“Partly because of jerks like me. But it’s mostly your own illogical mind,” writes Jim Saska in Salon.
If you are a city driver, you have undoubtedly been scared half to death by some maniac cutting across traffic like Frogger on a fixie. Such emotionally charged events stand out in our associative memory far more than mundane events, like a cyclist riding peacefully alongside your vehicle. The affect heuristic is compounded by the idea of negativity dominance—bad events stand out more than good ones. This causes you to overestimate both the amount and the severity of upsetting events, like almost getting some dirty hipster’s blood on your windshield.
Also interesting: Cyclists are getting less aggressive.
A recent study by researchers at Rutgers and Virginia Tech supports that hypothesis. Data from nine major North American cities showed that, despite the total number of bike trips tripling between 1977 and 2009, fatalities per 10 million bike trips fell by 65 percent. While a number of factors contribute to lower accident rates, including increased helmet usage and more bike lanes, less aggressive bicyclists probably helped, too.
The book “Thinking Fast and Slow”, where some of these broader deas come from, is one that has affected me strongly since I read it several months ago. Highly recommended.
Here are some road pricing thoughts; all downtown Vancouver vehicle infrastructure should be tolled for all vehicles, small urban vehicles (bicycles, car sharing vehicles and hybrid cars) should be annually charged $5.00 and electronic tracking technology installed for free, others should be charged $30.00 to $50.00 and for one year electronic tracking technology should be installed for free as well; after the year it should be at cost. There are approximately 300,000 cars in Vancouver so if the charge was $40 that would raise $12,000,000 The broad road pricing policy should be formally opened by the city for public discussion, in a way that it has never been before. It would be unique if bikers and bike lane advocates (as I am) were to propose such an approach to tolling.
It’s highly incidental to the primary point of this post, but I’m once again disappointed to see suggested “a number of factors contribute to lower accident rates, including increased helmet usage”. Presumably, they mean “lower injury rates”, which would make some sense. The fact that this (either a misphrasing or an overestimation of the magical powers of helmets) appears in text that that is being attributed to “a study” makes me sceptical of whatever other points such studies make.