Bicycle Accidents Take a Heavy Toll in Havana

Accidents involving bicycles, which are clogging the streets of Havana because of a fuel shortage in Cuba, killed 40 people in the capital in the first half of 1991, officials said Wednesday.

Cuba’s Communist government has imported tens of thousands of Chinese and Soviet bicycles to offset disruption to the public transport system caused by a national shortage of fuel, the result of a falloff in supplies from the Soviet Union.