Bicycle Safety Knowns & Unknowns

Traffic fatalities between 2007 and 2019 declined by 13 percent, but bicycle fatalities increased by 21 percent. In response, many cities have installed or are planning to install bike lanes, often by taking away lanes from automobiles. However, no one really knows whether such practices actually improve bicycle safety.

Cyclists riding at night are five times more likely to be killed in accidents than those riding in the daytime, yet most cities aiming to improving cycling safety are focused on other issues. Photo by PxHere.

A 100-page report on bicycle safety released in 2019 by the National Transportation Safety Board was able to draw upon at least eight large databases on bicycle accidents. Yet it was unable to definitively show whether the safety measures being taken by many cities, including bike lanes, road diets, and complete streets, truly increase bicycle safety or merely create an illusion of safety.

The report found that two-thirds of bicycle-motor vehicle crashes that injure the cyclist take place at intersections. Most bike lanes disappear at intersections and so do little to prevent such accidents. However, the report also found that 56 percent of fatalities took place between intersections, suggesting that crash severity can be higher between intersections. These are the types of crashes that might be prevented by bike lanes.

What the report doesn’t say is that 58 percent of midblock fatalities take place at night, which is well above the 47 percent nighttime fatalities at intersections. This may be because intersections are better lit than midblock areas, but it shows that keeping cyclists visible may be as important as giving them dedicated lanes.

These data come from the National Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). That system indicates that 52 percent of urban bicycle fatalities take place at night even though several sources (including other FARS data) indicate that only about 20 percent of cycling takes place after dark. This means that cyclists riding in cities at night are five times more likely to be killed in collisions than those riding in the daytime.

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The report describes several types of separated bike lanes, but admits that “Research on separated bike lanes in the United States has been limited and, thus far, has yielded mixed results.” One study, for example, found that bike lanes resulted in fewer total injuries but more severe injuries. Particularly frustrating is the fact that the NTSB report identified at least six different kinds of bike lanes, but had no information on whether some kinds worked better than others. This is partly because the FARS system doesn’t have information about whether or what kind of bike lanes were involved in accidents and partly because 800 fatalities a year is simply not enough to provide a statistically reliable sample for a lot of different street systems.

Since a plurality of bicycle fatalities take place on major arterials, the vast majority of which happen at night, providing cyclists with alternatives to those arterials would seem to be an important strategy. Bicycle boulevards — turning streets parallel to the major arterials into through routes for cyclists — are an easy way of doing so. Yet such boulevards are mentioned in the report only once, and then only to say that they are mentioned in another report. The report gives no indication that such boulevards can improve bicycle safety and may be able to do so better than bike lanes on arterials.

The report does discuss factors other than bike lanes that can improve safety. Based on the facts that that 62 percent of bicycle fatalities result from head injuries and that helmets can reduce those injuries by 60 percent, the report urges the states to mandate helmets for all cyclists.

Helmets may do more to reduce cycling deaths than bike lanes. Yet cyclists who favor dedicated bike lanes resist mandatory helmet laws, one of them saying, “if mandatory helmet use is a good idea for cyclists, why not pedestrians and motorists?” The answer, of course, is that head injuries may not be as big a factor in pedestrian and motorist fatalities.

While bicycle headlights and taillights may be able to improve safety at night, the report also notes that motor vehicle headlights could be improved to increase bicycle and pedestrian safety. Apparently, European headlights are more advanced than ours in that, when facing oncoming traffic, they can dim only the part of the beam that faces oncoming drivers, while keeping the high beam up on other parts of the road including where cyclists might be riding. Such headlights are illegal here and the report suggested that the Department of Transportation revise its headlight standards.

In short, helmets, better lighting, and bicycle boulevards may do more for cycling safety than road diets and complete streets. So it is disappointing to see so many cities focusing on the latter tactics rather than the former.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

18 Responses to Bicycle Safety Knowns & Unknowns

  1. JimKarlock says:

    WOW!
    That 100 page reports says bicycle fatalities are 79 per billion miles.
    And Wikipedia(1) shows 1.1 per 100 million miles. This is 11 per billion miles – SEVEN times that of cars.
    If you adjust for cars carrying 1.3 passengers, then the difference is even greater – NINE times the deaths!

    Am I doing this correctly?

    (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year

    Am I doing this correctly?

  2. Francis King says:

    It is a well-established principle that setting the speed limit at the 85th-percentile minimises overtaking manoeuvres, which are very dangerous. Overtaking manoeuvres lead to cars and HGVs trying to turn right through and over cyclists.

