Steve Magas is Ohio's Bike Lawyer. He has written about Ohio Bike Laws, bike crashes, bicycle advocacy and court cases for some 30 years. Soon we'll be adding a series of features about your favorite Ohio bike shops.
In addition to working with cyclists here at the BikeLawyer’s World HQ we are also involved in Pedestrian Safety & Advocacy. I’m working on an article now called “The Law of Walking Around” which will trace a bit of the history of pedestrian laws and discuss the WEIRDNESS of current pedestrian laws in Ohio as well as current trends in pedestrian safety.
The local public TV news folks at WCET reached out to me as they are doing a piece on pedestrian & bike safety so I’m doing an interview with them this afternoon – should be interesting!
Statistically Ohio remains a SAFE place, generally, to ride a bike and walk around compared to other bigger states …but… we want MORE… and…
Ohio is also mirroring the national trends – MORE crashes and MORE deaths of cyclists and riders… a trend that started back around 2009 for ALL vulnerable road users, including motorcyclists…
Every once in a while these articles come out ranking the “Most Dangerous Cities” for cycling or walking … Here’s the latest…
No 1 WORST for WALKING? From this article that title goes to…Ta Da… Albuquerque, NM, based on 9.24 fatalities per 100,000 people.
The rest of the list is a bit surprising… After Albuquerque there is Memphis, Baton Rouge, Miami and Lexington, KY?
The “rate” of fatal crashes is what they look at, not the total number. For total numbers, Florida leads the league… by a LOT – and has for many years. There are still Florida cities within The Most Dangerous – Miami is no. 4 on the walking list… Lexington is there because it had 49 car crash fatalities, which is not a big number, but 22 of those were pedestrians! Lexington’s fatality rate for pedestrians is 3x the national average
In Ohio, Cincinnati was the “worst” as it ranked 37th nationally with a rate of 3.55 deaths per 100,000 people. Next was Cleveland at 3.27 and then Columbus at 2.65. Nationally, the US Rate 2.21 deaths per 100,000 people so all 3 Ohio cities were worse than the national average!
Some [bad] numbers about driving in the US… Car crashes now kill OVER 40,000 people every year in America – car crashes have become one of the leading causes of death in this country. There are some 6,000,000 car crashes every year that result in injuries and property damage (and we wonder why auto insurance costs so much).
CRASH DATA FROM FARS/NHTSA: ~ 19,937 motor vehicle crashes occur every day in the United States. – There are around 118 deaths caused by auto accidents each and every day. Imagine a 120 seat airplane crashing…due to negligent pilot behavior… every day
Injuries: An estimated 6,849 injuries happen each day due to car accidents.
In 2022, a total of 42,514 fatal car accidents occurred on roadways across the United States. Another 1,664,598 crashes resulted in injuries and 4,226,677 caused property damage. In all, the number of police-reported crashes that year hit 5,930,496. – Forbes
From 2018 to 2022, the number of deadly accidents in the United States increased by more than 16% — from 36,835 fatal car crashes in 2018 to 42,795 fatal car crashes in 2022. 41,000 people were killed in US car crashes last year (2023). – USA Today
NHTSA has now published 2023 FARS data and the numbers are NOT any better. In the 30 years from 1994-2023 a total of 1,176,187 people have been KILLED on US Roads. That many people would be the 10th largest city in the US…
Ohio is seeing comparable problems – 1100 people are killed on Ohio roads each year. There are 250,000 car crashes involving over 500,000 people.
Traffic Deaths bottomed out in the US around 2010, dipping just slightly below 33,000 for a couple years and then started climbing, and climbing and CLIMBING. From 32,479 in 2011 to 42,471 in 2022. 9,992 more deaths today than in 2011 a whopping THIRTY PERCENT INCREASE in a decade
Why?
