Is Perception Reality - 2023 Annual Safety Report
Each year I chat with other bikers while riding thousands of miles, and I work with safety planners throughout Michigan on issues and upcoming potential projects. It gives me a unique perspective to hear what bikers are thinking, experience what bikers are experiencing, and work with people that can and do implement changes to make biking safer.
This year I heard an overwhelming frustration in bikers who felt that the system was not looking out for their safety, and that there was nothing they could do about it. There were some horrific fatal bike accidents in 2023 around the nation that received national attention. The biking community is tight knit, and many bikers knew someone, or were close to someone who knew a rider involved in one of these accidents.
With that backdrop to this year’s annual safety report, I hope to 1) Show where the “system” does have people who care and are working toward more safety; 2) Show some of the challenges within the system to implement logical bike safety measures and; 3) Show safety planners how bikers, from their perspective, plan their ride and evaluate the safety of cycling.
In this report I am emphasizing the lack of uniform standards concerning bike safety and road construction. I am not criticizing the people who strive for bike safety that are restrained while working within a lacking system. I am giving a shout out to encourage the people who can create and define bike standards to get it done. It’s needed. More than 40,000 bikers are being hit by cars and almost 1,000 are dying each year in the United States. Fatalities are rising year after year.
Bike accidents are incredibly low in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, averaging 29 per year in the last decade. It very well could be the safest place in the country to ride a bike. The suggestions within my report for the U.P. are applicable throughout the nation.
My goal is that the barriers, perceived and real, will continue to be lowered so that someday uniform safety standards that save lives are implemented on projects throughout our entire country.
Thank you for reading.
James Studinger