Now, I don’t usually pay too much attention to their sometimes questionable conclusions, but if they guys from Freakonomics say that motorists were the cause of 90 percent of bicycle vs motor vehicle accidents, who am I to argue?
Yeah, there’s that usual disconnect of facts and figures in their article – they mention that in the 80 years that the US government has been keeping track, some 52,000 bicyclists have been killed in traffic accidents. The 90% figure comes from a Canadian study that reviewed 2,752 police reports from Toronto. Who’s to say that Canadian drivers or cyclists are better or worse than Americans when it comes to avoiding accidents?
But it makes for good discussion.