" cyclist than a dead by the book biker.

Because the '08 study showed proportional risk for a much larger sample size, there are no conclusions that can be reasonably drawn from the fact 7 incidents of 8 (instead of 2 of 8) involved women. The only way to draw conclusions from such a ridiculously small sample is by examining each incident. You could probably find other factors with similar "patterns" in that sample. Maybe 7 of 8 victims had red or blue bikes! Then to try to gauge the relative risk of Idaho stops vs. Maryland stops based on this, when there's a good mix of riding styles even among women, is downright laughable.

Jack,

Yes, but it's even worse than that. If we look at the 2008 data, men sustain 81% of the injuries and 84% of the fatalities, even though they "only" make up 72% of the cyclists. This would tend to suggest that male behavior (light-running, etc.) is in fact *dangerous*.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

The 2007 study is just of people getting hit by lorries. So the law abiding behavior of women may make them susceptible to more intersection deaths, but it may protect them from other deaths. If that is true, the question is how can we get women to behave safer at intersections and men to behave safer at other locations? For the first part it doesn't have to be the Idaho stop - which law abiding women might feel uncomfortable with anyway. It could also be achieved with bike boxes.

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