Today Fri Sat
It is forcast to be Fog at 11:00 PM EDT on May 24, 2012
Fog
29°/14°		 It is forcast to be Chance of a Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 25, 2012
Chance of a Thunderstorm
20°/16°		 It is forcast to be Partly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 26, 2012
Partly Cloudy
21°/14°

18 Comments

news

What We Learned From the City’s 2010 Pedestrian and Cyclist Collision Data

By Steve Kupferman

20110524bikecollision.jpg
Photo by Tom Cochrane, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.


On May 13, the City’s Transportation Services division released citywide pedestrian and cyclist auto collision numbers from 2010. The data, collected from police reports, covers January to September of that year. (Get the numbers in full at the very bottom of the Transportation Services website.)
Here are some takeaways:


Pedestrians had the worst of it. The number of cyclists reported as being injured by cars during the nine-month study period was 904, while the number of pedestrians reported as injured during that same period was 1,379. We’re guessing this is because more Torontonians own pairs of legs than own bicycles.
Drivers were frequently, but not always, at fault. Most reported collisions during the study period happened in instances where the driver was allegedly inattentive or disobeying one or more rules of the road. But a significant percentage of accidents on record occurred when the person behind the wheel was “driving properly”—311 out of a total 1,035, on the cycling side of things. The only recorded car-on-bike fatality during the study period happened in a situation where the cyclist was allegedly at fault.
The most common type of reported car-on-bike collision was the sideswipe. Sideswipes were recorded 164 times during the study period. But don’t fret, door-prize aficionados: colliding with an opening car door was the second most frequent collision type, with 144 recorded occurrences. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that doorings are really so infrequent. These numbers are based on police data and wouldn’t reflect any accidents that weren’t reported.)
Toronto had the most per-capita recorded car-on-bike collisions of any major Canadian city. On average, over the five years leading up to and including 2010, Toronto’s cyclist collisions registered at 42 for every 100,000 residents. The only other Canadian city that came close was Montreal, with 38. The same was true of pedestrian collisions. Toronto had 78 reported for every 100,000 residents. Montreal had 71.
The most dangerous day of the week for cyclists? Tuesday. During the study period, Tuesday was the day of week with the most recorded car-on-bike collisions. Damn you, Tuesday.

CORRECTION: May 25, 1:19 AM This post originally misstated the period of time for which per-capita collisions were calculated by the City. They were based on five-year averages, not only numbers from 2010.

Comments

  • rmcw

    Given that I was once right-hooked, knocked off my bike, and had the driver take off before I could get a plate number, and the Toronto Police wouldn't actually take a report, I'm going to hazard a guess that these numbers are quite low.

  • bigdaddyhame

    Just as there might be more driver-at-fault accidents that went unreported as they were resolved without police involvement, there could just as easily be more cyclist-at-fault accidents that went unreported.  This report shoulda be seen as a representative sample more than an exact accounting.

  • HotDang

    Cyclists should know that the most dangerous behaviour they can engage in is sidewalk surfing.

    You're way more likely to hit a pedestrian, way more likely to get hit by a turning car, and even more likely to look like an inconsiderate cowardly asshole. Don't do it.

  • http://twitter.com/haraldkoch Harald Koch

    The numbers all seemed pretty normal to me, except that I was surprised to see that left-turning drivers caused more incidents than right-turning drivers, for both cyclists and pedestrians…

  • http://twitter.com/biketo Bike T.O.

    Sidewalk cycling is not the “most dangerous” behaviour. The stats referred to in this article show that only 11 of the 1145 collisions involved cyclists on sidewalks; that's less than 1% of the collisions. In the suburbs likely more than 10% of cyclists take the sidewalk on some part of their journey.

    One could perhaps make a case for sidewalk cycling as being “inconsiderate” or “cowardly” (though I'd like to see you tell that to a granny riding her bike on the sidewalk on Don Mills, Leslie, Pharmacy or any other suburban major road), but it's a whole different ballgame to make false claims about it being the “most dangerous”.

  • http://www.facebook.com/george.bell George Bell

    Any chance of getting this on a map…what areas of Toronto are the most dangerous for bikers…

  • http://paul.kishimoto.name Paul Kishimoto

    UNREPORTED CRI^H^H^HBIKE ABUSE IS THROUGH THE ROOF. BUILD PRISONS.