    The 85th percentile approach – recording all vehicle speeds, sorting them low to high, then picking a speed about 85% of the way up the list – doesn’t work when you introduce bicycles. A few percent of bicycles doesn’t change the 85th percentile speed very much, but they cannot typically manage the new speed. They are persistently overtaken. Very unsafe.

    To fix this, the standard approach – the orthodoxy – is to engage in displacement activity. Buses are stuck in congestion? Don’t fix the congestion, put in a bus lane. Bicycles get run over, because the speed limit is too high? Don’t fix the speed limit, put in a bicycle lane.

    As far as bicycle helmets go, the problem is that it is very hard to explain it to the layman (or woman). A physicist sees three speeds – up/down, left/right, forwards/backwards. The layman sees one speed – which is the speed that they are doing at that point. A helmet only good for 12 mph – what good is that if I’m doing 20 mph? A physicist sees that the vertical speed of falling off a bicycle is 12 mph, and so is content.

    Over the years there has been a lot of work done on bicycle safety. Recumbents are safer than standard bicycles, just as standard bicycles are safer than the old Penny Farthings or Ordinary bicycles. Bicycles can have fairings which reduce wind resistance, increase speed, and can provide some small crash resistance. The problem is that these designs are not very popular, are hand made, and consequently very expensive.

  3. rovingbroker says:

    Automobiles have streets and highways. Pedestrians have sidewalks and crosswalks. Bicycles need a third category physically separated by a barrier from the others. The idea that it is safe to have vehicles weighing thousands of pounds, moving at speed differentials from a few tens of miles per hour to a guaranteed fatal 60 miles per hour, passing within a few feet of a bicycle is ludicrous. Of course there will be injuries. Of course there will be deaths.

    I was once involved in setting up a route for a bicycle event. The organizer told us how important our job was saying, “There are two people in this room who have suffered life-threatening injuries while riding bicycles.”

    In simpler terms, it takes more than wearing a helmet and being careful to be safe.

  4. metrosucks says:

    Bicycle boulevards are the obvious solution. But these don’t fulfill planners’ dreams of taking away car lanes on busy arterials. So in typical government fashion: Create a problem, offer a government solution to the problem, which creates more problems of its own (bicycle rider injuries and fatalities), then increase government power and pass more rules & regulations as a result of government’s own incompetence/evil. Win/win for despicable government planners and anti-auto wacko’s.

  5. janehavisham says:

    If only there was other countries where people rode bicycles. If there were, we could look at their statistics to learn if their ideas of separate bike paths and tracks made bicycling safer or not.

  6. rovingbroker says:

    Giving a lift to the pro-cycling crowd is/are e-bikes …

    Even before the pandemic, bicycles were enjoying an uptick in demand from environmentally conscious consumers, but the risk of contagion on buses and subways have increased the appeal. The emergence of e-bikes, which boost power with an electric motor, has removed some of the sweat factor, making biking a viable option for more consumers after lockdowns lifted.
    [ … ]
    Governments are fueling the trend, offering buying incentives ranging from 100 euros ($113) to as much as 1,500 euros for heavy business users of e-bikes. Cities from Berlin to Lisbon are also opening up more space, with almost 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) of new lanes promised as a result of the public-health crisis [Coronavirus], according to the European Cyclists’ Federation.
    [ … ]
    [Pierer Mobility AG’s e-bike business, including the Husqvarna and R Raymon brands] revenue is set to triple to more than 100 million euros ($113 million) in 2020 compared with two years ago, and the bikemaker expects sales to jump to about 500 million euros by 2025, putting it at the heels of industry heavyweights like Dutch manufacturer Accell Group NV, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc. of the U.S., and Taiwan’s Giant Manufacturing Co. and Merida Industry Co.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-04/bicycles-are-pushing-aside-cars-on-europe-s-city-streets

    No mention of needing alternative transportation when it rains or snows.

  7. Builder says:

    I’ve had a fairly serious concussion due to an automobile accident and have been a heartfelt believer in head protection ever sense. I remember several years after suffering the concussion I purchased a bicycle and a helmet. After trying on the helmet and feeling how comfortable it was I was thinking that maybe I should just wear it all the time. I didn’t do this, of course, but my feeling illustrates how anxious I was to avoid another concussion.

