Bekologist

a story here league of american bicyclists report on minneapolis phenomenon showing minneapolis as yet another city that is exhibiting a safety in numbers phenomenon amongst the population there.

as more people cycle in minneapolis -in no small part as a result of Hennepin county and the twin cities cities planning for bicycle traffic - there are less crashes and collisions.


I think Robert Hurst likes to ascribe this affect as being somehow an indicator of a maturing of the cycling population. I hope i characterized his take on safety in numbers correctly.

The evidence i believe, indicates something much more pervasive and systematic than the explanation that bicyclists from earlier bike booms have now matured into skilled traffic cyclists.

The bicycling population represents a wide range of ethnographic diversity and skill levels in all the cities recording this 'safety in numbers' phenomenon.

As more people ride in a community, motor vehicle operator and bicyclist interactions become more normalized.

Bluntly, more motorists are more cognizant of more bicyclists.

Less recorded serious crashes and collisions seem to be one of the results from planning, programs and a cultural ethos that support roadway bicycling.

mnemia

There probably is a correlation, but the question is what direction causality is going in. It's not clear to me that having more bicyclists around increases safety...perhaps there are more bicyclists around because it's safer, rather than the reverse. The safety improvement could also be caused by some other factor, perhaps cultural or based on the attitude of law enforcement. Just looking at the correlation and concluding that more bikes = more safety is overly reductionist and ignores the complex factors involved on all sides of the issue.

crhilton

I doubt that even more than I doubted the correlation behind "safety in numbers." Doesn't seem like nearly enough time has passed to change people's minds about how safe bicycling is based on it actually becoming safer.

B. Carfree

When I ride down the main street in my neighborhood (two lanes, pot-holed pavement, severe crown, parking on both sides, 20 mph speed limit with me going 15 mph) I take the lane. In fact, I am closer to the center line than to the parked cars. If I am the only cyclist in sight, someone will buzz-pass. If they see that they will just have to do the same thing in half a block, they'll usually calmly wait behind. I am suggesting that part of the safety in numbers may be the sense of futility of passing cyclists when there is another one just ahead. Maybe we're just human traffic calming devices.

RobertHurst

You are correct, something much more pervasive. It is more an indication of fewer and fewer children riding bikes with each passing year, which means the average cyclist is getting (much) older and more experienced, by default. Even if all those old folks stopped aging and stopped gaining bike experience, it would be so. This demographic shift has had a huge effect on accident numbers and accident type. To get some feel for how drastic this change has been -- In the 1970s, about two thirds of cyclist fatalities involved kids under 15. Today, it's around 15%.

Age is the biggest factor, although certainly not the only one.

I'll just remind folks that it is fundamentally bogus to count adult commuter cyclists, then compare gains in that number to changes in overall reported accidents, including those involving little kids. Fundamentally bogus, will deliver completely useless results. Just a reminder. Unfortunately, the Safety in Numbers circus is based entirely on this fundamental mistake.

B. Carfree

Gee whiz, Robert. According to what you say, people in my age range (50s) were the prime targets when we were young, and we are still highly sought after targets. If nothing else, it sounds like a great way to rationalize my paranoia. Kidding aside, those are good points. I do recall that in the '70s and '80s most of the riders were fairly close to my age (teens and 20s). Whereas now, it still seems like most of the other riders are my age, which is a lot older. I really don't see many young people on bikes, which is kind of sad. There are so few of them out there that when I saw a father riding with his thirteen-year-old son just outside of town a few weeks ago I made a point to tell my wife about them when I got home. She said she doesn't see very many young riders either.

CB HI

+1 exactly.

CB HI

And we are the kids that survived from way back then, so maybe we even started out with better abilities to avoid the collisions.

Captain Blight

That's certainly been my experience. It really is getting to be pretty decent here. Now if I could only convince DPW to get the plows to drop the blade all the way to the pavement and plow curb to effin' curb.

Bekologist

I doubt a purported decline in child cyclists is accounting for the reductions in collisions and crashes seen in a number of cities even as the numbers of cyclists counted in those cities are increasing.

There has been a ridership spike in all the cities studies for the jacobsean effect from the late 1990's. a rise in ridership and nearly flat collision rates.

The Jacobsean trend of increased ridership/decrease in indexed collision rate and concurrent reported safety benefits from those increased numbers of cyclists in portland or minneapolis is not due to a reduction in the numbers of child cyclists in portland or minneapolis.

As Shaun Murphy, Minneapolis director of non motorized transportation quipped to their local Star Tribune, "People are so used to seeing bicyclists — love them or hate — and they don’t want to hit them."

That's not less kids biking. Less kids biking is not what is driving these reductions in indexed collisions and concurrent safety trend seen in cities that are planning for roadway bicycling. Daily ridership in New York City going from 100,000 in 2004 to180,000 in 2008 along with a flat accident rate between is not a result from less kids biking there.


sorry, that argument doesn't meet the cut.

Poguemahone

Weird. I'm about your age. I've biked in Richmond Virginia since I moved here in 1984. For years and years, I was one of very few transportation (or even recreation) cyclists. Most rides I would see absolutely no one else on a bike.

In the last ten years there has been a steady upsurge in cyclists here, and they are almost all younger than me. For years, there were three of us in my entire neighborhood, now there are that many on my block alone. Enough riders in the neighborhood so I no longer know them all (I know the other two long-timers).

