Biking in Memphis
I've been riding my bike to work the majority of the time lately. It's great for a lot of reasons, gas prices being not the least of them. I also enjoy the exercise and being more connected with my surroundings on my way to sitting in front of a screen all day.
Alicia Buxton wrote a sidebar to the cover story in this week's Flyer. She uses the statistics that there are far fewer biking deaths than auto deaths as evidence that biking is safer than driving.
I won't get into dissecting the stats comparison and belabor the fact that there are more auto deaths because, duh, more people are driving.
However, I do feel that biking is considerably more dangerous, especially in a city like Memphis.
I myself was nearly killed earlier this week by a driver not paying attention.
Riding a bike requires ten times the attentiveness of driving a car. You can't talk on the phone, both hands need to be on the bars. You have to be constantly aware of drivers entering the road that probably aren't watching for you.
In a city like Memphis, (more after the jump)
