If all you read was the press release of a new report by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), “Bicyclist Safety,” you would be forgiven if your take-away was: More bicyclists are being killed on American roads but they’re mostly helmet-less drunks -- and there aren’t enough deaths to make it a national issue anyway. The tone-deaf press release focuses on the share of fatalities of helmet-less riders and those with a high blood-alcohol level, without a single mention of speeding or driving behavior, and only a passing reference to Complete Streets. The press release ends with this gem of a comment from the GHSA Executive Director Jonathan Adkins: “Adkins noted that while bicyclist fatalities are a problem in some states, unlike many highway safety challenges, this is not necessarily a national issue.” He says this because there were “only” five fatalities in some states. If I told you there were no bicycle fatalities on the moon, would you say it was safe to ride there? Not without a helmet, I guess. It is a shame, because the full report itself is a little better. A little. It at least acknowledges and recommends counter-measures that can make bicyclists safer. The GHSA report highlights steps that bicyclists can take to protect themselves, but there are some excellent additional suggestions in the report that were left out of the headlines and infographics, but shouldn’t be. For example, the report clearly states the importance of controlling motor vehicle speeds, designing and building Complete Streets, bicycle boulevards, and neighborhood “slow zones.” It calls for providing information on driving safely with bicyclists in drivers’ education classes and on written tests. These are good suggestions. The report should have dug deeper into the issue of speed, however. Speeding is not only a contributing factor in bicycling fatalities, but in all roadway fatalities. Not every road may have dedicated physical space for bicyclists, but we can give every local government the right to lower speeds on its roads to improve the safety of all road users. Traffic deaths are preventable. Getting to zero traffic fatalities requires slower vehicle speeds and a comprehensive approach to road safety.
Chart courtesy of Transportation Alternatives While the GHSA ED says bicycling safety isn’t a national issue, we say it is. Safe streets for bicycling are safe streets. Period. Any transportation organization concerned with safety needs to make the bicycle their design vehicle. If you’ve made it safe for bicycling -– through speed control, attitudes, awareness, and infrastructure –- you’ve made it safe for driving, walking, and transit. Keeping bicycling safety in a larger transportation safety context is important. Asking bicyclists to protect themselves with reflective gear and helmets will not solve the larger problems. This report, and the reporting on it, shows how far we still need to go to get our transportation decision-makers to take a comprehensive, integrated approach to road safety. It is why we are supporting a Vision Zero framework that fits all of the pieces together. Source: bikeleague.org Bike Researchers: Safety Report 'Misleading'by Liz Murphy, October 29, 2014The Governors Highway Safety Association released a new report on bicyclist safety this week, and we responded with concern over the report's conclusion that bicyclists' safety is not a national issue. We weren't the only ones concerned. So we asked researchers and authors of City Cycling, John Pucher of Rutgers University, and Ralph Buehler, of Virginia Tech University, what they thought of this new report. Here's their take. As authors of the recently published book “City Cycling” by MIT Press, we disagree with some of the main conclusions reached by the Governors Highway Safety Association in their report “Bicyclist Safety.” The claim that bicycling has become much more dangerous is based on only data from 2010 to 2012 and is extremely misleading. Using
official data from the US Department of Transportation, the total
number of bike trips more than tripled from 1,272 million in 1977 to
4,081 million in 2009. Thus, even official U.S. Department of Transportation statistics completely contradict the conclusion reached by the Governors Highway Safety Association report. Simply examining the extremely short 2-year period from 2010 to 2012 is statistically unjustified and distorts the overall message of the Governors report. Cycling has become much safer over the past three decades, not more dangerous. Moreover, the report falsely claims that more widespread helmet use is the key to increasing cycling safety. Almost no one in the Netherlands and Denmark wears a safety helmet when cycling, not even children; yet, the cyclist fatality rate per bike trip is only about a tenth as high in the Netherlands and Denmark as in the USA, as we document in our “City Cycling” book for MIT Press (Ch. 2 and 7). Cycling is so safe in the Netherlands and Denmark because of much more extensive and better cycling infrastructure as well as dramatically lower speed limits for cars in residential areas. We agree with the Governors report that more should be done to reduce drunk driving by both motorists and bicyclists, and also with the suggestion to provide more separate cycling infrastructure for cyclists while reducing car speeds. But it is highly misleading for the report to suggest that cycling safety has gotten worse, on the basis of only two years worth of data. Likewise, we disagree that helmet laws are the key to improving cyclist safety. By far the most effective way to increase cycling safety is by improving motorist behavior, reducing car speeds, and providing more physical separation between cyclists and motorists by installed buffered bike lanes or fully separated cycle tracks, which have physical barriers between cyclists and motorists. Cycling in the United States has been getting safer over the past three decades. The Governors report does a disservice to public health as well as urban transportation by suggesting otherwise. We agree with the goal to make cycling even safer, but we disagree that requiring helmet use would be an effective way of doing that. |
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During
the same period, the number of cyclist fatalities fell from 922 in 1977
to 628 in 2009, a decrease of 32%. Taking into account the increased
level of cycling, the cyclist fatality rate fell by a dramatic 79%. In
short, cycling has become roughly four times safer per bike trip over
the past three decades.