There is a lot you can do as a bicycle rider to reduce your risk of getting seriously hurt in a bicycle accident, from basic things like following traffic laws and wearing a helmet to more dedicated measures like wearing specially designed clothing. Unfortunately, all the preparation and caution in the world cannot completely eliminate the risk of you getting hurt on a ride because of someone else’s negligence—and more specifically, because of negligence by a motor vehicle operator near you.
The question of what the single most common cause of bicycle collisions on major roadways is can be a tricky one to answer since quantitative statistics on that particular topic are hard to come by. That said, there is a lot of data on bicycle accidents in general, and the data points to how bike collisions with motor vehicles often happen.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there were 1,360 total preventable deaths that could be traced directly back to bicycle accidents, 928 of which—or about 68 percent—stemmed from collisions with motor vehicles. This represents an increase in yearly bicyclist fatalities of 47 percent since 2013—and yet, over that same ten-year period, preventable nonfatal injuries to bicyclists actually declined by about 32 percent, from nearly 500,000 in 2013 to a little under 340,000 in 2022.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has slightly different but broadly similar numbers for bicyclist fatalities caused by motor vehicle collisions, showing a significant uptick in fatal accidents over the past several years. NHTSA data also indicates that 85 percent of tracked bicyclist fatalities from this sort of incident occurred in urban areas as opposed to rural roads, 62 percent occurred in places other than intersections, and 56 percent occurred during low-light conditions between dusk and dawn.
Put all that information together, and the implication is that the typical fatal bicycle collision occurs on a crowded urban street late in the evening. This situation includes many things that could potentially distract a driver from focusing entirely on driving safely and avoiding a bicyclist who is not extremely visible at the time. One last NHTSA statistic suggests just one answer to the question of what the most common cause of bicycle collisions is: in 2022, 3,308 people lost their lives in accidents caused primarily by distracted driving.
Distracted drivers are the biggest risk to bicyclists who are riding in any kind of environment under any kind of conditions. Even worse, the process of filing suit against a distracted driver can be much more complicated than many people expect since there is often not much hard evidence showing that a driver was distracted in a specific way right before a collision.
Fortunately, you have support available from legal professionals who know how to handle cases like yours and have helped people like you get paid fairly for their injuries in the past. Call today to learn more.
