🧵 In Today’s Edition

1. Changing Course
2. By the Numbers: Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety
3. What We’re Reading

Woodie Anderson (right) is the manager of Greensboro bike shop, Cycles de ORO. (Photo: Gale Melcher)

Changing Course

Imagine your drive home from work. 

Air conditioning blasting, music blaring, seven minutes left on your commute. 

Traffic is moving along, but there’s a huge gap ahead. 

Then you see why: a cyclist in one of the lanes, inching along past the 45mph sign. You take a breath, annoyed at the time eaten up by this one guy. 

Up ahead, cars skid to a stop as a teenager wearing a backpack scampers across the road.

That was close. 

In your rearview mirror, you catch a glimpse of the biker weaving into a neighborhood, balancing bagged groceries on each handlebar. 

And you can’t remember the last place you saw a crosswalk.

More nonmotorists like bikers and pedestrians are dying each year, according to data released this month by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The City of Greensboro’s Department of Transportation is now working with what they’ve got, and making big changes across the board. Its goal is to make the city car-optional, GDOT’s Transportation Planning Division Manager Tyler Meyer told The Thread.

That means giving residents the ability to move freely throughout the city without an undue amount of inconvenience, Meyer said.

“Obviously, Greensboro is car-optional today,” Meyer said. “It just might take you a lot longer to get where you’re going.”

Read the entire story here.

— Gale Melcher

Thanks for reading The Thread, a 3x week newsletter written by Greensboro editor Joe Killian and reporters Sayaka Matsuoka and Gale Melcher. Reach us with tips or ideas at greensboro@theassemblync.com.

Today, we bring you a look at non-motorist accidents using crash data between 2007-2024 from the N.C. Department of Transportation. In 2024, pedestrian accidents peaked at 17 in October, followed by 16 accidents in June. 

October is the most dangerous time for pedestrians. Since 2007, more than 200 total crashes have occurred during that month. Fall and winter seem to be particularly unsafe. The months of September, November, December, and January also accumulated high crash rates.

2012 – The year with the most cyclist accidents—62. 2015 had the second-highest with 55 accidents.

2015 – The year with the most pedestrian accidents—142.

357 – Pedestrians who have been hit at 4-way intersections since 2007—27 in 2024.

166 – Cyclists who have been hit at 4-way intersections since 2007—7 cyclists in 2024. 

50 – Young children between the ages of 1-12 who have been hit while riding a bicycle.

127 – Young children between the ages of 1-12 who have been hit by cars since 2007. The youngest victims, three 1-year-olds, were injured or killed in residential areas. 

113 – Greenways and sidewalks built by the city in the last 20 years, part of the city’s effort to make Greensboro more pedestrian and bike-friendly.  

In 2023, the South clocked 3.5 cyclist and pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people, making it the second most deadly region for nonmotorists. Between 2013 and 2023, pedestrian and cyclist deaths in the U.S. rose from 2.1 deaths per 100,000 people to 2.9, according data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

— Gale Melcher

Set Free: A federal judge has released a Greensboro man from Libya who was detained by ICE agents since July 17, after a tip that he was from Iran. Mohamed Ali Aboubaker Naser, who has five children, will be returning home within a few days. The News & Record has the latest.

Hospital Honor Roll: Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro topped a list for best in the Triad, according to U.S. News and World Report’s 2025 hospital rankings, beating out Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, the Triad Business Journal reports.

Fly Around Fest is hosting this music festival to celebrate Appalachia’s natural beauty and rich musical traditions while raising funds to support the recovery from the historic floods from Hurricane Helene on Aug. 1 & 2.

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