Local bicyclists face the most risk of injury crashes in Pacific Beach, downtown San Diego, Rosecrans Street and parts of Oceanside and Escondido, an analysis of law enforcement collision data from 2010 through 2016 shows.

Other dangerous areas include Coast Highway in Encinitas, Palm Avenue east of Imperial Beach, University Avenue in North Park, Loma Portal, Mission Beach, Coronado beach and West H Street in Chula Vista.



For the record: This story has been amended from its original to more precisely describe the “intersection” data in the study. In the data, cross roads are used for geographic location purposes, even if the accident did not occur at the actual intersection of the two streets.

Escondido’s crash hotspots are Washington Street near Broadway and Valley Parkway at or about Midway Drive and Rose Street. In Oceanside, the most dangerous spots are Coast Highway at Eaton Street and Mission Avenue.

The analysis is part of a project launched by local attorney Michael Bomberger, who says he wants to help bicyclists ride more safely by making them aware of dangerous areas.


Another goal is pressuring the county government, San Diego and other cities to accelerate creation of more protected bike paths and more striped bike lanes on local streets, said Bomberger, whose law practice focuses on injured cyclists.

The lack of cycling infrastructure across the county has become a more glaring problem in recent years as cities encourage more people to commute by bicycle to reduce traffic congestion and fight climate change.

Retrofitting streets to boost bike safety is expensive and complicated because city planners designed most local streets with specific places for cars and pedestrians but no designated travel lanes or other spaces for bikes.


The bicycle crash data runs through 2016, so it doesn’t include the a sharp increase in bicycle use that began this winter when thousands of brightly colored app-rented bikes began flooding the streets of many local communities. They are known as “dockless” bikes because they don’t require users to return them to a docking station, like some rental operations.

Maya Rosas, director of policy for pedestrian and cyclist advocacy group Circulate San Diego, said by email on Thursday that the new analysis could be viewed as a call to action.

“Cities in the region have a lot of work to do to make bicycling safer, especially with the emergence of dockless bikes,” she said. “Long-planned bike facilities like the Downtown Mobility Plan cycletracks need to get built, and at the same time cities should be focusing on quick safety improvements like painting separated bike lanes and bike boxes to make streets safer for everyone.”

Rosas said the list of areas where cyclists face the most danger isn’t surprising.


“The intersections and crash zones are either high-speed streets or high-volume streets with lots of bike and foot traffic mixing with cars,” she said. “Speed is one of the most important factors that determines whether a person who is hit by a car is killed or not.”

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The analysis includes two separate lists: the county’s 15 worst crash zones — broader areas with large numbers of cycling injury crashes — and the county’s 50 most dangerous intersections, a list that uses the cross road as a geographic marker even if the crash did not occur right at the intersection.


The most dangerous such cross roads are Midway Drive and Rosecrans Street in San Diego, Rose Street and Valley Parkway in Escondido, Coast Highway and Encinitas Boulevard, Washington Street and Broadway in Escondido and Saturn Boulevard and Palm Avenue in Nestor.

Among the top 50, San Diego has 30 of the cross roads, Escondido and Chula Vista have five each, Oceanside has four, Santee has three and Coronado, Encinitas and Solana Beach have one each.

The accidents in Escondido come despite significant effort by the city to respect the bicycling environment.

“I believe we are the only City in San Diego County that prides itself on having a bicycle path spanning our entire City from east to west, and we have been active participants in grant funding and other programs to promote construction of safe routes for bicycles, including not only our Bike Path but the Inland Rail Trail linking cities along the Sprinter Corrider,” City Manager Jeff Epp said. “Bicycle paths are a key part of our ongoing Pavement Management Program.”


The most dangerous crash zones are San Diego’s downtown core and the Gaslamp, western Pacific Beach, University Avenue in North Park, eastern Pacific Beach and the Little Italy/Cortez Hill area.

Bomberger said he will eventually add more elements to the analysis, such as the most dangerous times of day for crashes and whether there are bike lanes or protected bike paths where the crashes took place.

The analysis, which was created for Bomberger by 1Point21 Interactive in Scripps Ranch, pulled out all local crash data involving bicycles from the California Highway Patrol’s Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System.

That statewide database compiles information from all of California’s law enforcement agencies.


Locally, that includes the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, all local police departments, the regional CHP office, harbor police, city parks district police and police at universities and colleges.

When cycling crashes in individual years are compared, the data doesn’t show any clear trends.

The number of crashes countywide was in the neighborhood of 950 each year, with the highest totals being 1,032 in 2011 and 1,049 in 2014, and the lowest totals being 915 in 2010 and 894 in 2016.

About half the crashes each year are in the city of San Diego.


A webpage summarizing the analysis can be found here: ebcyclinglaw.com/san-diego-bicycle-crashes-study/

david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick


UPDATES:

Comment from the city of Escondido was added on Aug. 1.