The "study" ranking "dangerous" cycling cities is no study at all. It's merely a ranking of per capita fatalities. This information is useless in analyzing risk. Graham County had one cycling fatality in 2014. Its per capita fatality rate works out to 26.3. Does that make Graham County more dangerous than Tucson at 7.5 per million? There are better ways to analyze the level of risk in cycling in Tucson.
The best way to analyze risk is crashes per mile ridden. Earlier this year, the City of Tucson published a Bicycle Boulevard Master Plan. The City provided data showing average injury crash rate for Tucson arterial bike lanes is 2.67 crashes (not fatalities!) per 100,000 miles ridden. Bike boulevards have 0.71 crashes for 100,000 miles ridden. These numbers are from the city's own data collected in 2009-2013. Cyclist injury crashes are uncommon based on the city's own data.
Alan Solot
Midtown
Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.
