bikes no safer than pedestrians
Update 07 Mar 21 9am: Corrected Snel’s occupation.
Alan Snel is a reporter for the Tampa Tribune does marketing for a half dozen bike shops. He also writes a blog about bicycling, Bike Stories. He recently wrote a fantastic editorial piece about the hazards of biking in and around Tampa Bay. Check out this stat:
Bicyclists in Florida die at a higher rate than bicyclists in any other state in the country. In fact, Florida earns this dubious distinction on an annual basis. You’d think that transportation engineers would make it a priority to build and maintain safe roads.
We’ve made note of the horrible pedestrian death rates here plenty of times, and biking is just as dangerous. The city has always had a car-first mentality, pedestrians be damned, bicyclists be damned. All over everywhere. All the time. We’re getting tired of it. And we’re not alone.
Alan has recorded some of the reaction he received since the article.
Something’s got to give.
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March 20th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
I’ve had this recurring nightmare that the husband will be wiped out on his daily bicycle commute, short as it is from Port Tampa to MacDill. The newspaper articles will note how ironic it was that he survived years in SF units and multiple tours to foreign hell holes only to be wiped out by a Tampa driver. Ironic, hell. Some days it seems quite likely.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
alan hasnt been at the trib for almost a year now. but hes right: tampa needs to get its shit together for bikers.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:58 am
It’s not safe roads. Most other cities have bike paths. Not in the wilderness, or out in the county, but actually in the city.
March 21st, 2007 at 9:17 am
my bad, dreaming….
From Alan Snel’s blog:
After writing newspaper stories… for 25 years, I left the full-time news business in July 2006…
Snel now does marketing for a half dozen bike shops.
March 21st, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I forsook my car for a long time and tooled around Brandon on my mountain bike. This was back in 98…it was way less crowded then, hyuck.
Let’s see, I had a truck drive in front of me with a guy tossing m80’s out the window; a car pull up next to me while I was on a sidewalk and let go a big gulp of soda into my face (I crashed into a water-filled culvert about 15 feet deep); had a car full of tough guys swerve at me and when I lipped them off, slowed down until they were even with me and flashed a gun; has a car in the Publix parking lot think it was funny to cut close to me causing me to slip on wet pavement and crash, of course limping the mile and a half to Brandon Hospital to have my sprained neck and fractured ribs looked at….those oare just the ones I can remember. Oh yeah, there was they guy who drove straight for me and the only evasive action was to run into a tree–THAT felt good.
I gave up biking in that and this town. People are just generally frakking idiots.