Several California cities including Davis, Palo Alto and Berkeley, have more than 5% of their workforce commuting to work by bicycle. In these cities, higher numbers of bicyclists have meant lower traffic congestion problems. But Los Angeles bicycle accident lawyers fear that the higher bicyclist population also means an increasing risk of collisions with motor vehicles.
According to Census Bureau data, 5 California cities – Davis, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Chico, and Mountain View – have more than 5% of their workforce commuting to work by bicycle. In fact, the city with the highest share of bicyclist commuters is Davis, where out of a total workforce of 29,663, 4,923 choose to bike to work. That makes it a staggering 16.6% of the population that choose to bicycle to work.
Similarly, in Palo Alto, bicyclists constitute close to 11% of the total commuting population, while in Berkeley, bicycling commuters make up 8.85% of the commuting population.
According to the Census survey, those are rough estimates because it is difficult to point out exactly how many numbers of workers commute to work every day by bicycle. For instance, the data does not include those people who ride to public transportation stations. It also does not include people who simply ride by bicycle to work once or twice a week. These people are not considered bicycle commuters.
Several cities in California have promoted bicycling, and California has several cities that do feature as some of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the country. However, the more the number of bicyclists, the greater the risk of accidents with motorists who are ignorant about the rights of bicyclists. Promotion of bicycling therefore should be combined with education efforts targeting motorists.