I’ll hazard a guess that Key West’s accident/injury picture is pretty good because the cycling is slow and laid back. Coaster-brake bikes predominate, and there’s not much point in having a hot-dog bike for a one-mile ride with a half-dozen stop signs en route. The island is 4 miles long, one mile wide. I doubt many trips are longer than two miles.

So when there’s a fall or collision, the cyclist isn’t carrying much speed into the mishap.

I’m not as discouraged by Key West as Mighk is. Sure, they have the NASCAR credo embedded in their driving habits. But they also have a belief in tolerance and laid-back living, and I believe this is one rare community where you can tell people, “Apply that principle to this situation,” and they’ll be receptive.

Risk of accident in an activity depends on participant’s abilities and application of those abilities (care, habits), on the physical conditions of the situation in which the activity is conducted, on the quality of equipment used, and on the behavior (habits, care, abilities) of others present.

Nevertheless, people tend to attribute accidents that occurred in conditions they consider to be risky primarily to factors inherent in the situation and beyond anyone’s reasonable control (“accident waiting to happen”) even when human errors or failures that the great majority of participants successfully avoid were main contributing factors, and to attribute accidents that occur in conditions they deem to be safe primarily to the (avoidable, careless, blameworthy) errors of participants.

In the former case, risk is held to be inherent in the situational conditions, and the behavior of involved non-victims is (largely) exonerated. In the latter case, source of risk is found in avoidable errors of participants, and situational conditions are exonerated.

Consequently, even where a study of exposure and accident rates might find that for participants following recognized safety rules, the risk of accident is equal or lesser in the “unsafe” conditions than in the “safe” conditions, the “safe” conditions may still be viewed by many as objectively safer.

If they removed every car from the island, everyone would be able to move around faster. If they removed every bicycle, the place would be an even worse gridlock. Perspective. It’s such an elusive thing.