A recent article in The Atlantic Cities highlights a new study conducted by the City of Minneapolis. The study was a “comprehensive crash analysis” of bikes. It looked through approximately 3,000 bike accidents involving cars between the years 2000 and 2010. The three main factors that led to bike crashes were lack of infrastructure, driver awareness, and rider behavior. Bicyclists played a role in 59 percent of recorded bike and car collisions. Bicyclists were most likely to fail to yield and disregard a traffic signal. Drivers contributed to 64 percent of accidents. (The numbers add to a number greater than a hundred percent because there are accidents where both the driver and the bicyclist are at fault.) Drivers were most likely to fail to yield or to be distracted while driving.
These accidents show that there is a need to improve bicycling infrastructure in cities. Dedicated bike lanes can lower bike related injuries by half. Even more impressive is that protected bike lanes (bike lanes that are physically separated by a divider from the street) can lower injury risks by 90 percent. Minneapolis intends to improve its bicycle infrastructure. It plans to add 183 miles of bikeway soon and to bring all of the city’s residents within a half mile of a bike lane by 2020. Adding bicycle infrastructure has another benefit—it makes bicycling safer by encouraging more riders. From 2000 to 2010, though the number of trips on bicycles increased, the number of accidents stayed constant. Proper urban bicycle infrastructure can make all the difference in the safety of a city’s bicyclists.
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