Not to be overly suspicious, but it may be a hyped-up or cherry-picked statistic. The two sources in the article are the Chief of Dubai Police, and the director of the Abu Dhabi Police traffic department, who didn't give any further details; the paper itself is state run.
"Two weeks ago, Abu Dhabi Police announced a campaign against motorists who use their phones while at the wheel." ... "Gen Tamim likewise warned that Dubai Police will soon be using electronic evidence against drivers who cause accidents while using their smart devices." ... "The precise statistics for traffic accidents in the two emirates this week were not revealed to The National."
Cities compile detailed statistics based on every reported traffic incident, I honestly wouldn't expect anybody else to have numbers as accurate as theirs for something like this.
Over the past couple of years I've noticed that when I pass someone driving erratically or abnormally slow, they are more often than not futzing with their phone (texting or talking). This is the kind of driving that ten years ago I would have attributed to drunkenness.
It's a serious factor in my desire to move somewhere where I don't need a car to get around.
People who walk and text very rarely injure or kill other people, though. I don't really mind people being a menace to themselves, but I very much mind people being a menace to me and people I care about.
I don't know about you, but I try to swerve and avoid pedestrians if they walk out into the street. That can lead to me hitting other vehicles, losing control of the car, and all sorts of other badness.
Maybe I should just plough through them, and then sue for damage to my car.
Could it be that the outage failed to summon a certain non-trivial amount of people to venture out in their cars (for meetings, dinners, etc.), reducing the overall number of cars on the road to begin with?
As a person who has never texted (seriously) I've started to notice an alarming number of people holding and looking at their phones while they drive in my town.
Makes me afraid to use the bicycle lane anymore.
I sure hope police/insurance companies are looking at cellphone records after accidents to fine people appropriately for this kind of behavior.
Aside...but, why do you ride a bike on road? Yes, there are health benifits from the exercise and joy of riding a bike, but the negatives are pollution/lung issues and reasonably high likelihood of injury or death compared to other forms of transport. As the risk of injury/death rises along with driver carelessness, is there a point at which you would reduce or stop your on road bike usage?
People coming from, say, the netherlands just don't realise how dangerous it is to ride bikes on roads in non-biking countries (uk, us, etc.). Car drivers just don't bother looking or just don't care. "King of the road" mentality.
I live in Victoria, BC and there are bikes on the road all the time here. A good portion of the roads have bike lanes and people are used to driving motor vehicles in tandem with bikes on the road.
For all you know he does live in the Netherlands. Maybe even on Vlieland (ok I know this is extremely unlikely, but we don't know).
I don't know how you drive your bike, but if this is what you think, you're doing it wrong. If you drive your bike like it's a car, motorists will notice you and pass you with a wide margin. If you ride on the wrong side of the road and turn left from the right lane, then yeah, it's scary because you're driving like a maniac. Don't do that.
Everywhere I've ridden a bike, which includes Chicago, the suburbs, and the Seattle area.
Like anything, riding in traffic involves learning and practice. Read "Effective Cycling" to learn the rules and techniques, then try it out. 10,000 hours later (according to Gladwell), you'll be a pro. (I'm don't have this much practice, but I still feel safe. I can only think of two dumb mistakes I've made, and I recovered from them without disrupting traffic flow or being injured.)
A few techniques that I learned experimentally:
1) Don't filter forward unless there is a lane that you can use. Cyclists seem to want to get to that line when the light is red, but they never think about where they're going to go when the light changes. I wait behind the cars in the middle of the lane and never have trouble merging into the flow of traffic. (The cyclists that filter forward are faced with two possibilities. Stand around like an idiot while all the waiting traffic passes you and you can safely merge back into traffic, or run the light when the other direction gets their yellow, cutting in front of the waiting cars. Both confuse and annoy other users of the road, and the second one is illegal and dangerous. Drive your bike like a car.)
2) Most rightmost straight-through lanes are, in practice, right turn lanes, so stay out of them. If you don't, you just annoy people that want the opportunity to turn right on red. After the light changes, nobody will pass you on the right because the lane is blocked with right-turning cars waiting for pedestrians, and so you have a clear lane as soon as you get into the intersection. Failing that, nobody will pass you on the right because vehicles simply do not overtake slow-moving vehicles on the right. Verify this with a look backwards and a polite wave.
3) Cyclists never obey stop signs, so drivers are very confused when you are stopped at one. A hand signal to the person with the right-of-way is appropriate to restore the correct flow at the intersection.
How can I start cycling on the roads? I can't drive and I've only cycled in parks when I was a kid. I thought about starting to cycle to work/university but cycling in the midst of so many cars on roads when I'm so new seems dangerous. Yet, if I never start I'll never cycle. How did you do it?
Having lived in London, I would agree with you. Almost every week I witnessed at least one bike accident, most of the people were hit by double decker buses. Though I should add that London is one of those places that really should have bike lanes but doesn't.
Yes, there are health benifits from the exercise and joy of riding a bike, but the negatives are pollution/lung issues and reasonably high likelihood of injury or death compared to other forms of transport.
Do you have anything to back that statement up with? Sounds like FUD to me.
Which part? seems commonsense that bike riding would be more dangerous than car driving...not everything needs a dataset when simple physics would suffice.
