Alligator Online: The Long and Winding Road - Florida ranks highest in nation for bicycle deaths - 28 November, 2006

UF graduate student Carmen Valero-Aracama, 32, has a hard time getting her 1-year-old son, Luca, to lay down for the night. She talks to him and watches TV with him, but she says sometimes he’s too confused to sleep. “So many people come in and out of his life,” she said. “He gets attached to people, and then they disappear.”

People like the friends and neighbors who have been in and out of the house bringing Valero-Aracama food. People like the family members who have come from South Carolina, New Mexico and Spain to make sure Luca and his mother are doing OK. People like his father, graduate student McNair Bostick, who died in August when he was hit by a car while riding his bike.

Luca’s story is all too common in a state where car and bicycle collisions continue to cause financial damages, injuries and deaths.

“It doesn’t take much to have an accident,” said Jon Lizaso, a research associate for the agronomy department who worked in the same lab as Bostick.

“In the case of McNair, it was just a second. Just a small distraction. It was enough to kill a person and change the history of his family and the lives of many persons.”

A bad state for bicyclists

In 2005, Florida had 124 bicyclist fatalities - the most in the nation and nearly three times the national average, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report. California, which has more than twice as many people, had 115.

According to the UF Police Department’s Web site, Alachua County is ranked one of the worst counties in the state for bicycle-related injuries and fatalities.

The numbers add up. Students who ride their bicycles to campus and the 5 percent of Gainesville residents who bike to work are riding in one of the country’s most dangerous areas for cycling.

And riding on campus is not much safer.

UPD statistics show there have been 59 bicycle accidents reported on campus since 2002, with 12 occurring this year.

Most accidents in the past five years occurred on some of the campus’ busiest streets: Museum Road had the most bike accidents with 17, while Gale Lemerand Drive has had about 15.

And when it comes to fault, these accidents follow a jolting trend. This year, only two of the 12 accidents were the fault of the cyclist. Over the past five years, cars have been to blame in about three-quarters of all accidents.

Safety education

UF sculpture junior Julian Castro rides his bike - a blue cruiser he dubbed “Wally” - around campus daily, though he’s had several close calls with motorists.

He was stopped and ticketed last year for not using lights while cycling on campus at night and elected to attend UPD’s Bicycle Traffic Safety School, a class the department has put on since 1994 for cyclists who receive a citation for breaking traffic laws.

He said the class, which lasted about an hour and a half, taught several bike laws but not how to anticipate dangers and avoid collisions.

He said it also emphasized riding on the sidewalk, a practice that is prohibited for bikes in some areas.

“They tried to sway you away from riding on the road,” he said. “It was very frustrating. We were being told all of this, but motorists aren’t told that bikes have a place on the road.”

He isn’t the only one who feels that way. Some believe current traffic education programs are inadequate because they only target half of the danger: the cyclists.

“The whole emphasis is on bikers,” Lizaso said. “What about people who are just driving through the bike lane?”

Lt. Robert Wagner, UPD’s statistics officer, said most bicycle accidents on campus occur when motorists fail to see cyclists.

However, UPD’s class is only offered for ticketed cyclists. Ticketed motorists take a separate driving school that includes few instructions on how to share the road with cyclists.

Dekova Batey, bicycle/pedestrian program coordinator for the city’s Public Works Department, said the city’s bike training, pamphlets and programs are targeted for both cyclists and motorists.

“The messages are targeted to different audiences - cyclists and automobiles,” he said. “There are programs for all motorists in the roadway.”

Committees like the Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Board allow citizens to make recommendations to commissioners about possible improvements for bike safety, he said.

However, some think bicycle and pedestrian education programs only work on problems with pedestrians or cyclists - not motorists.

Jim Jones, Bostick’s research adviser and a professor in agronomy department, said, “There’s clearly a need to be doing more.”

Enforcement

According to the Florida Uniform Traffic Control Law, bicycles and motor vehicles are nearly identical.

Bikes are legally defined as vehicles and must obey every law pertaining to motor vehicles, as well as several bicycle-specific ones.

Few laws mandate special rules between bicycles and motor vehicles, however.

One of these laws, enforced statewide since Oct. 1, requires motor vehicles to give bicycles at least a 3-foot clearance on the road. Drivers that get too close will have to pay court costs and a $60 fine and will earn three points on their driver’s licenses.

However, police officers must actually see the violation to be able to enforce the law.

Wagner said in the case of a crash between a bicycle and a car violating the law, the car driver will be ticketed for the violation. In the case of cyclist injury or death, no special classes or extra violations are added on, he said.

Mighk Wilson, board president for the Florida Bicycle Association, said motorist penalties for careless or reckless driving rarely compensate for cyclist injury or death.

Motorists involved in cyclist fatalities are sometimes prosecuted for careless or reckless driving. If convicted of reckless driving, a criminal infraction, the motorist most likely will serve a jail sentence. Careless driving, a civil infraction, doesn’t take the severity of the crash into consideration and typically involves a fine and license suspension.

“In the vast majority of cases, the cyclist is doing everything right and is the type of cyclist we promote and want people to emulate,” Wilson said. “They suffer injury, and the driver receives no punishment worthy of the impact.”

Wagner said UPD enforcement of bike laws has increased in recent years, although some believe enforcement on campus is unbalanced towards cyclists.

Jones said police officers should enforce traffic laws more consistently for both cyclists and motorists.

“I’ve seen them ticketing bicycles,” he said, “but haven’t seem them ticket cars for being rude or turning in front of bicycles.”

Wilson said police officers hold cyclists to a higher standard than motorists, possibly because officers are not trained to understand cycling laws.

“We don’t hold motorists accountable for their behavior,” he said. “We don’t say, ‘Enough is enough.’”

The path ahead

Jones, along with several faculty members and students, has organized five bicycle safety meetings since Bostick’s death.

During the meetings, the group discussed what could be done to increase cycling awareness around the campus and the city.

“I’m finding it’s tough to sit down and try and do this,” he said. “There’s a need for these kinds of tragedies to be taken to heart.”

Jones suggested incoming freshmen be required by the university to take a bike safety course, much like the mandatory course for freshmen on alcohol abuse. With this, new students would be given information on the state’s bike laws and safety advice.

Lizaso, who also attended the meetings, has several other ideas for measures the city could take to ensure safer streets.

He said bike lanes should be separated from roads by a small curb. Currently, most bike lanes are only separated from motor vehicles lanes by a line of paint.

He added that such a measure would help prevent accidents like Bostick’s from happening again.

Though the League of American Bicyclists has given Gainesville several Bicycle Friendly Community awards starting in 2003 based on the city’s roadway projects and commuting statistics, Lizaso said Gainesville is not a bike-friendly city.

Castro disagreed. He said it is one of the better towns he’s been in for bike safety, though the city could do more. He said he believes education for everybody is more important than more lanes or curbs.

“It’s not enough to be given a bike lane,” he said. “There needs to be motorist education. Bike safety shouldn’t just be for cyclists.”

Quick Facts

* In 2005, Florida had 124 bicyclist fatalities - the most in the nation and nearly three times the national average, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report. California, which has more than twice as many people, had 115.

* Statistics acquired from UPD show there have been 59 bicycle accidents reported on campus since 2002, with 12 occurring this year.

* This year, only two of the 12 accidents were the fault of the cyclists. Over the past five years, cars have been at fault in about three-quarters of all accidents.

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