How safe is bike commuting? 

Perhaps less than you think.

 

By Sadie Dingfelder May 12 at 5:07 AM

In January, a few days after the “Snowzilla” snowstorm hit D.C., schoolteacher Inez Steigerwald, 26, was biking to work down Michigan Avenue NE. Halfway to her destination, she hit a patch of slush.
“I lost control and went down straight on my elbow,” she says. “I totally shattered my elbow — two parts completely broke off — and had to get surgery to get it repaired.”

Steigerwald didn’t realize how dangerous bike riding was until she got hurt doing it. As it turns out, bikes are the most dangerous way to get around with the exception of motorcycles. That’s worth pondering as thousands of Metro commuters consider their alternatives during the coming “safety surge” of station closures and single tracking.

Nationwide, you’re more than twice as likely to die while riding a bike than riding in a car, per trip, according to a 2007 study led by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Laurie Beck. Bike riding is also about 500 times more fatal than riding in a bus. Though Beck didn’t run numbers on subway and commuter rail systems, they may be the safest form of transportation of all. Despite a series of well-publicized accidents and maintenance issues, Metrorail and Metrobus reported just two injuries per million riders in 2015.

“With public transportation, you have the benefit of professional drivers, frequently traveling in urban settings at lower speeds,” Beck says.

In addition to accidents, cyclists face another major health risk: Air pollution. Bike commuters inhale about three times as much air pollution as drivers, according to a 2015 study conducted in Fort Collins, Colo. For that study, commuters wore backpacks that measured their exposure to different kinds of air pollution, including carbon monoxide and black carbon. The Colorado State University researchers found that cyclists, due to their heavier breathing and longer commute time, ended up huffing far more pollution than drivers.

It’s ironic that the people who are reducing emissions by not driving cars end up inhaling the byproducts of car combustion, says John Volckens, one of the study authors.

“We think bikers are choosing a healthier option, but it turns out bikers on long, crowded roads are getting exposed to air pollution,” he says. “Our study suggests that perhaps we should be doing more than putting lanes on roads. We should be separating bikes from cars.”

Given all these findings, cyclists begin to seem like selfless altruists, risking life and limb for the good of society. But while accidents and air pollution pose serious risks, bike commuting is still the best choice for your overall health, says Johanna Boogaard, a researcher at the Health Effects Institute, in Boston.

“Bikers do themselves a great benefit by getting active and healthy,” she says. “Exercise has not only huge cardiovascular benefits, it also helps against depression and other mood disorders.”
A 2010 study by Boogaard and her colleagues buoys that claim. While injuries rob casual cyclists, age 18 to 64, of five to nine days of life and air pollution subtracts between one and 40 days, the benefits of cycling adds three to 14 months to your lifespan.

Though she used numbers from the bike-friendly Netherlands, Boogaard says her study’s findings probably hold true for the U.S.

“There are more traffic accidents in the U.S., but because the calculated benefits are so large — think physical activity, especially important in inactive populations — it is unlikely that this would tip the balance,” she says.

In more good news for would-be bike commuters, it turns out that D.C. is relatively safe for cyclists, with only 1.5 bike fatalities per million residents, as compared to New York’s 2.4 and Philadelphia’s 1.9, according to 2014 data from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

That’s probably due to the city’s dedicated bike lanes and trails, Washington Area Bicyclist Association executive director Greg Billing says.

“We have some great bike lanes. Fifteenth Street is a national example, a win-win for everybody,” he says. “It has two protected bike lanes that, during rush hour, get around 400 bicyclists an hour.”
Of course, safety is just one thing people take into account when deciding how to get to work. Some people bike because it’s less expensive or better for the earth, or because they hate dealing with unpredictable Metro delays. For Steigerwald, biking is simply the fastest and most reliable way to get to work. That’s why, just six weeks after shattering her elbow, the first-grade teacher got back on her bike.

Steigerwald says she’s always been a safe biker, but now she’s being extra cautious.

“Since my accident, on days when it’s been raining, I’ve been taking the bus or Car-to-Go, because I don’t want to risk getting injured again,” she says.

What cities are most dangerous for cyclists?

Fatalities per million residents in 2014.

