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Comment by ptaipale | Hacker News Reader

Where do bike deaths happen in New York? On streets when riding straight, or in intersections?

(On both, of course, but what is the distribution?)

I don't have any numbers, but my impression is that it's mostly turns, although there's also a big problem with people getting "doored" (which would easily be solved by putting bike lanes between parking lanes and sidewalks, instead of between parking lanes and automobile lanes).

I was surprised to learn that left turns account for "more than twice as many serious injuries and fatalities as right turns." https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/about/leftturnstudy.shtml

> putting bike lanes between parking lanes and sidewalks

This is how all of the new NYC bike lanes work!

On major avenues in Manhattan, but not necessarily on side streets[0] or in other boroughs[1].

[0] - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7740039,-73.9587169,3a,75y,1...

[1] - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6757116,-73.9532197,3a,75y,2...

I signal turns with my arm when biking, especially left turns. Otherwise I would be slowing and moving unpredictably, which doesn't seem safe. Unfortunately this isn't common behavior in NYC - even cars often fail to signal their turns, let alone cyclists.

> I was surprised to learn that left turns account for "more than twice as many serious injuries and fatalities as right turns."

This may be because bike lanes are placed on the left side of major one-way avenues in Manhattan: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8005797,-73.9618377,3a,75y,1...

I'm not sure what the distribution is, but definitely both. I've been hit in an intersection, funny enough, by a police officer, who just turned right, crossing into the bike lane, t-boning me. A few months ago, I saw a truck completely just run over a bicyclist, killing her on 6th ave, and not even stop [1].

Often times, protected bike lanes are still very unsafe. 6th and 1st Avenues are a prime example, where trucks park to the right of the bike lane, and unload in the bike lane, forcing cyclists to suddenly merge into aggressive traffic.

[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/06/24/breaking-cyclist-kill...

Here's a list of this year's deaths with links to details: https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/these-14-cyclists-d...

Interesting, thanks.

It doesn't say it directly, but it appears that heavy vehicles turning (right) at an intersection are a relatively common setup for fatalities. Unfortunately separate bike lanes don't help there.

For turning specifically, NYC has been installing a variation of http://www.protectedintersection.com/ along with protected lanes recently. For example, 12th and 13th St has "turn traffic calming" (https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/12th-st-13th-st-..., slide 4)

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