Julie White: Cycling Safety Is More Than Just Numbers

Jason’s note: I’ve asked a number of people to contribute essays to RocBike.com. Today’s essay is from one of Rochester’s busiest Action Moms. She’s an educator, activist, knitter of yarns, spinner of tales, and blogger of blogs. Ladies and gentleman … Julie White.

Several recent posts in the bike-o-sphere (#1, #2) argue that bicycling is an extremely safe form of transportation, backed by facts such as recent data indicating that bike-car accidents account for only 2% of traffic accidents.

I can‘t argue with the data. But safety is first and foremost an emotional issue. Intense emotions like fear don’t respond to facts. Just think back to the days after 9/11 when fear drove our political decisions. We ignored these facts (among others): Osama bin Laden not connected to Iraq. No evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Why? Because “we can’t let the terrorists take away our way of life … homeland security, etc., etc.” Stay with me … that’s the end of my anti-war rant. But the point is … fear is a powerful emotion and it takes an equally powerful counterforce to deal with it.

Back to the relatively more solvable issue of bike safety. Everything in life brings an element of risk, and to deny that is counter-productive. In fact, bring up the issue of safety with any seasoned cyclist, and they’ll tell you any number of near misses they’ve had, while simultaneously touting the safety of cycling. (For an example of this, go to Ken Kifer’s page here. His accounts of the many crashes he’s narrowly missed are enough to make a novice question if cycling is really worth it.)

Yet we … those of us reading RocBike.com … continue cycling. Why? Because of the experience of cycling itself. Experience is far more persuasive than raw data any day.
When I was twelve years old, my family moved to a new town, and I had my first experience of cycling, exploring the town on my bike, helmet- and care-free. Since then, experience has led me to be more careful and always helmeted.

First, I knew a guy in college who missed an entire year while recuperating from a cycling accident. He was without brain trauma only because he had been wearing a helmet. Then, another college friend was killed while bicycling, hit by an eighteen-wheeler in her small Ohio hometown, who didn’t see her as he turned right.

Finally, my ten-year-old daughter was clipped by a hit-and-run driver, a half-block from home. (The police found the sixteen-year old driver a few blocks away, unlicensed and driving an uninsured and unregistered car.) I was biking with her at the time, and told her that it was safe to turn left. I didn’t see the driver, probably due to a combination of a jog in the road and the speed at which she was traveling. It was literally as though she came out of nowhere. My daughter was thrown off the bike. She was wearing a helmet, and after a few hours in the emergency room and a couple of days of R and R, she was fine.

I, on the other hand, was not. While I know intellectually that life, including cycling, is inherently full of dangers, the risk of cycling just didn‘t seem worth it after that. I used to get panicky just approaching the intersection of the accident.

Obviously, I did finally get back out on my bike, propelled solely by the memory of how much fun it was. I started by going out on trails, then eventually on roads on slow traffic days, then finally to fairly normal urban biking habits. I now commute to work and on errands whenever possible and ride recreationally on a regular basis.

In the end, you could give me statistics out the wazoo about bike safety, but the only thing that really made a difference was getting some positive cycling experiences to overshadow the one surreal and terrifying memory of my daughter on the pavement.

So, if you want to convince someone, say — just for the sake of argument — a mother, that cycling is safe, don’t tell her that only 662 people die in cycling accidents each year. She knows that those 662 people each had mothers, and the fact that they accounted for only 2% of traffic accidents is of absolutely no consolation.

No, just make it easy for mom to get out on her bike. Start before she’s a mom by providing lots of opportunities for bicycling and bike safety education in public schools. Make wearing a helmet when biking as natural as wearing a winter coat when it’s cold out. After she’s grown up, make sure there’s a bike path nearby, so she can take her bike somewhere she feels safe and remember the girlhood freedom her bike brought her. Provide a public education campaign for motor vehicle drivers about co-existing safely with bike traffic, so she knows there’s not only education but also social support for bicycling. Put bike lanes in, so that when she takes to the road, she feels as safe as possible.

Whatever you do, don’t minimize her fears. She’ll only think you couldn’t possibly understand and dig her heels in even more.

Of course, not all mothers would have developed the same level of fear as me. And certainly the fear of losing a beloved child or family member is by no means the sole terrain of mothers.

I can only speak to what I know. I know that the health and safety of my children are gut-wrenchingly important to me. And I know that cycling benefits the environment and my health. All I needed was a reminder that cycling is fun, that it makes me feel connected to the natural world and to my neighborhood, and that it’s a great way to begin and end my day. Those are things we can all share in.

If you want to be an advocate for bicycling, my recommendation is this — leave the data for the pundits. Get on your bike, and take someone cycling with you. The rest of it will follow.

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