A study of 26 people on bikes killed in LA County found some commonalities:
*speeds exceeding 35 miles per hour (38% of cases),
*multiple travel lanes for cars (77%),
*no bike facilities (85%), and
*nighttime (54%).
Note: I have not looked at the actual report. So, take what i'm going to say with a big chunky grain of salt.
This report goes to poor lighting as the cause for nighttime crashes. I believe (and cannot prove, just vibes) that another contributor to disproportionate nighttime ped & bike fatalities is the relatively empty roads designed for peak-period volumes that enable speeding to a degree that daytime congestion prevents.
@bikepedantic See also increase in speeds during Covid. More people working from home meant less people on the road thus more high speeds
@bikepedantic so if I'm following this line of reasoning...would an intermediate conclusion be that night time accident/fatality rates on streets with peaky travel patterns are going to be disporportionately high vs day time, and that a road that displays consistent levels of usage would have a fairly proportionate split of daytime vs nighttime incidents?
@szeis4cookie Probably. Definition of "Peaky" is key here. When I think "peaky" i think of the traffic engineering concept of the K-factor, what proportion of the day's traffic is during peak periods (7-10AM ish, 3-7pm ish)
A road with a lower k-factor distributes its volume across the day, including into the evenings when many 'nighttime' crashes happen.
@bikepedantic As a non-practitioner who has only skimmed the full report, I have the same vibes. My fear with this setup/recommendation is that people will latch onto the lighting item listed as "the" thing to fix, ignoring the more problematic hazards posed by the report.
@bikepedantic honestly, the speeds that people go down my Fellsway West at night 😳.
Three of these four factors (speed, lanes, and bike facilities) probably covary to some degree.
But if i'm right, a community that committed to systematically reducing capacity by eliminating lanes and adding bike facilities would also see a disproportionate reduction in nighttime fatalities. Something to watch.