Two Cycling Deaths in June 2018 NM Traffic Fatality Report

by Scot

The monthly traffic fatality report from the Traffic Research Unit at UNM has been released. Last month saw a relative uptick in the rate of overall deaths:

tru june 2018 overall

And while the record pace of those killed walking our roadways very slightly slowed, the first two cycling deaths of 2018 unfortunately took place last month:

tru june 2018 by catergory

One of those killed, of course, was an 11-year-old boy trying to cross Moon NE at Los Arboles. I don’t have the story regarding the other death, and appreciate any readers who can pass it along. I can pass along two images and a thought or two regarding the intersection of Moon NE at Los Arboles, however:

moon at los arboles residential
Note the residential setting surrounding the intersection of Moon and Los Arboles 
moon at los arboles
Data collected by MRCOG shows an Average Weekday Traffic Count of only 3,611 in 2016. The current speed limit of 30 mph is too high. In such a low-traffic, high residential setting it should be 20 mph. This intersection is also only a block away from a elementary school crossing on Moon and Moon has bike lanes in both directions at this location. 20 is plenty for Moon at Los Arboles. It is very interesting to consider how the deadly incident last month involving an 11-year-old boy might have turned out differently with a lower speed limit.

 

Overall, non-motorized roadway users continue to account for more than 25% of all traffic deaths in New Mexico, and the first few days of July have already seen more carnage. Slow down out there, everybody.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s