Tom Greenwood of the Detroit News writes a decent column about commuting, but he’s kicking off 2009 on a sour note.

It’s the first day of 2009, so let’s start the year with some fun famous first facts concerning cars, roads and traffic.

Greenwood’s first “fun” fact is the first car crash occurred in 1896 when a motorist hit a bicyclist.

His second “fun” fact was in 1899 when a motorist killed a pedestrian — the first fatality caused by a car.

Injury crashes and fatalities are not fun and should not be trivialized.

We reminded him that in Michigan last year, motorists struck 2,160 bicyclists (18 fatalities) and killed 133 pedestrians.

Tom Greenwood can be contacted at commuter@detnews.com, (313) 222-2023 or by writing to The Detroit News, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226.

Tags: Detroit News, Safety

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.