For Bicylists, There is Safety in Numbers
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 09. 9.08
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the more bicyclists there are on the road, the lower the rate of accidents. If you double the number of cyclists, the accident rate per cyclist will drop by a third.
"It's a virtuous cycle," says Dr Julie Hatfield, an injury expert from UNSW who address a cycling safety seminar in Sydney, Australia, on September 5 and quoted in Science Daily. "The likelihood that an individual cyclist will be struck by a motorist falls with increasing rate of bicycling in a community. And the safer cycling is perceived to be, the more people are prepared to cycle."
Helmet and reflective jacket- is this gear really necessary? image Bike Commuter tips
"It's a positive effect but some people are surprised that injury rates don't go up at the same rate of increases in cycling," says Sydney University's Dr Chris Rissel, co-author of a 2008 research report on cycling.
"It appears that motorists adjust their behaviour in the presence of increasing numbers of people bicycling because they expect or experience more people cycling. Also, rising cycling rates mean motorists are more likely to be cyclists, and therefore be more conscious of, and sympathetic towards, cyclists."
Dr. Rissel also reinforces a point made by many TreeHugger readers whenever I promote helmets: "We should create a cycling friendly environment and accentuate cycling's positives rather than stress negatives with 'safety campaigns' that focus on cyclists without addressing drivers and road conditions. Reminding people of injury rates and risks, to wear helmets and reflective visible clothes has the unintended effect of reinforcing fears of cycling which discourages people from cycling."
Paul Dorn the Bike Commute Tips Blog concurs. "Amen to this. Stop perpetuating the myth of bicycling as a dangerous activity. Leave your helmet at home." hmmm. ::Bike Commute Tips Blog
Paul also directs us to an earlier study by PL Jacobson saying much the same thing: "Conclusion: A motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking and bicycling if more people walk or bicycle. Policies that increase the numbers of people walking and bicycling appear to be an effective route to improving the safety of people walking and bicycling." ::Safety in numbers: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and bicycling
More on Bike Safety in TreeHugger
'Eye to Eye' Project to Promote Bicycle Safety in Oregon
Physically Separated Bike Lanes: Concrete is Better Than Cops
Bike Safety Tips From MP Olivia Chow
Freakonomics on Bike Safety
Scary Fifties Bloody and Gory Filmstrip on Bike Safety
Surviving The Summer of Splat
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Virtuous cycle? The term I'd use for this is a 'positive feedback loop.' The only difficulty lies in gaining the 'critical mass' to start things going.
::biked 8 miles to work this morning::
I love riding my bike and I would love to see it get safer. But, as a driver, I would like to see it get safer for the cars on the road, too.
With some cyclists veering from the road to the sidewalk, creating their own lanes, and whipping around cars and people, they are as much of a danger to themselves as they are to drivers (not so much that they can hurt a car as that they can cause an accident).
When I drive, I follow the rules of the road, whether I am in a car or on a bike. I wish other cyclists would do the same.
It would benefit both drivers and cyclists and make the roads safer for everyone.
Cheers!
Yeah...my main reason for not biking is that I fear for my safety. I'm taking a cycling class this weekend and hopefully it will give me the confidence I need.
I only drive when "necessary" and try to combine all my trips. I just wish my city was more bicyle friendly. I'm working on trying to educate the city leaders.
If there is anyone in the central Arkansas area who wants to improve safety conditions or whatnot for cyclists, PLEASE go to www.metroplan.org. They have a survey you can take and there are also town hall meetings around the central Arkansas area. =]
Counterintuitive? Hardly. It makes perfect sense. Most bicycle accidents happen when the driver doesn't see the cyclist. With more cyclists, that increases both movement and mass in the drivers visual viewport, increasing the awareness of cyclists on the road.
@Paul
The critical mass will coming soon: $10/gal gasoline.
@ almost vegetarian
I agree there are some bad seeds who ride bicycles dangerously. They are small minority, though, and Darwin's theories show that those who engage in risky behavior will soon be removed from the gene pool.
