Streetsblog New York City

The Daily News reports that more cyclists are getting hit by cars in Williamsburg and Greenpoint -- an increase of 38 percent and 188 percent, respectively, over last year.

While Transportation Alternatives cites dangerous conditions created by the lack of bike lanes, the News draws a different conclusion:

[T]he numbers don't lie. Stats show that in most incidents, bicycles are to blame.

Out of 29 bicycle accidents in the 94th Precinct during May, June and July this year, the cyclist was found at fault in 17.

Numbers don't lie? Traffic policing can be awfully subjective, particularly in a precinct that has made its bias perfectly clear as of late.

Discuss.

An article in the LA Times (reg required) details how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has systematically withheld information on fatal accidents from the public, even going so far as to deny Freedom of Information Act requests from researchers.

R.A. Whitworth, whose Maryland-based company conducts highway safety research for attorneys, insurance companies and even government agencies, discovered a few years ago that federal regulators were collecting the global coordinates of fatal accidents and linking them to its database, known as the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, or FARS. The database is one of the most important kept by the federal government.

Almost by happenstance, Whitworth discovered on the agency's website in 2004 the geographic coordinates of fatal accidents. He immediately saw the value: He could create maps of accidents, providing insights into where they were occurring on any given day and under what conditions.

He downloaded the data to his computer, but a few days later it was gone from the website. He called the agency and explained that the data had disappeared and he would like the agency to repost it. Officials called the posting a mistake and said he should erase it from his own computer, he recalled.

Whitworth waited until the following year, to see if the agency would again mistakenly post the data. This time, it did not. So he filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency in September 2005. The request was denied.
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