That’s worth studying – social media started, and blew up in this time period… as did the development & sale of phones capable of doing a lot more than making phone calls. Suddenly, from your car, you could receive & review a fax or spreadsheet, search the World Wide Web, go online to look at a menu, watch TV or a Movie, take a photo or video, download data, upload to any of the dozens of media pages… all while “DRIVING”… and did car makers take steps to stop this? Ummm… NO… the InfoTainment systems that used to just play music now have screens the size of large iPads and have become CRASHerTainment systems…
The bottom line is that people SUCK at driving cars – they run into buildings – poles- curbs- other cars and people on bikes or motorcycles, as well as people just walking around – People in the US drive their cars so poorly that they are killing others in record numbers… it’s more than an issue, it is a public health problem. What’s the answer? I’m not “carceral” per se, but I think if people knew there would be STIFF punishments for careless driving they’d be more…careful… but that’s just me…
In some places there is so much concern for E-BIKES that they are passing local laws prohibiting them, or allowing forfeiture/impoundment… I’m really NOT against that…for cars…
Perhaps just having in the law the ability of LEOs or the Courts so simply lock up their cars for a time will slow folks down – I dunno – SPEED is clearly the problem. Speed KILLS… and the current “system” of safety by ticketing is failing everyone…and the answer is NOT “get everyone ELSE off the roads so cars can go even faster” – the answer is slowing down traffic so motorists kill and maim fewer people – if allowing the government to impound cars for a specified term gets that job done, I’m all for it…
While I was in DC many years ago for the National Bike Summit I met Eleanor McMahon, a Canadian visitor who tagged along with the Ohio contingent. Her story was a very sad one. Her husband was a cyclist, and police officer, who was killed while riding [off duty] on the road. The motorist was not licensed. He had over 5 license suspensions – and multiple crashes. She did some research that showed an extraordinary percentage of people drive on suspended licenses. She developed a bill called Greg’s Law, after her husband. This bill substantially upped the penalties for repeat offenders – fines up to $50,000 – and imposed a 7-day Impoundment of the offender’s vehicle. Sort of a cooling off period, which has been effective. Eleanor was a very effective advocate for us in DC and for her constituents later when she was elected to government in Canada!
I was going to be a Math Teacher, not a lawyer. I received a BA in Math & a BS in Education from the University of Cincinnati WAY back in 1979. But THEN I took the LSAT and ended up making a right angle turn into law school. [I see what you did there…]
Those math things still swim around in my brain. I’m sure the analytical side helped some in law school [although the lack of reading WORDS, not equations did NOT]. Today I look hard at numbers… statistics surrounding cycling mostly… and the numbers… are not good.
The worst year ever for cycling deaths, until recently, was way back in 1975 when 1002 riders were killed in the USA. Back then some 79% of those killed on bikes were… KIDS… while only 21% were adults…
The 1st shot below is from the Late 1980s – Pre-Dawn on the Saturday before Mother’s Day… getting ready to depart Columbus with 4 or 5,000 other early risers…
IYKYK – If you have ridden bikes in Ohio for any significant time you probably know… TOSRV is the GrandDaddy of all the Acronym Rides… the Tour of the Scioto River Valley – 105 miles from Columbus to Portsmouth on Saturday and 105 miles back to Columbus on Sunday, Mother’s Day… a classic early season weekend!
There I was – a young 30-something newbie lawyer in my Bike Nashbar shorts and big Bell helmet. Mesh gloves – Beta? brand cycling shoes. Riding a Schwinn Le Tour Luxe…
My riding buddy Terry was a high school classmate who was living Cincinnati at the time. Terry rode a LOT and was/is a STRONG rider- I was…not…
I am Downloading preliminary Ohio Crash Stats for 2024…
Hold on a sec… Maybe you should refill the coffee, this might take me a bit…
Well, it was ANOTHER BAD YEAR in Ohio… 24 cyclists were killed on Ohio Roads… because this is preliminary data, there may be more from later in the year that did not make it into the ODPS database yet…
We look, first and foremost, at the PEOPLE, not the numbers. Each of these 24 riders was a human being who was snatched from this life while riding a bicycle along the roadway… before we look at the why or the how or the Who was AT Fault, we grieve for the family and friends of the folks riding the bike… The PEOPLE include 2 kids- 9 and 12 yr old boys.
In the crash below, 2 riders were hit from behind in broad daylight- 9 year old Tide Bartlett was killed and his 10 year old riding buddy, was severely injured.
