Delaware is Bicycle Friendly? Really?

May is National Bike Month, and according to the League of American Bicyclists, Delaware ranks fifth in the nation for being bicycle-friendly. Their scorecard for Delaware is available for download. Also, based on an April 2013 fact sheet from the USDOT National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2011 Delaware had no bicycle fatalities at all, compared to 5 for Maryland and 6 for Virginia. So Delaware cyclists aren't getting bumped off at high rates. But as to the "friendliness," I guess rankings like these depend on the metrics used.

When I first moved to the Wilmington area ten years ago, I used to ride my mountain bike all over New Castle County. It was great exercise and environment-friendly, but it was very, very scary. These days I mostly walk or ride the bus. But I remember vividly how difficult riding a bike was in many parts of New Castle County.

Out in the hinterlands of Greenville, Hockessin and Centreville, many roads consist of two narrow, winding lanes with little or no usable shoulder. It's beautiful out there, but dangerous for cyclists. I was always narrowly avoiding being mowed down by some suburban housewife driving to lunch or to pick up the kids, cell phone clamped to one ear, barely capable of controlling the behemoth SUV she was driving at a rate of speed that caused her to veer into the oncoming lane (where I was) at every curve. And no, I'm not being sexist, it really was always a female driver.

Riding is actually a little easier here in the city. But there are still a lot of drivers who think they own the road by virtue of having the bigger vehicle. They do the same thing to cyclists that they do to pedestrians. They ignore right-of-way laws and aggressively cut you off at every opportunity. As far as I've been able to tell, Wilmington police simply don't enforce these laws and motorists never get ticketed for their antics (even when directly observed by a police officer, as I've seen too many times), so drivers merrily continue this annoying and dangerous behavior.

It's true that we have very few "real" bike trails here in New Castle County. Most involve "sharing" the road with cars, and you know how that goes.  When you get to your destination, it's unlikely you'll find any kind of bike rack, either. Probably as a result of these issues - rude drivers, lack of separate trails for bikes, and scarce bike parking facilities - not many people here in the Wilmington area use bikes to commute, or even just to get around to do errands. Indeed, one area in which Delaware did not rank well, according to the NHTSA fact sheet, was percentage of population using bikes to commute. And of course, this certainly contributes to our low bicycle fatality rate. When hardly anybody is out there riding, there's nobody to be knocked off their bike and killed.

So Delaware's areas of needed improvement for bicycle-friendliness, per the NHTSA, include:

• Increasing the number of people using bicycles to commute to work;
• Adding a bicycle emphasis to a strategic highway safety plan, and
• Providing bicycle education for police and schoolchildren.

Based on my experience as a bicyclist here in NCCo, I'd have to say that while infrastructure is important - bike lanes, bike racks, etc. - education and enforcement of the laws that protect bicyclists from motorists may be even more important. As long as drivers are allowed to terrorize bicyclists with impunity, most people will be reluctant to give up their cars and take to their bicycles.

Beefing up the laws that protect bicyclists and pedestrians, and then implementing them in the form of an active, ongoing ticketing campaign, would go a long way towards making motorists more polite and compliant with applicable laws. Unfortunately, as with cell phone and seat belt laws, too many people are motivated more by the fear of a hefty fine than by safety concerns.