  8. LazyReader says:

    Pffft……….. the European Union — is going to require all cars to be speed limited by 2022. So whether you buy a four cylinder economy car or a 550 horsepower Ferrai; makes no difference anymore, they go he same speed limit on city streets. Where as in the U.S. we’re going to pay 500,000 police or whatever, to badly, randomly enforce it? At 50,000 times the public expense and 5% of the effectiveness. We should ask ourselves why.

    I’m all for bicycle infrastructure. 1000 new cyclists is a huge boom to reduce automotive road stress, it takes 1000 car trips off the streets.

    • JimKarlock says:

      ” 1000 new cyclists is a huge boom to reduce automotive road stress, it takes 1000 car trips off the streets.”
      Not really, the average car has more than one person in it, so it takes MORE than one bike to take one car off the road.
      AND DON’T FORGET THAT Biking is almost 10 times as deadly as cars.
      How many people do you want to see killed?

  9. janehavisham says:

    https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/05/29/protect-yourself-separated-bike-lanes-means-safer-streets-study-says/

    “Cities that build protected lanes for cyclists end up with safer roads for people on bikes and people in cars and on foot, a new study of 12 large metropolises revealed Wednesday.

    Researchers at the University of Colorado Denver and the University of New Mexico discovered cities with protected and separated bike lanes had 44 percent fewer deaths than the average city.”

    • JimKarlock says:

      “44 percent fewer deaths than the average city.””
      How does that compare to BEFORE the built the protected & separated lanes?

      • rovingbroker says:

        JimKarlock asked, “How does that compare to BEFORE the built the protected & separated lanes?”

        Perhaps following the included link will reveal the answer. I’ll help you out …

        In Portland, where the population of bike commuters increased from 1.2 to 7 percent between 1990 and 2015, fatality rates fell 75 percent in the same period. Fatal crash rates dropped 60.6 percent in Seattle, 49.3 percent in San Francisco, 40.3 percent in Denver, and 38.2 percent in Chicago over the same period as cities added more protected and separated lanes as part of their Vision Zero plans.

  10. metrosucks says:

    Hey look, jane, I mean dan, is even citing streetsblog and colorado. What a coincidence.

  11. rovingbroker says:

    Bike And Carmakers Just Want Our Rides To Talk To Each Other

    At CES 2021, Tome Software announced that it is leading a joint effort to standardize Bicycle-to-Vehicle (B2V) communications. This year, the push for B2V has accrued additional supporters, among which are industry stalwarts such as Bosch, Specialized and Trek. Ford is a big part of it, too, as it has worked alongside Tome since the inception of the technology.

    https://jalopnik.com/bike-and-carmakers-just-want-our-rides-to-talk-to-each-1846066716

  12. janehavisham says:

    Thanks rovingbroker, exactly right. And yet the antiplanner can’t find any response.

  13. TCS says:

    Physically separated, complete-enough-to-be-useful pathway network for bicycles. Hmm. What’s the user fee model look like to accomplish that?

  14. rovingbroker says:

    Cycle lanes to be built on New York’s Brooklyn and Queensboro Bridges

    New York City’s mayor has revealed “radical” plans to turn vehicle lanes into cycling paths on two bridges across the East River and build five bicycle streets across the city in response to the pandemic.

    https://www.dezeen.com/2021/01/29/cycle-lanes-new-york-city-architecture-news/

    ” … in response to the pandemic.” Huh?

  15. rovingbroker says:

    Retired NBA Center Shawn Bradley Is Paralyzed After He Was Hit By A Car While Cycling

    Back in January, while out for a ride on his bicycle, former Dallas Mavericks center Shawn Bradley was hit from behind by a car just a block from his home in St. George, Utah. The 7 foot 6 inch tall NBA star suffered a severe spinal cord injury and was admitted for neck fusion surgery eight weeks ago. He has spent the time since hospitalized and undergoing physical rehabilitation.
    [ … ]
    Back in January, while out for a ride on his bicycle, former Dallas Mavericks center Shawn Bradley was hit from behind by a car just a block from his home in St. George, Utah. The 7 foot 6 inch tall NBA star suffered a severe spinal cord injury and was admitted for neck fusion surgery eight weeks ago. He has spent the time since hospitalized and undergoing physical rehabilitation.

    https://jalopnik.com/retired-nba-center-shawn-bradley-is-paralyzed-after-he-1846499296

    Bicycle “lanes” without physical barrier or separation from traffic are dangerous.

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