 "Photo: Alicia Schuster / UCD Advocate")
People hang maps on their walls for different reasons: some to plan where they are going and some to remind them where they’ve been.
Zach Hartman, a student at the UC Denver School of Medicine, has a map with a slightly more morbid point: each little dot on it is a place where someone was hit by a car.
Specifically, Hartman’s map pinpoints where bicyclists have been hit in traffic in Denver and beyond. This observational study on the growing amount of accidents—and the increasing injury done to the bikers—looked at collisions for two years.
“The number of riders that came in [to the hospital] with abdominal and chest injuries in recent years has increased,” explained Hartman, “and the average length of the stay has increased.”
The map is covered with dots, but the highest areas of collisions are in the urban and downtown areas.
Working with Hartman are Dr. Jeffry Kashuk, asscociate professor of surgery, and Dr. Ernest Moore, both of UCD. In fact, the idea from the study came from Moore’s personal experiences as a biker.
“I’m an avid bike rider,” said Moore. “I’ve been clocked a few times in Denver. Four out of five times, it’s been a woman on her cell phone,” he said and laughed.
“I think biking is phenomenal,” he said. “What bothers me about Denver is it’s dangerous trying to get through in the city.”
“America is still a very automobile culture,” Kashuk explained. “We’re talking about more frequent riders having to deal with autos in city streets.
“Anyone who bikes in Denver often can feel that hostility on the road,” he said.
Many groups have advocated biking instead of driving as a cost-effective way to lower carbon emissions. Yet simply throwing bicyclists onto the road, Kashuk said, isn’t the solution.
“If more people are being injured, or they’re more severe, maybe our infrastructure isn’t prepared for an increased volume of riders,” he stated. “I wouldn’t put my kids out there.”
What they didn’t expect to find was the scarcity of helmet use.
“It was alarming,” said Moore. “I thought that everyone had that figured out by now.”
According to data collected in the study, only one out of every four riders actually wore a helmet.
Moore said, “It’s just not safe around downtown Denver.”
Even faculty members at the UC Hospital have complained to Kashuk about their sometimes perilous commute to work.
“They have to risk their lives trying to maneuver Speer [Boulevard] to get to the hospital,” Kashuk said. “Bike paths are all well and good, but they don’t help if you’re trying to get to work.
“Most of these occurred on streets that didn’t have a bike lane or a bike path,” explained Hartman.
Though telling, the study was only observational and only included injuries coming into the UC Hospital for treatment.
“This was just a single-center study,” Kashuk explained. “If you’re going to go the city planners saying ‘you need to spend x million dollars,’ you need to back it up with robust data.”
“There need to be more studies in larger areas,” said Kashuk. “This could be a call to action. This study is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“If anything, I hope it raises awareness about biking safety,” Hartman said. “I hope it doesn’t scare people away.”
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