FABB Blog

 

Fairfax Co bicycle crashes - January-June 2011

Bike crash at North Shore Dr

Fairfax Co police recently released statistics on bike crashes this year to date. In the first half of this year there were 46 reported crashes, compared to 32 in the same period last year. The increase could be because there are more cyclists. Unfortunately statistics on bike use are minimal. From our experience riding in the county we believe there are many more people on bikes this year. There were a total of 86 bike crashes reported in 2010

In only 13 of the 46 crashes in 2011 was the driver determined to be at fault (28%). Cyclists were said to be at fault in nearly 60% of the crashes. In only 4 of the 27 crashes in which the cyclist was at fault were charges filed.

From some reason the report released by police contained this section: "Fairfax County had an estimated 2,176 reportable crashes in the first quarter of 2011.Crashes involving bicycles in this same period represent less than 1% of this total." We're not sure why "represents less than 1% of this total" is highlighted. For one thing, many bike/car crashes go under reported because they involve less than $1,000 in damage or there were no serious injuries. I would guess that a much higher percentage of auto crashes are reported than bike crashes.

The page on which the crashes were reported also contains the poorly produced safety video we critiqued earlier.

See the TBD article Fairfax County reports more bike crashes in 2011 than this time last year

Labels: bike crash, fairfax county police

posted by Bruce Wright at 10:14 PM permalink