The shrill warnings ahead of Citi Bike’s launch predicted “carnage” on streets packed with psychotic drivers and bare-headed, novice riders. Rutgers University public policy professor John Pucher predicted that cyclist injuries and fatalities in the city would double or triple in the program’s first year. But it has not come to pass. The New York Times on Monday reported that nobody has yet been killed on a Citi Bike in the program’s first five months, though about two dozen injuries have been reported, mostly minor. However, it won’t take many deaths in the areas served by Citi Bike to increase the toll by vast percentages. As the Times’ Matt Flegenheimer reports, only one cyclist has died in those parts of the city so far this year (not on a Citi Bike), compared to two in the same time last year. So for now, the overall death toll is down 50 percent.