The police report is very cold – very dry – but leaves a lot to the imagination when trying to figure out exactly what happened…
We look at DATA to see what happened and why – to learn lessons from each crash – to search for common problems – problem areas of the roadway – common mistakes made – common investigative tactics and common misunderstandings… But we also order up ALL the public records for each case to try to figure out for ourselves exactly what happened in these cases, and why…
In the crash that killed 9 year old Tide Bartlett multiple news reports indicate that the area of the crash has been reported as DANGEROUS for YEARS… One resident noted that while there is a 25 mph speed limit almost nobody actually goes 25… Another recent story indicates that several people were recently appointed to a dormant BAC, Bicycle Action Committee… we’ll see what comes out of that as well…
One thing we do here at The BIkeLawyer’s World Headquarters is keep an eye on the BIG Picture as well as handling individual cases throughout the State of Ohio. We also try to keep track of particularly egregious crashes to see how they were investigated by police and pursued by prosecutors. Sometimes we find cycling crash cases getting shoved aside and sometimes they are very aggressively handled…
To help us look at Ohio data we often start at the Ohio Bicycle Federation’s website- www.OhioBike.org. I have been an OBF Board Member for many years. We developed a spot on the website to allow folks to take a look at some crash data.
If you go to the website there is a dropdown menu for “COLLISION DATA” – Once there you’ll see tabs for BIKE MAP and PEDESTRIAN MAP.
Clicking the BIKE MAP tab will bring up a map of Ohio. Each bike crash that occurs on the road is marked with a DOT. These dots come from data found in the Ohio Crash Reports gathered by the Ohio Department of Public Safety. This means there is typically motor vehicle involved. Today, the crash reports include GPS coordinates and our Bike Crash Map pulls the location data and sets out the dot. When you open the big map you can choose to see the data 1 year at a time or have data from many years shown at once.
Here’s a visual view of where crashes happened statewide in Ohio from 2020-2024.
As part of that process I like to search for other Bike Law pages for other lawyers locally, throughout Ohio and around the country and see what they are doing.
Some folks have very sophisticated, professional pages – tremendous pages- something for us to strive for – The NYC BikeLawyer, Dan Flanzig and Flanzig-New York Bike Lawyers has a great page. The folks at Bike Law do a great job. Many Type A “bike lawyers” come at this from the hardcore tri/race scene – some are more casual. You can tell who actually rides and has some passion for protecting your right to ride and the ones who …well… are just trolling for cases…
Let’s just say that there are many lawyers out there trying to capture “bike crash cases” using very routine marketing efforts – their consultants told them “You need a page on bike crashes” and then sold them a cookie cutter webspage that might SAY “We do Bike Cases” but you can tell they couldn’t tell a disk brake from a derailleur. They often cite some out of date statistics, list some typical”causes” of crashes [speeding, distraction, drugs, etc] , have a list of “injuries” designed to be captured searches [“bike crash brain injury” – “Fractures” “Nerve Damage”] and feature a photo of a smashed up bike that they purchased from Getty.
A few examples below. These are from several different local and statewide law firms – each misstates Ohio or local law – or implies that riding in traffic is super dangerous, or more dangerous than riding, say, on the sidewalk.
This bit of data simply misstates Cincinnati’s sidewalk law and then implies that riding on the ROAD…GASP… put you in DANGER…
Here’s another example that implies that you are “forced to ride bumper to bumper” with cars and trucks if there is no bike lane… dude… there are NO BIKE LANES ON 99% of the Roads in Ohio… yet, we RIDE on 99% of the roads in Ohio …every day… generally very SAFELY interacting with cars. When people don’t do STUPID/CARELESS things we can safely ride with traffic, in traffic… remember the mantra? Cycling Savvy folks will remind us that:
WE ARE TRAFFIC
These law firms & their marketing consultants don’t understand that road cyclists generally KNOW what they are doing – they know the law- they protect themselves & work at riding safely- these lawyers and their consultants develop webpages that basically treat road cyclists like they’re 10 yr olds darting in and out of traffic…
One of the worst is the last photo listed. It’s from a “big name” Ohio injury law firm – and it completely MISSTATES Ohio law – I mean gets it 100% BACKWARDS in a way that I didn’t even think was conceivable.
Screenshot
They claim it is UNLAWFUL for a cyclist to pass traffic on the right…this is FALSE –
But the bigger deal is that they claim that: –>” If the lane is too narrow to safely travel side by side, SINGLE FILE RULES MUST BE FOLLOWED”
Say WHAT?
