Splitting Hairs in Forest Hills

Transportation Alternatives’ Crashstat 2.0 gives us the information we need to identify the most dangerous streets for bicyclists and pedesestrians. According to Streetsblog, “This interactive Web site allows users to search through 11 years of bicycle and pedestrian crashes on easy-to-use Google Maps. Crashstat 2.0 displays 139,227 pedestrian crashes and 44,942 bike crashes.”

Transportation Alternatives has a page that ranks the intersection in each borough with the most crashes. There we are, #4, predictably just down Queens Boulevard:

• Manhattan: Park Avenue and East 33rd Street: 156 crashes
• Brooklyn: Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue: 120 crashes
• The Bronx: East Fordham Road and Webster Avenue: 99 crashes
• Queens: Queens Boulevard and 63rd Road: 72 crashes
• Staten Island: Victory Boulevard and New Dorp Lane: 34 crashes

One death trap even closer to us is the intersection of Queens Blvd. and Yellowstone Blvd.—1,523 crashes resulting in 1,482 pedestrian injuries and 41 fatalities in the past 11 years. Most of us have been sad witness to the bereavement that is a near-constant presence where these two streets meet up.

Part of Michael Bloomberg’s push for congestion pricing is to get more people up on bikes (remember his trip to Paris?). I’m all for that except for one “but,” and it’s a big but: I used to bike to work on a regular basis and it was, at times, terrifying. Cyclists are viewed as vehicular competition who lack the vulnerability of pedestrians. I sometimes felt like I was risking life and limb. I ultimately gave up my biking routine, though, when I thought about how much carbon monoxide I was inhaling while crossing the 59th St. Bridge.