


Four out of five of those deaths could have been prevented had the cyclist been wearing a helmet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of them, about 67,000 suffer head injuries, 27,000 are hospitalized and about 800 die - mostly due to collisions with cars. Each year, about 580,000 people end up in emergency rooms due to cycling crashes. With more than 85 million cyclists expected to hit American roads in the next few weeks, the overarching theme of this course was readily apparent: to minimize the chances of becoming a casualty in the transportation wars. None of the bicyclists critiqued their own maneuvers - more on that later. Riders told of motorists who were driving too fast, distracted by cellphones or iPods, and others just plain oblivious to the concept of sharing the road. There were plenty of close-call stories from the dozen or so other cyclists who signed up for “Traffic Skills 101,” an eight-hour bicycle safety course presented by the nonprofit groups Local Motion and the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition. Thankfully, Britt had a good set of brakes.

He was just minutes from the Department of Public Works when a driver at the intersection of Pine Street and Flynn Avenue failed to stop at the blinking red light and nearly ran into him.

