Last year approximately 4,000 cyclists reported being injured on the streets of New York City, a number that has remained fairly steady for the past few years. I Quant NY mapped the locations of all of 2013's cycling injuries and the result is overwhelming.
I Quant NY's subsequent heat map is more instructive: more cyclists are injured on Manhattan's East Side than anywhere else, which makes sense given the Williamsburg Bridge and the uptown arteries accessed via the First Avenue bike lane.
The Bloomberg administration's bike lane push hasn't contributed to an expected decrease in speeding on city streets, one of the most common factors in injuries to pedestrians and cyclists. Mayor de Blasio has vowed to correct this and the NYPD has been handing out more speeding tickets. According to police data, 10 cyclists were killed in traffic last year.
Despite a steady increase in cycling—a full 1% of commuters now get to work with two wheels—there has not been a steady increase in injuries (that torrent of bike-on-pedestrian injuries predicted by bikeshare naysayers hasn't materialized either).
Earlier this week, I Quant NY mapped last year's traffic fatalities, and showed that Broadway in Williamsburg was one of the city's deadliest thoroughfares.
