The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently reported that more than 1,100 bicycle riders died in U.S. traffic accidents in 2022. That’s a 77 percent increase from 2010 and the most bicycle fatalities in recorded history (which goes back to 1932).
Do bike lanes make streets safer for bicycle riders? Photo by Missouri Bicycle Federation.
Bicycle advocates blame the increase on larger automobiles, particularly pickups. But the numbers don’t necessarily bear that out. In order to reduce fatalities, they want “safer street designs,” but the numbers don’t support that either.
The first thing to note is that all of the increase in bicycle fatalities has taken place in urban areas, according to NHTSA’s Fatality and Injury Reporting System. Between 2008 and 2022, the number of rural fatalities has stayed roughly constant at around 200 per year while the number of urban fatalities has nearly doubled from under 500 a year to more than 900.
The share of urban bicycle fatalities involving pickup trucks increased only slightly, from 15.2 percent in 2008 to 19.6 percent in 2022. While that may seem like a large increase, it is due more to noise: the share involving pickups was 19.8 percent in 2010 and has fluctuated between 13.8 percent and 19.8 percent with no steady movement in any direction. A steady increase in the number of pickups should be associated with a steady increase in fatalities, not ups-and-downs like this.
The safer street designs that bicycle advocates call for usually amount to taking lanes away from cars in order to make space for bicycle lanes. Such lanes are designed to protect bicyclists from being hit from behind by automobiles.
However, only about a quarter of urban bicycle fatalities involve a motorist overtaking the bicycle. By comparison, more than 40 percent of urban bicycle fatalities take place at intersections, where bike lanes almost always disappear. Cities that install bike lanes while doing nothing at intersections are ignoring the most important locations of most bicycle fatalities.
Some people also blame the increase in bicycle and other fatalities on distractions caused by smart phones. But smart phones have been adopted worldwide and the United States is practically alone in seeing fatalities increase since they bottomed out in 2011. Some countries have seen small increases since the beginning of the pandemic, but not as big of an increase as in the U.S.
Again, all of the increase since 2011 has been in urban areas. For traffic fatalities in total, rural fatalities declined by 18 percent since 2008 while urban fatalities grew by 54 percent. Since the low point of 2011, urban fatalities have grown by 72 percent. Clearly, cities are doing something wrong.
Almost every major city in the country has adopted some sort of vision zero plan. Yet those cities have seen nearly all of the increase in bicycle fatalities and fatalities in general. Vision zero isn’t working and may even be responsible for part of the increase. Traffic safety advocates and bicycle advocates should work together to design safety plans that rely on actual data and not suppositions.
Why is that dam! gate there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEVbgdEgYrE
Reminder bicyclists are just as stupid.
They text, they don’t look, they cross at intersections regardless of light color.
Cyclists should practice stopping and starting. It’s a pain in the ass to stop and start on a bicycle, but stopping when on doubt about the safety to proceed will save your life. You can’t assume intersecting roads are clear; you have to slow down enough to check or stop.
Biking is practical in confluence with city block size. A standard NYC city block (Via 1811 plan) is 264 feet by 900 feet. Meaning One mile is 20 blocks with 19 intersections in between. So bicyclist may not like having to stop 19x, but anticipating constant flow depending on light.
Real solution is better, Bikes need to go in opposite direction of traffic, I never understood why bike lanes flow in car direction, because you cannot see the vehicles quickly coming up behind you.
“I never understood why bike lanes flow in car direction….”
This should improve your understanding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz7h0yJINMQ
That video isn’t really designed to weigh which version is safer. It starts from the conclusion that one way is safer and explains all the benefits of that way and the risks of the other way. But it doesn’t consider any of the benefits of riding against traffic or the risks of riding with traffic, either.
A lot of the risks it ascribes to contraflow riding are just as prevalent riding with traffic (e.g., left turns with traffic are just like right turns against traffic; weaving in and out of stop traffic). Several other risks are actually status quo risks – if contraflow riding is unexpected, then doing so creates risks, yes, but the opposite would be true as well.
The video also assumes bikers are taking a lane, which is prevalent in some places, but at least in my experience, usually not the case.
Back to the OP’s topic, I expect that intersection fatalities would dramatically decrease if bikers had to cross like pedestrians one direction at a time in a crosswalk.
FantasiaWHT,
The small city I live in has collected bike injury crash data for about 12 years. About 1/2 of injury crashes occurred when the cyclist was riding against traffic.
Drivers are not conditioned to look for something approaching them at 10-15 mph from their right.
1.–“design safety plans that rely on actual data and not suppositions.”
That is against the inherent nature of city planning fascists.
2.–Might because of drugged out homeless wandering around on their bikes. In Portland about 1/2 of pedestrian fatalities are homeless. Suggests something similar might be going on with bikes.
Let’s pick a city in the US for a fun experiment … Move all the pedestrians from sidewalks into the paint-defined bike lanes and put the bikes on the sidewalks.
And riders must walk their bikes across intersections — just like we were taught, but ignored, in elementary school.
Can you show us data with protected bike lanes?