Don't worry, that dangerous bike dude is an anomaly

Last year, Chris Bucchere, a cyclist in San Francisco, slid off his bike into a group of pedestrians exiting a BART station and entering the intersection of Castro and Market, and slammed into 71-year-old travel agent Sutchi Hui, who struck his head on the pavement and died of his injuries four days later.

Bucchere, 37, was also taken to the hospital, but his injuries were less serious.

Then he made a serious 21st-century mistake, taking to the Internet to mourn his broken helmet instead of Hui's death.

Bucchere pleaded guilty to felony vehicular manslaughter, the most serious charge ever brought against a cyclist in a fatal bike crash with a pedestrian, and was sentenced last week, receiving three years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service but no jail time.

For many, it was the perfect storm of arrogance and insensitivity that turned Bucchere into the personification of the dangerous bike dude.

But his carelessness is not a trend. According to some bike safety experts, it is an anomaly.

"People often look for a simple answer in these things, but there really isn't one," says Andy Clarke, executive director of the League of American Bicyclists, a group based in Washington, D.C., that advocates for both more cycling venues and more safety programs.

"This was a freak incident, an outlier," he says. "The reaction of the rider was dreadful, monstrous behavior. But you can't define the entire system on the basis of one unfortunate incident."

Joe Parkin, a former professional bicycle racer and now the editor of Paved, a magazine about road-cycling culture, says that use of the Strava bike computer system, which collects and ranks riders' performances over selected routes and awards virtual trophies and which may have distracted Bucchare the day of the accident, is partly to blame for the reckless behavior by some riders: "Strava is a little like tequila. Enjoyed in moderation, it is harmless, but when overconsumed, it has a tendency to turn people into reckless idiots so fixated on some virtual prize that common sense goes out the door."

The reality is that between 2009 and 2011 (the most recent statistics available) there were 677 deaths from automobile-bicycle crashes, only 2.1 percent of all traffic crash fatalities. That's down from 830 in 1995. In the same period, injuries involving cyclists dropped from 61,000 to 38,000, according to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center. Pedestrian deaths from collisions with bikes are so rare that national statistics are not kept.

The New York City Department of Transportation reports that more than 600 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes from 2007 to 2011 and that only three pedestrians were killed by bicycle crashes.

What has increased is the number of people riding bikes. In nearly every major metropolitan area in the U.S., bike lanes have been built and bike-share programs — like Citi Bike in New York — have been launched.

In New York City, commuter cycling has doubled in size since 2005, with now more than 250,000 daily bike commuters, according to Transportation Alternatives.

In the "Leave It to Beaver" years of the 1950s, bikes were kids' toys that rarely ventured farther than the schoolyard or the ball field.

The bike riders from those days are today's (mostly male) cyclists — but older and richer. And they're the ones getting hurt and killed at a greater rate: Of the 677 cyclists killed, 87 percent were male, 51 percent of the injured were 25 to 64 years old, and only 20 percent were under age 16.

There have been some fears that city bike-share programs are putting unskilled riders on unfamiliar bikes, causing more accidents and injuries.

According to Clarke, the opposite is true. "A big part of bike share programs is safety and education," he says. "There are helmet rules, and all interactions are approached with safety in mind. The bikes themselves are not designed for high-speed, long-distance riding."

But that hasn't been the whole picture, especially in New York City, where the new Citi Bike fleet has become the vehicle of choice for young professionals out on the town for a night of drinking. A story in the New York Times quoted Michelle Young, founder of the website Untapped Cities, saying she frequently cycles from the Lower East Side to her home near Columbus Circle after a night out.

She told the newspaper that after the gay-pride march in June, "she weaved through the drunk crowds" to get uptown and saved the $10 a taxi ride would have cost.

A Hunter College study commissioned by the Gruskin Foundation on cyclist-pedestrian accidents said that there are 1,000 accidents a year in New York state alone and more than half of those occurred on New York City streets. The report warned of the results of putting 10,000 Citi Bikes on the streets without an enforceable safety plan.

There has also been some grumbling from motorists that although they must be licensed, have their vision checked and pass a skills test in order to use the streets and highways, cyclists have not been subjected to those criteria.

"Licensing cyclists is a nonstarter," Clarke says. "It has not been shown to have any real effect, and we are certainly not pushing for it. There should be traffic education, but the public schools are the proper place for that. "

There was a time in America's history when bicycle-pedestrian accidents were much more common. In the late 1880s, the penny-farthing bicycle, with a six-foot-high front wheel and much smaller trailing wheel, ruled the roads. Riders were perched precariously and often frightened both horses and pedestrians, leading to serious accidents.

But a decade later, the penny farthing was replaced with the safety bicycle, which had two smaller wheels of identical size and was propelled by a chain-driven mechanism instead of the fixed pedals of the penny farthing.

But it didn't take long for the safety bike to become a road hazard itself. Daring young men found they could go fast on the new bikes, which they began to call scorchers, and organized riding clubs.

With their handlebar moustaches and colorful wool club jerseys, the scorcher riders would terrorize the roads as they dashed down country lanes at blazing speeds.

In 1895, New York City Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt created a bicycle squad to apprehend speeding horse-drawn carriages and bicycles. The 29-member bike squad, known as the Scorcher Squad, made 1,366 arrests in its first year.

The next year, Denver created police bicycle squads to run down and catch two-wheeled miscreants. The city went so far as to create a bicycle court, where errant bikers could be held accountable for their actions.

So far, no modern jurisdiction has created a bicycle court, but in 2010, Philadelphia city councilman Curtis Jones proposed a temporary bike court to prosecute drunken riders at the annual Philadelphia International Cycling Championships held every June.

His idea was rejected.

The solution to the bikes-vs.-cars-vs.-pedestrians problem can be solved, but not by relying on prosecution alone. Bicyclists, drivers and walkers also need take responsibility for their actions. Until then, our roads will continue to be killing zones.