  • http://twitter.com/biketo Bike T.O.

    It's interesting that bike collisions are about 50% the amount of pedestrian collisions but that from Statscan commuting by cycling is about 25% the amount of commuting by foot. There is probably even a higher proportion of foot traffic to bike traffic when accounting for non-commuting traffic.

    This suggests that, per person, one is twice as likely to be in a collision as a cyclist as a pedestrian. Cycling is still not all that dangerous, but it would be nice if we could all recognize that we could do a lot more work to make cycling a safer and more comfortable activity for young and old.

  • John Duncan

    I'm not particularly surprised by that. Right-turning drivers often move a lot slower than left-turning drivers (with resulting better chance of stopping and lower chance of injury-that-actually-gets-reported).
    Right-turning drivers are mainly paying attention to the pedestrian crosswalk and don't feel all that rushed as they can turn right on a red, whereas left-turning drivers are paying much more attention to oncoming traffic and trying to spot a gap, while also keeping an eye on the traffic signal. They feel rushed and want to take any opportunity that they get. Tracking the location of pedestrians (especially in suburban areas where drivers don't even expect to see pedestrians) is a very low priority on their attention graph.

  • Dan_Parish

    There is a map at the bottom-right of Page 2 of the leaflet referenced in the post, here: http://www.toronto.ca/transpor…

  • John Duncan

    Collisions that don't result in injury (or that the police refuse to write-up) are dramatically under-reported. As cyclists are often moving faster than pedestrians, and collision-severity is directly linked to speed, and a bike adds the element of property damage, I suspect that the number of collisions involving pedestrians are more under-reported than those affecting cyclists.

    However, you definitely could claim that cyclists are about twice as likely to be in a collision causing a certain level of injury.

  • Dan_Parish

    Toronto also has fewer people commuting by bike (as a percentage) then any other city it's compared to on that list according to the 2006 census. If you assume cities where more people commute by bike also have more people riding recreationally, that means that the number of cyclist collisions/100,000 in Toronto is actually even worse relative to those other cities than the numbers already show.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jasonkucherawy Jason Kucherawy

    I was driving on Yonge St recently and a jaywalking pedestrian walked right into the side of my car. Then she (drunk) yelled at me for being in her way. I was stopped in traffic. She was staggering. Does this sort of thing register anywhere in stats? Should I have reported this to the police as contact between a pedestrian and a car? If I had hit her as hard as she hit my car, it would have to have been reported I'm sure.

  • mboadway

    It is a fact that biking on sidewalks is inconsiderate when there are pedestrians around.  It can also be dangerous, even leading to death as we found out two years ago.

    That said, the worst offenders for sidewalk surfing in the suburbs that I regularly see are not anyone's grannies, but TPS 32 Division on training rides near their station on Ellerslie in North York.

  • http://twitter.com/BikeLaneDiary Martin Reis

    What I find fascinating is that only cycling fatalities involving cars count for anything in this report. For example, during 2010 four cyclists died on the streets of Toronto. One was killed in a collision with a motor vehicle; Nigel Gough. Another was run over by a streetcar, Vince Sering. Grim. A third died at a train crossing involving a GO train and then there was the cyclist who mysteriously fell off his bike at Davenport and Caledonia. My point is simply this: it's a good idea to read these reports with caution. They don't tell the full story. But they certainly are very sobering. The info I quoted above is based on the Toronto Cyclist Fatalities Map  which can be found here: http://is.gd/3RV3AH (Advocacy For Respect For Cyclists/ARC)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bryan-Cook/507835870 Bryan Cook

    Interesting map, nice find but the GO train story adds to the “cycling on sidewalks is dangerous” arguement because if she had been on the road she would have stoped at the barrier. But she was on the sidewalk and ignored the railway warnings.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bryan-Cook/507835870 Bryan Cook

    Interesting map, nice find but the GO train story adds to the “cycling on sidewalks is dangerous” arguement because if she had been on the road she would have stoped at the barrier. But she was on the sidewalk and ignored the railway warnings.

  • tyrannosaurus_rek

    If you'd hit her at the same speed she stumbled into you, she could have sustains a broken leg and concussion, or she very well could be dead. So don't compare the two scenarios.