The tragic death of a 62 year-old bicyclist last week on Memorial Drive has highlighted the lack of safety on our roadways for even experienced cyclists. We ourselves know first-hand how dangerous Metro Boston’s roads can be. We train for triathlons and are fully aware that we are taking our life into our own hands whenever we take off for a ride. Even in places where there are bike lanes on the roads, those bike lanes always just end precipitously — eventually forcing cyclists to navigate unsafe roads alongside high-speed automobile traffic.
And even when we are in a bike lane, we still have to deal with motorists who pull out halfway into the bike lane in order to see oncoming traffic, or who are distracted thanks to cell phones, or who are under the influence (either by alcohol or marijuana), or who are just bad drivers, not to mention the prospect of being “doored” by an inattentive driver exiting their parked car adjacent to the bike lane.
Although we applaud the trend toward encouraging bicycling both for exercise and in order to reduce our dependence on cars for environmental reasons (we used to commute to work on our bike on nice days and rode our bike routinely when we were in college in Cambridge), the reality is that bicycling never is going to be widely-adopted by commuters thanks to rain, snow, ice, and summer heat-and-humidity. It’s a good way to get exercise, but it has its limitations for our increasingly-aging populations and for those who are not mobile.
Biking has its place in communities with designated bike paths, such as those on Cape Cod and the islands, where we enjoyed many bike rides with our children when they — and we — were younger.
But the reality of the push to get people on bicycles, as laudable as it may be, is that it only will lead to more tragedies on our unsafe roads. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that 1,105 bicyclists were killed in motor-vehicle traffic crashes in 2022, a 13% increase from 976 in 2021. In addition, the Consumer Product Safety Commission reports there were 405,411 emergency department-treated injuries associated with bicycles in 2022.
In New York City, last year was the deadliest year for cyclists since 1999, according to that city’s Department of Transportation. Of the 30 cyclists who died in 2023 on NYC streets, 23 died riding e-bikes, which is more than double the previous record for e-bike fatalities. Serious injuries among cyclists in NYC went up last year as well, with a total of 395 cyclists who were severely injured, including 79 who were riding e-bikes, an increase of about 50 from the previous year.
The U.S. never is going to be Europe, where bicycling was a way of life before the automobile and the roadways in major cities were designed with bicycling in mind. We certainly would like to see safer roads for bicyclists in and around the Greater Boston area, especially if we can add dedicated bike paths. But until we have figured it out (and have the money to pay for it), we fear that more tragedies are inevitable.