From today's post
Bicycle crashes rose too. While the pedestrian crashes were split almost equally by gender and were distributed across the city, bicyclists involved in accidents were disproportionately male — roughly 77 percent, a figure that was consistent across all three years of the study. And of the 642 crashes involving bikes in 2012, only one happened east of the Anacostia.
The claim that "Most crashes happen through no fault of the driver" is unfortunately stated. There is no ticket issued in most cases, but in almost every case someone* is at fault; and since most crashes involve two drivers there is likely some driver at fault in almost every crash.
The most fatal were crashes involving pedestrians. In the large subset of crashes examined in this table, cars hit people 805 times, causing injuries to 650 victims. Six people died.
*I've heard of crashes that accured because one driver had a heart attack or because a large tree branch fell onto the hood of a car. I'd say no one is at fault in those cases. But they're rare.
Gee. Did a search and couldn't find one mention of the word "seat belt".
Posted by: 7 | July 24, 2014 at 09:30 AM
My inner skeptic asks how much of the increased bike accidents are due to increased reporting of accidents compared. CaBi is going to be a very good monitor of accidents, since you are renting their bikes.
Posted by: SJE | July 24, 2014 at 02:18 PM
Since DC is a contributory negligence jurisdiction, as a matter of law in order for one party to be at fault the other party has to be completely without blame. So it's completely believable that in the majority of crashes nobody is at fault.
I agree that the wording in the article is problematic though. The study didn't show that nobody is at fault in most crashes, but that nobody is cited.
Posted by: contrarian | July 25, 2014 at 12:06 AM