From the magazine Bicycling, a very interesting editorial about the cycling's evolution, rights on the street and attitudes towards striking balance:
"What is it about cycling that engenders such animosity in New York? The usual angry rhetoric accuses New York’s cyclists of ignoring the laws. But here’s the thing: ALL New Yorkers, pedestrians, motorists, and cyclists alike, disregard the traffic laws.
So if New York cyclists disregard the traffic laws, how does that make them any different from any other New Yorker?
It doesn’t. Well, except for that traffic safety part. Last year, 269 people were killed in crashes in New York City; 151 of these fatalities were pedestrians, 18 were cyclists.
And who was responsible for these fatalities? Eighty-percent of all New York City crashes resulting in serious injury or death to a pedestrian involved a male automobile driver, with 79% of the most serious crashes involving private passenger cars.
Bicyclists are apparently so insignificant a factor in traffic fatalities that they did not even figure into the percentages."
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