Santa Cruz County ranks second worst in state in bicycle deaths and injuries.

Santa Cruz County released a study that puts it second in California for cyclist deaths and injuries.

A driver, bicilyst or pedestrian is involved in a “serious crash” once every two days in Santa Cruz County.

That’s according to a new study analyzing the decade from 2014 to 2023 by the Community Traffic Safety Coalition.

Among California’s 58 counties Santa Cruz ranks second worst in bicycle injuries and deaths.

“But there's more bikers here than anywhere else for sure. There's more bikers. Yeah, that's why, there is more of us," said Santa Cruz cyclist Mike Kazoo.

224 people died over the decade and close to 1,500 seriously hurt.

“We have a lot of people that bike and walk in our community, and we don't have enough infrastructure, although, we're making great improvements. Most of the county has adopted vision zero, which is a, worldwide strategy to end all traffic fatalities in serious injuries,” said Kelly Curlett with Safe and Active Transportation for the county.

Now despite the widespread adoption of a mission to reach zero traffic fatalities, the report shows that throughout the ten years… injuries and fatalities actually increased slightly, despite a big dip during the pandemic.

They found that almost 30 percent of serious crashes were due to right of way violations with significant blame also falling to intoxication and speeding.

Bikers in the area had no shortage of ideas for why things are getting worse.

“The scary thing is the kids on the, e-bikes, wheelies, the wheelies down here. So, you know, santa cruz is known for wheelies on a regular bike, but us but those e-bikes go too fast," said Kazoo.

“Probably some unsafe bicyclists. I'm not going to. I want to victim blame, but I think some of the bicyclists just go blowing through stuff without looking to,” said Shane Robinson, Soquel cyclist.

“It's just insane down here dude like everybody's faded out of their minds. Everybody's merging into you. Nobody knows what zipper merge is. So. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that this is like peak fatality area for people on two wheels,” said Soren Clement, Felton Motorcyclist.

Curlett said the county is making strides in safety, and they want this study to raise more awareness.

“We also want to get people more involved in traffic safety efforts. There are, you know, classes and workshops that people can take. We really encourage people to advocate for, street design and policy changes like reduced speed limits. There's so much that we can do, but it takes our, the whole community to, create change. It's something that affects all of us.”

One measure they’ve taken in recent months: protecting sections of the bike lane on soquel avenue with pollards.

“Someplace was going to take them out because cars are crashing into them too much, and people are complaining about, like, it's kind of like, isn't that better than hitting a bicyclist in the lane? And it gets their attention again. So I think they should stay,” said Robinson.

Before they began looking into this, Santa Cruz Public Health tells me there hadn’t been studies like this before.
This one looked at a ten year span, but now they want to do a new study every year so they can be more in tune with the problem and quicker to adapt.