Bicycle safety - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bicycle safety is the use of practices designed to reduce risk associated with cycling

Cycling

Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...

. Some of this subject matter is hotly debated: for example, the discussions as to whether bicycle helmet

Bicycle helmet

A bicycle helmet is a helmet intended to be worn while riding a bicycle. They are designed to attenuate impacts to the skull of a cyclist in falls while minimizing side effects such as interference with peripheral vision...

s or cyclepaths really deliver improved safety. The merits of obeying the rules of the road

Vehicular cycling

Vehicular cycling is the practice of riding bicycles on roads in a manner that is visible, predictable, and in accordance with the principles for driving in traffic.The phrase vehicular cycling was coined by John Forester in the 1970s to characterize the...

including the use of bicycle lighting

Bicycle lighting

Bicycle lighting improves the visibility of the bicycle rider to others in dark conditions, i.e. to increase the rider's conspicuity and to enhance the ability of the rider to see, illuminating the way forward. Both reflectors and active lights are used to make the rider more visible, and many ...

at night are less controversial.

Bicycle crashes

According to a Department for Transport

Department for Transport

In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved...

reports show that cyclists in the United Kingdom have a higher killed and serious injury rate per million vehicle kilometres, which is half of the rate for motorcyclists and eight times the rate for motorists

Automobile safety

Automobile safety is the study and practice of vehicle design, construction, and equipment to minimize the occurrence and consequences of automobile accidents. Automobile safety is the study and practice of vehicle design, construction, and equipment to minimize the occurrence and consequences of...

.

The first recorded bicycle accident is probably a collision in 1842, reportedly between Kirkpatrick McMillan, an early rider of the velocipede

Velocipede

Velocipede is an umbrella term for any human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle....

, and a young girl in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

. The report, however, is vague and the identification disputed.

Causes of crashes vary according to local conditions. A study conducted in 2000 by the Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

found that single bicycle accidents accounted for 47% of all bicycle accidents, collisions with obstacles and animals accounted for 12%, and collisions with other road users accounted for 40%, with the remaining 1% having unknown or unclassified cause.

Even minor bicycle accidents not involving hospitalisation can cause important costs to the cyclist and to society. The Belgian SHAPES project has recently estimated the cost at 12 €-cent per kilometer cycled.

Defining safety

A cyclist who is hit by a car is more likely to be killed than one who just falls off.

As long ago as the early 1930s there were efforts to clear cyclists off the roads to make way for private cars, then largely a preserve of the elite. These were successful in Germany, then an authoritarian regime, and spread during the war to German-occupied countries such as the Netherlands where civilian motor transport was also crippled by fuel rationing, but was resisted in other countries.

During the mid-part of the twentieth century, the traffic engineering response to the increased use of motor vehicles in the United Kingdom, as in the rest of the industrialised world, was to look for solutions which not only eased the passage of traffic through the streets, but which also protected vulnerable road users from the dangers of the motor car. In the 1940s, an influential proponent of this ideology was Herbert Alker Tripp, an assistant commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police. Tripp argued in his book Town Planning and Road Traffic that: "If we could segregate pedestrians completely from the
wheeled traffic, we could of course abolish pedestrian casualties".

This philosophy was also pursued by Colin Buchanan, his 1963 report for the UK Government Traffic in Towns
Traffic in Towns
Traffic in Towns was an influential report and popular book on urban and transport planning policy produced in 1963 for the UK Ministry of Transport by a team headed by the architect, civil engineer and planner Professor Sir Colin Buchanan....

, defined future government policy until the end of the century. Buchanan himself knew that segregation had not been proven to work in the case of cyclists, he famously wrote in his 1958 book Mixed Blessing "The meagre efforts made to separate cyclists from motor traffic have failed, tracks are inadequate, the problem of treating them at junctions and intersections is completely unsolved, and the attitude of the cyclists themselves to these admittedly unsatisfactory tracks has not been as helpful as it might have been".

Primary safety

The state of knowledge regarding primary safety has advanced significantly through programmes such as Effective Cycling

Effective Cycling

Effective Cycling is a trademarked cycling educational program designed by John Forester, which was the national education program of the League of American Wheelmen for a number of years until Forester withdrew permission for them to use the name...

and the development of Britain's new National Standards for cycle training. In addition to technical improvements in brakes, tyres and bicycle construction generally (for example, it is now rare for a chain to snap and throw the rider when accelerating away from a stop), there are well-understood behavioural models which actively manage the risk posed by others.

Cycling experts such as the UK's John Franklin emphasise the importance of assertive cycling and good road positioning. Franklin advocates the use of road positions that will give cyclists a good view of the road, that will make cyclists visible to other road-users, and will discourage risky behaviour by other road-users; he often advocates the use of a centre-of-lane 'primary riding position' when negotiating hazards.

Rural safety

Direct rear impacts with cyclists are a more prominent collision type in arterial/rural road type situations. When they occur in such circumstances they are also associated with significantly increased risk of fatality. Data collated by the OECD indicates that rural locations account for 35% or more of cycling fatalities in Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Hard shoulders

The use of appropriately designed segregated space on arterial or interurban routes appears to be associated with reductions in overall risk. In Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, the provision of hard shoulders

Shoulder (road)

A hard shoulder, or simply shoulder, is a reserved area by the verge of a road or motorway. Generally it is kept clear of motor vehicle traffic...

on interurban routes in the 1970s reportedly resulted in a 50% decrease in accidents. It is reported that the Danes have also found that separate cycle tracks lead to a reduction in rural collisions.

External links

How to reduce the odds of a collision with other vehicle operators
Navigating safely through a highway construction project
Safety Quiz - Is Cycling as dangerous as we think it is?
Is Bicycling Safe? - If you follow the rules of the road and ride carefully, cycling is actually safer than driving.
Bike-Boxes at Traffic-Intersections in Portland Oregon, USA
US Consumer Product Safety Commission Bicycle Guidelines
The Belgian SHAPES project on commuter cycling

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