A "virtuous cycle"! I like that quote. It activated my pun neurons: for anyone thinking of opening a commuter/utility bike store, that would make a lovely name for the place.
More seriously though, this does jive partly with what John Pucher's research has shown about some places in northern Europe, where a large proportion of drivers are also cyclists AND where laws REQUIRE drivers to be cyclist-aware on the principle of anticipating and yielding to the more vulnerable.
The streetfilms.org clip of a Vancouver lecture of his is well worth viewing.
I just attended the ProWalk/ProBike Conference in Seattle last week, and there were similar results announced for Portland - numbers of cyclists up, accidents down. And never forget that our numbers are still much higher than those in the Netherlands and Denmark.
And yes, there are some interesting treatments done in the Netherlands (even England - 2 bike lanes on a road only 20 feet wide). Take a look at some of the new things being done in New York City with separated Bike Lanes, and Bike Share Programs (see Montreal).
in an accident i'd rather have my fluresent jacket and helmet, thankyou.
i'd like to cycle AND keep my brians in my head AND skin on my body!
cas, I can understand your concern for your brains staying inside your skull and your skin attached to your body, but two things need to be kept in mind:
1) Since we know that statistically (take a look at the summaries of research at cyclehelmets.org), cycling is a very low risk activity in terms of fatalities, less so even than walking, it makes even more sense to wear a helmet and vest while walking and exposed to vehicles on the street (for example while crossing a street or getting into/out of a vehicle) or even, to avoid being killed or injured by a bus wing mirror, as has happened in several cases recently here in Montreal, while waiting for a bus. Injuries and death are not less serious because you are not on a bike, nor more serious because you *are* riding a bike.
2) Again, spilled brains are likely to be the result of impacts of the kind of velocity and force that most helmets are not designed to protect against. A recent highly publicised fatality in Chicago involved massive head trauma to the victim -- who always wore a helmet and was doing so at the time he was killed by a car.
Another illustration of the relative merits of promotion of cycling as a normal activity vs a blinkered obsession with the hazards that are supposedly (but not factually) unique to cycling as opposed to other daily activities: there are reports of Vancouver, Melbourne and Tel Aviv abandoning or having diffuculty setting up bike-sharing schemes because of the helmet compulsion laws in effect in their jurisdictions. The basic idea behind these schemes is for people to be able to pick up a bike on the spur of the moment when needed, but helmet sharing is faced with the potential hygiene problems and the unlikelihood of people carrying around their own bike helmets wherever they go just in case they need to pick up a shared bike for a trip somewhere. This is a reason that the Washington DC bike sharing scheme consciously decided to forgo helmets, leaving their use (or non-use) up to users. This in the country where the helmet fixation is so ingrained that bike lanes are signalled with pictures not of bicycles but of bicycles ridden by HELMETED human figures (as bizarre and irrational to most of the rest of the world as the Saudi Arabian pedestrian crossing signs showing headless human figures).
Don't wear a helmet because it makes biking look 'dangerous'? No thanks. Why not tell drivers to not wear their seat belt, because it gives a negative impression of driving? Why not remove airbags from new cars, because it makes them seem more 'dangerous'?
When I was around 10 years old, I was riding over to a friend's house. On the sidewalks, actually going pretty slowly. My friend, who was in front of me, stopped; I did not. I hit his bike from behind, at a very low speed. That was enough to send me over the handlebars, landing on hard concrete. I skinned my knee. Hurt, but a little washing and a few bandaids later, it was just fine. Later, I looked at my helmet.
It had a huge scratch on it. Larger than the one on my knee. About the size of a lighter. If I hadn't been wearing a helmet, instead of being *plastic* it would've been *my head*. Instead of a few band aids, I would've almost certainly had to go to the hospital. At best, I probably would've lost some hair (if not from the crash, from having to remove it to treat injurties), and had a very painful and ugly cut (and scab) on my head. It could've been far, far worse.
There is no good reason not to wear a helmet. Not wearing one because you think you're going to help the perception of cycling is positively asinine.