Bicycle crash casualties in a highly motorized city
Section snippets
Background
Cycling is being increasingly encouraged as a sustainable, inexpensive, environmentally friendly, transport mode, that is also good for health. However, cyclists are exposed to higher risk of injury and fatality in road crashes. In view of worldwide initiatives to encourage cycling, there should be higher awareness about the risk of cycling, especially in highly motorized societies where cycling is currently a minor transport mode and there are no special provisions (such as lane separation)
Database
Since any road crash involving injury to any person, whether the driver, passenger or pedestrian, or any animal, must be reported to the police in Hong Kong, the Traffic Accident Database System (TRADS) is an appropriate database for bicycle crash analysis. Nonetheless, research worldwide has increasingly suggested that under-reporting of injury-inflicting crashes to the police is not uncommon (Amoros et al., 2006, Austin, 1992, Bulls and Roberts, 1973, Rosman, 2001). Moreover, research using
Scientific Spatial Analysis of Bicycle Crashes in Hong Kong
Did bicycle crashes constitute a significant road safety problem in Hong Kong? From 1993 to 2007, bicycle crashes have become an increasingly acute road safety problem in Hong Kong. Its share in the total traffic crashes has increased significantly and continuously from about 2.9% in 1993 to 12.74% in 2004. The trend was slightly reversed after 2004 but it stayed at a high level of over 10% throughout the study period. In 2007, it stayed at 10.26%. Though this percentage was seemingly not very
Discussion
Bicycle safety is often neglected as a road safety issue in societies where bicycle is a minor transport mode. The true extent and nature of the problem are often concealed by the general impression that bicycle crashes are minor ones involving inexperienced cyclists on cycle tracks only. Through examining the traffic crash records in Hong Kong from 2005 to 2007, we show that the seriousness of the bicycle safety problem can only be truly appreciated by the small modal share of bicycles in the
Acknowledgements
This research work was funded by the Committee on Research, and Conference Grants (CRCG) of the University of Hong Kong (10207893).
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