1,000 New Yorkers treated in hospital every year after being hit by bikes says study

Hi Paul, yest it's in the story. According to the NY Dept of Transportation nearly 10,000 pedestrians required hospital treatment after being in collision with cars and 600 were killed in the preceding 3 year period.

Did they provide any context, by quoting the stats for pedestrians injured in collisions with motor vehicles?

They would certainly have been much higher. Over the decade to 2007 in the UK, 0.4% of pedestrian road deaths were due to cycles, the other 99.6% motor vehicles. 0.7% of pedestrian injuries were in collisions with cyclists.

The City of London Police's figures for three years to August 2010 show 330 pedestrian injuries and 3 killed (all 3 by motor vehicles and 2 in the same incident where a vehicle rolled backwards down Pudding Lane). COLP's stats are broken down by who is considered to be at fault, rather than who they were hit by, and of 330 injuries, 15 were attributed to cyclists. Nearly two thirds, 219, were attributed to the pedestrians themselves, through drink/drugs, or simple inattention including phoning/texting.

In the same period, 319 cyclists were involved in collisions, of which 20 were attributed to peddestrians - in other words, peds were more of a hazard to cyclists than vice versa.

I find NYC residents to be a particularly rude, aggressive bunch (the only worse place I have ever been being Nice, in France) so I am prepared to believe that cycle culture there might be more hazardous to pedestrians, but even so.

@brylonscamel

I must admit - I've suffered 2 'serious' injuries in 4 years of commuting

The first was my own stupid fault when out just a week after getting a lovely new hybrid - funny, it didn't corner quite like my old mtb - nobody else involved, just NASTY road-rash

The second was a head injury and nasty concussion when a pedestrian (AKA 'lemming') stepped out at a crossing against a red light and I had to swerve sharply to avoid - the sod never even stopped and I ended up in hospital

So when do we get our study of cycling injuries caused by pedestrians to start lobbying for laws against them?

In 35 years of cycling, the worst injury I sustained was in collision with a jaywalking pedestrian; breaking both tibia & fibula. Worse than anything sustained whilst riding mountain bikes or racing at the track!

This accident was not isolated and I’ve had frequent encounters with pedestrians - sprinting from between buses, crossing on ‘the red man’ and stumbling about with headphones whilst texting. Fellow cyclists can also be a hazard, often with poor observational skills, appalling bike handling and no road manners.
Just because injuries tend to be more minor than those involving vehicles and rarely fatal does not make them irrelevant. I suspect they are frequent but go unreported.

I wonder what a straw-poll of Road.cc contributors would reveal!?

It's hard to argue with their 5 rules anyway.

And it's hard as cyclists to start "blaming the victim". But my hunch is that a fair old proportion of people who are hit by cyclists simply don't pay sufficient attention before stepping into the road. They're aware enough that they won't get hit by a truck, but not enough to pick up that a bike is there...

I dunno, I can easily believe it. I know that anything you see on the web is only a one-eyed snapshot and not every cyclist in NY is a courier type, but there do seem to be a lot of people riding like idiots there. Just as in London I'm sure there are a good number of pedestrians getting taken out by bikes every year.

Not that I have proof or anything - but when I hear a study commissioned by *that* partisan a group comes out clearly making the point they'd hoped ... I wanna check the study methodology