Carless in Chicago » safety

The public health case for less traffic

Jason — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:46:12 +0000

As most readers of the book and this blog know, I work in public health, and while the intersection of public health and going carless isn’t a big theme in the book, it’s a big interest of mine. On his blog (which I don’t visit often enough), Ken Archer rightly chides the CDC for only emphasizing traffic safety as a way to reduce road fatalities, and not encouraging reductions in traffic itself. This omission seems particularly odd given that embracing active transportation lies at the heart of many of CDC’s obesity prevention initiatives.

In case you didn’t know, auto accidents are the number 1 cause of death among 1-34 year olds. Here in Illinois, about three people die on the roads every day, with approximately eleven traffic-related injuries occurring every hour. I’m all in favor of seat belts and airbags, and all the traffic calming we can muster. But choosing to go places on foot, by bike, or on mass transit is often the safest decision you can make.

(Via Yglesias.)

Bicycle Density = Bicycle Safety

Jason — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:21:54 +0000

After posting Matt Yglesias’s observations on mass transit safety yesterday, I had a vague recollection he wrote something along similar lines about bicycles a couple weeks ago. It turns out, I was remembering him linking to an interesting post on Streetsblog, highlighting data from NYC that as the number of bicycle riders goes up in the city, the average number of bicycle accidents goes down.

NYC Bicycle Ridership & Casualties

It turns out that the feeling of greater safety you probably experience when you see another cyclist on the road isn’t an illusion. It’s part of the Safety in Numbers Effect, identified by public health consultant Peter Jacobsen. The reasons for the effect are a bit unclear, but many safety experts speculate that the explanation is pretty simple: The more bikes on the road, the more aware motorists become of the cyclists around them.

So when you pick your bike, you’re not just helping yourself, you’re helping the other cyclists you encounter on the streets too.

Mass Transit Safety

Jason — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:46:20 +0000

I’ve certainly overheard a couple of conversations on the El this week about the terrible events on the DC Metro earlier this week, when one train on their Red Line collided with another in Maryland. Of course, transit safety is critical, and we should all hold our transit agencies to a high standard. But Matt Yglesias, who mostly blogs about politics, but also produces some of the best transit-policy blogging I’ve read, reminds us as to just why the DC Metro crash is such a big story:

One story you’re not going to see leading tomorrow’s newspaper is “97 dead in fatal car accidents.” And yet in 2007, this country saw 37,284 people die in car wrecks. That averages out to 97 per day—much more than the seven people whose death in yesterday’s Metro crash has acquired so much coverage today. Obviously in part that’s because driving is much more popular than transit. Still, according to the Census Bureau 87.7 percent of people get to work either by driving alone or in car pools, while 4.7 percent take transit. That’s about 18 times more driving than transit usage. By contrast, 14 times more people die in car wrecks on an average day than died on the rare day that anyone died in a train crash. On a typical day, of course, the United States has zero train-related fatalities.

Something to think about the next time someone tells you that driving makes them feel safe and in control.