Bay Area streets are dangerous for cyclists. According to findings in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, Market Street is the deadliest, particularly at its intersection with Octavia. A lot of major arterials out in the burbs fill in a lot of the rest of the list, but Valencia Street made it too, just barely: #25. Be careful out there.
I saw this chart yesterday. This morning after a good night’s rest, I was thinking about it, and I’ve concluded that it’s misleading. I don’t know that “most dangerous” is the right way to characterize those roads. They have the most bike accidents, but it seems likely that that’s because they have the most bike traffic. These are major bike routes. Of course a road with 100 times as many bikes is going to have more accidents involving bikes. Of course the bike fatalities are going to happen where there are bikes all the time. What I’d like to see is some sort of ratio of accidents to bicycle volume. It’s certainly safer to ride on Polk (#8) than Van Ness, which doesn’t make the list because it’s so much more dangerous that almost every cyclist takes Polk instead.
[...] Camp on V-Street Valencia Street is a dangerous place, more or less. We’ve all heard the debate: are there so many bike accidents on Valencia and Market because they are such dangerous (bad) bike [...]
[...] Valencia Street Squeaks onto Chronicle List of 25 Deadliest Roads for Cyclists [...]