I use a bicycle almost daily to get around Paris, so I was disappointed to read of another fatality suffered by a cyclist using a Vélib rental bike, the sixth fatality since the service was lunched in 2007. The collision occurred in the Eighth Arrondissement, at the intersection of the avenue de Friedland and the rue Balzac. (I know this intersection well, and bike across it several times a week.)


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The profile of this fatality tracks its predecessors:

  • The cyclist was a 50-year old man. The profile of a Vélib fatality is a middle aged cyclist, not a youth.
  • The cyclist was riding in broad daylight, on an ordinary street. Fatalities occur on ordinary streets, not traffic circles; they also occur during normal hours, not late at night.
  • Alcohol was not involved. Unless I've missed something or the
    details haven't been reported, alcohol has not been a factor in any
    Vélib fatality, for either cyclist or motorist.
  • The cyclist was struck by a turning truck. Vélib fatalities result from collisions with large vehicles. Turns seem to present particular dangers.
  • The vehicle driver said he saw nothing. Blind spots are a clear and present danger to cyclists. I'd written on this last September. At that time, there was talk of adding stickers to Vélib bicycles to warn cyclists of the dangers posed by blind spots. I haven't yet seen any stickers.

I deplore this latest fatality, and especially a public policy failure to do more to prevent future loss of life. For this cyclist, the critical point I'd want to make to the police and city officials is: given that the victims are not drunken, joyriding misfits, what can be done to enhance cyclist safety?

I have a few hypotheses:

  • One is that there may be a learning curve, for truckers. Do big rig drivers learn about cyclists in driving school? I suspect that the subject isn't yet covered. Without assigning blame, I'd also want to know whether most truckers driving in central Paris come from the suburbs, where they're less used to congested streets and cyclists.It may be possible to target drivers of large vehicles, to alert them to dangers posed to cyclists.
  • Another is that these are pure accidents: the driver does not see the cyclist, due to a blind spot. Retrofitting vehicles is impratical; prominent warnings to cyclists have yet to be made. What has been done in cycle-friendly towns in the Netherlands or Germany?
  • This is a quantitative problem that has an answer: how dangerous is Vélib, per kilometer traveled?