The acknowledgment came in a Monday NY Times story on the latest report by the advocacy group Right Of Way. That report, entitled The Only Good Cyclist: NYC Bicycle Fatalities - Who's Responsible?, documented that driver error was the principal cause in at least 57% of recent bicyclist fatalities in NYC, and was a contributing cause in at least 78%.

Bicyclist fatalities soared to a record 35 in the city last year (MTR # 251, 252), drawing renewed attention to engineering and enforcement policies that privilege drivers over pedestrians and cyclists.

Right Of Way combed police reports in 71 fatal 1995-1998 bike crashes. The group found drivers took cyclists' lives in four main ways: unsafe or aggressive passing (23%-28% of cases); turning into a cyclist's path (15%); speeding (14%); and running a red light (10%).

In marked contrast to prompt victim-blaming in January, police officials declined to comment on Right Of Way's findings. "We're not going to get into trying to interpret someone else's data," an NYPD spokesman told the Times, although in fact the data used in RoW's report came from the police. The spokesmen said a planned five-year analysis of cycling deaths was unfinished, and conceded that the police had no explanation for the record number of cyclist deaths last year.

The NYPD's prejudice about cyclists' culpability, and the resulting free ride given to drivers, have lethal consequences. "Victim-blaming becomes a rationale for doing nothing to protect cyclists from drivers," report co-author Charles Komanoff told the Times. The Only Good Cyclistcharacterizes as "scandalous" the NYPD's failure to protect cyclists' rights - and its readiness to blame them when victimized by drivers.

The Only Good Cyclist is available at www.rightofway.org, along with RoW's 1999 landmark book on NYC pedestrian deaths, Killed By Automobile.