Source: CVDaily Feed
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LOGAN — A new report from the Logan City Police Department is spotlighting automobile accidents involving bicyclists and pedestrians. The report showed where and when accidents occurred and who was at fault. It included data from 2011 till now and showed that accidents increase during the fall months.

Police Lt. Rod Peterson said the department compiled the report to study how these types of accidents are happening and why the fall months are the most dangerous.

“It gets darker sooner and of course you have the students back and maybe that does put more bicycles on the road,” said Peterson. “I think that it would be safe to assume that anytime you have more of them on the road, it is reasonable to say you are going to have more accidents.”

For each accident police noted the address, reason and who was at fault.

Peterson said the report showed that so far of the accidents occurring in 2014, 71% were the fault of the bicyclists.

“As we looked further into that,” said Peterson. “The majority of the 71% are that the bicyclists either did one of two things; they just road right into traffic and didn’t see the car or they rode their bike through the cross-walk and were struck.”

State code says if a bicycle is being operated on the roadway, the operator has to follow the same rules as motor vehicles and bicyclists can be cited if they violate those rules.

Peterson said a majority of accidents could be prevented if bicyclists would stop, check traffic and then walk their bike through the crosswalk.

“We just want to be very proactive and try to look at what the causes are of these things,” said Peterson. “Then try to somehow deploy some way of doing everything we can to educate people and do everything we can to try to prevent these accidents from occurring.”

There have been 14 auto-bicycle accidents so far this year and 11 auto-pedestrian accidents.


will@cvradio.com