Which part? seems commonsense that bike riding would be more dangerous than car driving...not everything needs a dataset when simple physics would suffice.
This part: the negatives are pollution/lung issues
This part: reasonably high likelihood of injury or death
And this part: compared to other forms of transport
From your latest comment, this part: seems commonsense that bike riding would be more dangerous than car driving
And this part: simple physics
And also in the context of: not everything needs a dataset when simple physics would suffice
Most of the answers boil down to depends where you live. When I lived in Denver there were tons of bike only trails, the air was usually great, and lots of people biked. Biking there was a way of life for many people.
Where I live now, the air is great, but there are few if any bike lanes. Yet, I still see cyclists going down 2 lane roads with traffic going by them at 50MPH. An accident is bound to happen, and over the summer a cyclist was hit on one of the bridges. He flew off the bridge, and fell to his death. It is common sense that cycling on busy roads is more dangerous than driving a car on the same road.
The accident statistics do not back up your assertion. Most cyclists are injured when turning from the wrong lane or when using bike paths or sidewalks. When you're on the road with the rest of the vehicles, people pay attention to you because they have to check to be sure that a car is not where you are. (There are bad drivers, but you have better maneuverability and brakes than them.)
Americans are taught at an early age to be afraid of riding their bikes on the street, but there is really nothing scary about it. And drivers aren't as bad as you think they are: when there is something in their path, they tend to steer around it.
The issue is not that bicycling is hazardous; the issue is that drivers are inattentive.
Here in the UK, around 90% of road traffic accidents are attributable to driver error.
We badly need to reach the era of self-driving cars, so that folks who'd rather be checking their email can do so without endangering the rest of us, and so that cyclists can ride the highways safely again (or at least as safely as they did prior to 1910 or thereabouts).
The cited doc doesn't take into account the deep breathing that bicyclists do, leading the pollutants deeper into the lungs. So yes, there may be more in the car, but I'd argue it's doing far more damage to the cyclist. The regular coughing fits many suffer (Similar to smokers) attest to that.
I don't know any cyclists that suffer from regular coughing fits, and I ride more than 100 miles a week (and have mild asthma that I take medication for).
Even if there is an increased contact with pollutants, which is debatable, it's not certain that this causes any adverse health effects. Evidence also suggests that the health you gain from regular physical activity offsets any potential damage from breathing pollutants. Most people die of heart disease long before they get the cancer that the pollutants supposedly cause.
You will die one day even if you live in a cleanroom. Why not get some exercise before you do?
Its certainly dangerous, but the benefit of the exercise is enough that bikers still live several years longer, on average, than people who take cars to work.
As Paul Graham noticed earlier, computers became something like TV on the working desktop, smartphones are even a more danger. I hope in my lifetime I'll see something new to displace smartphones/tablets and make them look old like TV now, and be less dangerous and less addictive.
Isn't this a product of long commutes and sedentary living? There are only three times when I feel compelled to use my smartphone:
* When in a train/bus/car
* When I need directions
* When I feel like a game of chess
Further to this, my smartphone is also useful for:
* It's alarm clock
* Looking up facts over discussions away from home/office
I noticed my need for a smartphone dropped dramatically when I stopped commuting. I don't have push email (on purpose) and so I don't check email every time it beeps. After a month of this, I lost the automatic urge to check email.
I would do without a smartphone except for the maps function. I could buy a dedicated GPS, but the additional features, having web access anywhere, chess (trivial), alarm, push the smartphone ahead.
Get rid of your car, don't live in a sprawling city, walk places: problem solved.
I'd much rather see something new to make driver-operated motor vehicles seem old and impractical. Smartphone usage by a passenger on a bus or train doesn't pose a constant lethal threat to everyone on the road, merely a threat of inconveniencing the user when they miss their stop.
And that happened because those things have some very visible bad effects (images of cancer all over packages in Europe) and even then there are like 30% smokers on my country. Assuming shock and visible pain are the only way to end such a popular addiction it's going to be tough to end our digital ones.
But at least you showed it's possible, that's something!
Smartpones can already detect that you are travelling above a certain speed on a public road and display a notification that texting while driving is dangerous. Not something I would endorse (too many false positives), but I wouldn't be surprised to see it, either as a result of a law, or as a voluntary "enhancement".
This weekend I narrowly avoided accidents on multiple occasions with drivers that were more than deeply occupied in their smartphones. One driver blocked a major intersection against the light while another destroyed several cones in a road construction zone. Maybe the problem was worse than normal due to the release of a new popular model?
That's remarkable, given that the roads in that country are not nearly bad. The question one should ask though is what can technology do to fix that public safety hazard?
In my sleepy little town at any red light when traffic stops for the light (I hope!) it's as if someone said "Let us pray." and all the drivers bow their heads.
Having visited Abu Dhabi for a little more than a month, I don't find this too surprising. A lot of the drivers there are insane and coupled with a cell phone, they're killing machines.
"Two weeks ago, Abu Dhabi Police announced a campaign against motorists who use their phones while at the wheel." ... "Gen Tamim likewise warned that Dubai Police will soon be using electronic evidence against drivers who cause accidents while using their smart devices." ... "The precise statistics for traffic accidents in the two emirates this week were not revealed to The National."