1. Tucson, Ariz. 11.4
2. Phoenix 7.2
3. Denver 4.5
4. Detroit 4.4
5. Columbus 3.6
6. Oklahoma City 3.2
7. Seattle 3.0
8. Houston 2.7
9. New York City 2.4
10. San Francisco 2.3
11. Chicago 2.2
12. San Diego 2.2
13. San Jose, Calif. 2.0
14. Philadelphia 1.9
15. Fresno, Calif. 1.9
16. Los Angeles 1.8
17. Albuquerque, N.M. 1.8
18. Baltimore 1.6
19. Washington, D.C. 1.5
20. Boston 1.5

Source: U.S. Department of Transportation

I cannot believe that Washington, D.C. is that safe!  We see the near-misses everyday.

200 years ago, the sky went dark and there was no summer

 

By Ishaan Tharoor May 12 at 1:16 PM

Sulfuric gases from Mount Tambora's crater seep around its caldera area in West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on June 22, 2011. (Fikria Hidayat/KOMPAS Images via AP)

As summer approaches, many in the United States will be awaiting warmer, balmier days. It's a prospect keenly felt right now by those in the nation's capital, which has endured two weeks of ceaseless rain.

But things could be much worse. Two hundred years ago, the U.S. Eastern Seaboard registered record-low temperatures. On June 6, 1816, six inches of snow fell across wide swaths of New England. "The heads of all the mountains on every side were crowned with snow," one area farmer wrote. "The most gloomy and extraordinary weather ever seen."

A Connecticut clockmaker recalled at the time having to wear an overcoat and mittens for much of the summer; another bookkeeper noted in his diary that "the vegetation does not seem to advance at all." Frosts set in and crops failed. In Montreal, there were reports of frozen birds dropping dead on the city streets. Denizens of Vermont were forced to subsist on "nettles, wild turnips and hedgehogs."

These early Americans probably did not know the cause of the epic cold spell: A year prior, after months of rumbling, a colossal eruption occurred at Mount Tambora, on a small island in what was then the Dutch East Indies and is now Indonesia. Millions of tons of ash and sulfurous gas went dozens of miles up into the stratosphere, creating a kind of dusty veil around the planet and plunging part of Asia in darkness.

As my colleagues in the Capital Weather Gang wrote last year, it is perhaps the most explosive geological event in historical record. "Tambora’s blasts and the tsunamis they caused killed an estimated 92,000 people, including those who starved to death because the explosion of debris killed livestock and crops," The Post wrote.

A British colonial officer surveying the aftermath painted a bleak, desperate picture of the eruption's effect on its immediate surrounds: "The extreme misery to which the inhabitants have been reduced is shocking to behold. There were still on the road side the remains of several corpses, and the marks of where many others had been interred: the villages almost entirely deserted and the houses fallen down, the surviving inhabitants having dispersed in search of food."

As scientists know now, the volcano's blast also had more wide-ranging effects. The debris circling the stratosphere led to cooler temperatures in 1816 and drastically effected weather patterns. Droughts and unseasonal flooding eventually spurred a devastating cholera epidemic in India. Harvests were ruined from China to the United States, leading to widespread famine and suffering. The speculation that followed in U.S. agriculture after 1816 would eventually trigger the United States' first financial crisis, three years later.

"Never were such hard times," wrote Thomas Jefferson, whose own Virginia estate faced crippling debts.

1816 became known famously as "The Year Without Summer." In New England, it got the nickname "Eighteen-Hundred-and-Froze-to-Death," while grain shortages in what's now Germany led 1816 to be called "The Year of the Beggar." Much of Europe was just emerging from a generation of Napoleonic warfare and was ill-equipped to cope with failing harvests.

The terrible conditions sparked westward migrations — from Europe to the United States, and from the Eastern Seaboard to less harsh climes. In the United States, they led to the emergence of particular religious communities in western lands, from Presbyterian groups to what would eventually be the Mormons. And they also led to the formation of the first avowedly abolitionist churches among pioneering settlers.

A new app, "Summer of Darkness," chronicles what happened when a group of British holidaygoers attempted to summer by the shores of Lac Leman in Geneva. Their desired sunny idyll was ruined by the year's weather, which was cold and unforgiving.

“At first,” wrote the poet and author Mary Shelley, “we spent our pleasant hours on the lake or wandering on its shores. But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.” That confinement, it's believed, led to her drafting the nightmarish story that we now know as "Frankenstein."

Lord Byron, another eminence in the group, penned his poem "Darkness," where "The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars/Did wander darkling in the eternal space,/Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth/Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air." It was a moment, as Byron wrote, when "men forgot their passions in the dread/Of this their desolation; and all hearts/Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light."

Keep praying for sun!