See all that red? That's what it's like for most people in the US, minus all the sidewalks. You might be lucky enough to live in a place like I do where there's enough green and orange and walkable shoulders to make walking and cycling viable if you live in the right neighborhood or close to a bus stop.
Also take special note of the situation on Prince Avenue. It has clearly marked, wide, dedicated bicycle lanes you can easily make out on a satellite view and it's still orange. People have died there, recently. You can at least get a bicycle across with the racks on buses. Most people don't have buses.
People still walk it and ride it. And people die often enough doing it to validate the concern.
That link centers the map on Prince Ave in Athens-Clarke County. Look that road up, it's a 4 lane road. I would never bike on that road, of course it's dangerous. If you avoid roads like that, you avoid most of the risk. It's common sense but a substantial portion of adult male cyclists obstinately refuse to apply such common sense because they'd rather die as some sort of martyr for their right of way than stay alive.
In fact most of the roads on the map you just linked to are marked as green. If I zoomed out and the first red road I saw was Broad Street. That is four lane road as well. No surprise. Multi-lane roads are very dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians, so you should tell your children to avoid them. That's what I've always done, so I have much less to worry about than the crudest population-level statistics would suggest.
> It's common sense but a substantial portion of adult male cyclists obstinately refuse to apply such common sense because they'd rather die as some sort of martyr for their right of way than stay alive
Let's stop for a moment and reflect on these words. Notice the implausibility of what this person is saying. Observe how they place the blame squarely on the person bearing the risk, rather on the inadequate infrastructure or the pervasiveness of the mode of transportation that causes the most fatalities per Km. Not even a faint attempt at understanding what could be behind the cyclist's behavior, other than painting them as zealots.
See all that red? That's what it's like for most people in the US, minus all the sidewalks. You might be lucky enough to live in a place like I do where there's enough green and orange and walkable shoulders to make walking and cycling viable if you live in the right neighborhood or close to a bus stop.
Also take special note of the situation on Prince Avenue. It has clearly marked, wide, dedicated bicycle lanes you can easily make out on a satellite view and it's still orange. People have died there, recently. You can at least get a bicycle across with the racks on buses. Most people don't have buses.
People still walk it and ride it. And people die often enough doing it to validate the concern.