Dude- did you even READ the statute – do you have any CLUE what you are talking about?
Clearly these folks and their marketing teams need to take my BIKE LAW 101 seminar for lawyers & judges. I spend 2-3 hours going over Ohio Bike Law, bike crash scenarios and key elements of Bike Crash cases that are different and more challenging than run-of-the-mill crash/injury claims. Maybe I’ll send them some of our Ohio/Kentucky BIKE LAW cards…
We [the Ohio Bicycle Federation] fought HARD for YEARS to get 4511.55(C) added to the Ohio Revised Code as part of the 2006 Better Bicycling Bill. I helped write that revision – it adds a SECRET WEAPON to our legal arsenal – the “Too Narrow” provision that ALLOWS US TO TAKE THE LANE- These YaHoos would have you think the “too narrow” provision MANDATES SINGLE FILE RIDING… Sheesh – I may need a drink… that is just DUMB
I helped write 4511.55C and all the other 2006 changes in the law that were adopted by the legislature – I argued for the passage of the bill before the Ohio legislature. I THINK I know a bit more about Ohio Bike Law than most folks… SO I think you can take THIS to the bank:
=> 4511.55C does NOT mandate single file riding- completely the OPPOSITE.
=> 4511.55C is an EXCEPTION to the AFRAP Rule. An exception to 4511.55A.
=>4511.55A mandates riding “as near to the right side of the roadway as practicable” – 4511.55B is the part of the statute that allows riding two abreast EVERYWHERE.
=> 4511.55C says that you DON’T HAVE TO RIDE OVER TO THE RIGHT IF THE LANE IS TOO NARROW. It has NOTHING TO DO with the two abreast rule – single file riding is NEVER MANDATED under Ohio Law.
=> 4511.55C is a LANE POSITION statute that modifies the AFRAP rule found in 4511.55A & it gives you the legal right to TAKE THE LANE and use ANY LANE POSITION YOU WANT when the lane is too narrow to be shared by the bike & a MOTOR VEHICLE…
Maybe instead of a Cookie Cutter lawyer you need to find yourself a good BIKE LAWYER if you are injured while riding your bike! Somebody who KNOWS the law – who helped WRITE the law – who has been protecting YOUR RIGHT to the road and arguing with insurance companies and their lawyers over The BIKE LAW for some 40+ years!
Needless to say – OUR New & Improved & Revised Ohio BikeLawyer website will NOT be misquoting ANY of Ohio’s bike laws. I have helped write and pass many of the current laws. A few years ago I was retained by ODOT for a project for ODOT which involved a complete review & analysis of EVERY bicycling and pedestrian statute.
These lawyers are not stupid – they are a hot shot firm representing injured people. They handle big and small injury and death cases. They DON’T DO a lot of bike cases, but they see them as a Target Market – they want the cases without doing the deep dive to really understand what makes them unique.
There are lawyers advertising for bike case who are apparently lazy when it comes to posting on BIKE Law – they treat cyclists as a product who are too stupid to understand the law – they did a quick one-time read through of 4511.55 and completely misinterpreted the law and then put it out on the “Bike Crash” webpage for all to see…
Bottom Line – CHOOSE WISELY when choosing a lawyer or law firm to represent YOU and protect YOU in the event of a serious bicycle/bike crash!
If you have been injured in a Bicycle, Motorcycle or Car Crash you may be worried paying for your medical bills, you may be incurring lost wages, you may be experiencing pain and suffering like you never could have imagined. You may have an insurance adjustor calling you – being NICE – telling you “You don’t NEED a lawyer- I can send you a check…” Remember, the insurance company you are dealing with wants to pay you NOTHINGAT ALL, if possible, or the least amount of money it can get away with! If you don’t protect your rights, you may not be able to make a claim, or you may get “BAMBOOZLED” [as the Ghost in the current Insurance Company TV ad says] .
I published a fun photograph on Twitter/X a few days ago of a bunch of kids’ bikes parked in my granddaughter’s yard… and made the joke that we had purchased our 4 year old granddaughter a bike and within a day or two she was apparently in a neighborhood gang… it apparently struck a nerve…
