Hazards

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has access to, and shares, vital data about safety on U.S. roads. They're spot on with things like speeding or distracted driving, although it should be said that they tend to come out not-swinging about those things and their recommendations can sound more like gentle suggestions which drivers are free to ignore. Still, the recommendations exist.

So it's frustrating to people who engage in active transportation that the same NHTSA (people who deal with them a lot pronounce it "nit-sa") does come out strongly in one area: victim-blaming people who aren't in cars. This week, it's kids riding their bikes to school, and how the "best" protection they have is wearing a helmet and obeying traffic laws. To be clear: kids should absolutely be doing those things, and parents should be modeling and teaching that behaviour.

To be clearer: both are as far as they can be from the best protection kids on bikes could have. See, for example, the hierarchy of hazard controls when it comes to active transportation:

Source: Don Kostelec on Twitter.

It's not like NHTSA doesn't have access to this data. If advocates have it, then certainly the U.S. Department of Transportation has it. The problem is what they do with it, which often is not a freaking thing.

It's bad enough that kids are bound to fall down sometimes while learning to ride a bike. (Those are exactly the kinds of falls helmets are designed for. Keep those little heads protected!) It's a lot worse that our transportation organizations are so unwilling to do anything to support those kids, and their families, and their entire communities, when the act of riding bikes to school is a simple solution to a wide range of issues.

I hope, although I'm not holding my breath, that NHTSA will eventually listen to the advocates who keep pressing them to do better things with their data than browbeat people who are already doing their part to make traffic less painful for all.