Thanks to the efforts of Bike Maryland and others raising concern for cyclists and pedestrians safety Streets Smarts campaign is coming to the Baltimore Metro Area. From Baltimore Metropolitan Council BikePed Becon:
Street Smart Campaign coming in September....
Statewide in 2007 there were a total of 615 lives lost and 51,729 persons injured in 588 fatal crashes and 34,866 injury crashes (totaling 35,424 crashes). Another 65,519 crahses were property damage only (PDO) for a total of 100,943 reported crashes with the possibility of even more injuries unknown or unreported.
Statewide 110 lives lost were pedestrians and 2,667 pedestrians were injured, in a total of 2,928 crashes. Statewide 7 Bicyclist lives were loss and another 662 injured in a total of 809 bicyclist involved crahses.
In our Baltimore region we represent 39% of the toal fatalities and more than half the crashes and injuries across the state.
Street Smart is aimed to target local law enforcement to locations where enforcement can raise the awareness of the rights and responsibilities of drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists to look out for one another on the roadway. Drivers should stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. Pedestrians should use crosswalks, obey signals and cross at intersections. Learning to be Street Smart reminds us of the importance to use crosswalks, obey signals and Share the Road before it's too late.
In 2007 in the Baltimore region:
237 lives were lost
25,004 people were injured
52,898 crashes were reported
50 pedestrians lost their lives
2 bicyclists died
Well bike of course! Hundreds of cyclist found out just how convenient it was to bike to Artscape and thanks to the free bike parking courtesy of the University Baltimore it was safe and secure. Volunteers from the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee as well as Bike Maryland helped distribute bike safety materials from State Highways as well as bike maps from the State, Jones Fall Trail and Gwynns Falls Trail. The Friends of the Charles Street Trolley were there as well talking about the advantages of mass transit in an urban core.
Biking is just fun, practical and a great way to do things!
We are now archiving our newsletters, so if there is something you missed or would like to share with friends and family.
Commuting by Bike or Foot Provides Heart Help for Men in Study
By Nicole Ostrow
July 13 (Bloomberg) -- Men who walk or bike to work are less likely to be obese and more likely to have healthier blood pressure and insulin levels, research showed.
Men whose commute involved such exercise were half as likely to be obese as those who drove or took public transportation, said Penny Gordon-Larsen, lead author of the study in today’s Archives of Internal Medicine. Cardiovascular benefits found for women in the study weren’t statistically significant, she said.
About two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to the National Institutes of Health. Obesity raises the risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, stroke and osteoarthritis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Atlanta. For most adults, walking 60 minutes a day at a brisk pace meets U.S. guidelines for avoiding weight gain, according to the article.
“Even if you adjust for other forms of physical activity, walking or biking to work really does add an additional benefit,” said Gordon-Larsen, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a telephone interview today. “It really shows that working physical activity in, even if you can’t get to a gym, could have beneficial health outcomes for people.”
Researchers included 2,364 people enrolled in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study who worked outside the home. They looked at the time, distance and mode of commuting along with body weight, obesity, fitness, blood pressure, insulin levels and blood fat levels.
Active Commuters
Of the study participants, 192 men, or 18 percent, and 203 women, or about 16 percent, were considered active commuters. Most of the active commuters walked to work, the researchers found.
The average commute for the bikers and walkers was 5 miles, compared with 14 miles for nonactive male commuters and 10 miles for women in that category.
Gordon-Larsen said the heart benefits may not have been seen in women because they didn’t walk or bike at a high enough intensity or fewer actively commuted, so the study wasn’t able to achieve significant results.
Future studies are needed to investigate the amount of active commuting needed to benefit health, the authors said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Ostrow in New York at nostrow1@bloomberg.net.
What Motoring is doing to us in Maryland
Air:
Our region’s Air Pollution is among the worst in the Nation (Straight ‘F’s in Ozone pollution and nearly the same for dangerous fine particulates)
www.stateoftheair.org/2009/states/maryland/
Traffic:
Our region’s Traffic Congestion is our Nations second worst (Baltimore/Washington area drivers waste 62 hours and 42 gallons of gas, or about $1,700 out the window a year just sitting there. (That's on top of the average annual auto operating costs of over $9,600)
mobility.tamu.edu/ums/congestion_data/tables/national/table_1.pdf
Obesity:
Obesity is increasingly linked not only to poor diets and lack of exercise, but to the time spent sitting inside motor vehicles- take a look at this animated map - amazing! :
www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html
Accidents:
Our region wins the absolute worst Traffic Accident Rate award in the country. This is truly breathtaking: We rank 192 and 193 out of 193 regions in crashes.
assets.bizjournals.com/cms_media/atlanta/pdf/2009_Drivers_Report.pdf
Deaths:
Speaking of crashes, Motor Vehicles are the Number One killer of our young ages 3-33, by far, in the USA. Our region ranks in the middle nationally. Perhaps because we're mostly sitting in traffic and hitting each other at lower speeds…..?
www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810936.PDF
Meanwhile, we build more roads and provide more parking… that’ll fix it.
Parking garages are sprouting up like skunk cabbages. By adding to the parking glut, Baltimore continues to suburbanize itself with cheap easy parking encouraging even more people to drive into the city in lieu of public transit or bicycling.
it works like this: Auto oriented transit planning = Reduced travel options = Alternative modes are stigmatized = Suburbanization = More auto oriented land planning = Generous Parking and supply = More Dispersed Development = Increased Car ownership rates = more auto oriented planning and so on......
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