Nitram612

I started riding in Minneapolis about 4 years ago, and I would say that this is probably true. Cars just behave better around cyclists than they did when I first started. I still get the occasional "I didn't see you" and impatient tailgating dickhead that refuses to pass when they have plenty of room, but for the most part drivers are pretty patient and more careful than they used to be. Intentional acts of intimidation/endangerment by drivers have gone way down.

DX-MAN

Increased numbers of cyclists on the road may not be 'the smoking gun' indicator of accident/casualty reduction, but it does contribute to figuring out why. It's another facet of the awareness that seems to be creeping upward from where it was a decade ago. Cycling is indeed working its way back into the collective consciousness.

A little over 4 years ago, our local paper published a pretty comprehensive article on the increase in biking that was going on (due to gas prices -- WAY less than right now, LOL!); the article included a quick synopsis of traffic law as it pertains to bikes, and LO AND BEHOLD, the number of clashes with motorists started to go DOWN! As of today, I couldn't tell you the last time I was honked at or yelled at (wait a minute -- I sure can, it was two years ago, by some redneck ASS in a Dodge pickup as he whipped by me doing 45 in a 40!); I still get the occasional buzz, but a loud and loaded string of curses relieves my anger at that, and I just pedal on (usually nursing the hope I'll catch them...never happens, I'm too slow and ride MTB).

It's starting to seep through the collective motorized concrete skulls...........

RobertHurst

The main thing people forget is that kids have accidents and injuries far out of proportion to their numbers. So a small reduction in kids on bikes brings a disproportionately large reduction in accidents and injuries.

The flipside of this we may see in the future, if kids start getting back into bikes like they used to be, the accident numbers, fatality numbers will start to spike back up, and people will start to freak out.

CB HI

Most (if any) ridership counts do not even count kids riding to school or in their neighborhoods. So when kid ridership goes down, the decrease is not included. No one even knows if total ridership is going up or down.

But the death and injury counts include adults and kids.

So if in 1980 10% deaths are adults and 90% kids and there were the same number of kids riding as adults,
then for 100 deaths in 1980 10 were adults and 90 were kids.

Now if in 2010 the number of adults riding doubles and the number of kids riding is cut in half;
The ridership count goes up even if the total number of riders stays the same since it is the adults that are counted.

So what happens to the death numbers if the death rate for each group stayed the same:

from 1980 to 2010, the adult deaths go from 10 to 20, while the kid deaths go from 90 to 45. Oh my, look the total went down from 100 to 65 even though adults have the same ratio of death to riders as 1980.

Now I pretend to be Bek and claim that ridership has increased and the death rate has gone down. But in reality, the total number of cyclist is the same and with fewer kids riding, the overall deaths went down and it had nothing to do with total ridership numbers (which in this example remained the same)

That is how the Bek numbers game is played.

John E

I have read conflicting stats for San Francisco -- bike use up 3%, injury/fatality incidence up 8%. Some attribute this to bicycle-specific facilities on the roads; I wonder if it reflects the increase in inexperienced, overconfident, and/or clueless cyclists.

TheHen

Nicely put, CB. I would like to emphasize that not only are "bike counts" somewhat unreliable, but they are both new and have constantly changing methodology. It is as though there is no history. Every lifelong cyclist (of a certain age) knows by direct observation that cycling all but disappeared from the mid-eighties to the turn of the century. Now, as cycling re-emerges, we get these counters who say there have never been so many cyclists. I just have to call b.s. Both the sheer numbers and the percentages of trips by bike were much higher in the places I lived in during the '70s and early '80s than they are in those places now. How telling it is that, when traffic counts were made recently in a LAB Gold bicycle friendly community, the traffic engineers disregarded cyclists and pedestrians from the counts because they were far too few to affect the decisions that needed to be made.

Maybe adding more cyclists to the street will enhance our safety. The problem is, the means of determining whether it is or isn't does not yet exist. Most wrecks go unreported and no one is making accurate counts. Add in a lack of historical record and we are basically just making noise.

Captain Blight

Maybe it'
maybe its the time of day I ride or the routes I take, but I rarely if ever see kids on bikes obviously commuting to/from school. Huh; never realized that until now. I wonder why? Nintendo nation, I'm betting.

RobertHurst

Even if kids wanted to ride to school, their parents wouldn't let them.

AlmostTrick

I've always wondered how much the "safety in numbers" phenomenon really helps. I mean, if a rider is visible and predictable, and following best practices, drivers will see them and take care not to crash into them. How much does it matter that a motorist encountered dozens of cyclists on their trip vs. just one? I'd even say that a lone cyclist can garner extra care from drivers simply because they are so unexpected / out of the ordinary.

Bekologist

really. Ridership in New York City and Minneapolis, Portland have actually remained the same? I hadn't heard that. no one has. the fantastical example of CBHIs is groundless.

I'm not the one playing a 'numbers game' that is CBHI. I am not the transportation agencies in a number of US cities reporting a reduction in indexed crash rates and an increase in ridership.

this Jacobsean phenomenon is repeated in enough cities that the evidence is compelling. complaints about a lack of children cyclists - how is that bike ed thing going on oahu anyways? much less so.

CB HI

Since you claim you have all these studies, then show us the ones that include the ridership counts for kids from 1980 to 2010 and account for the variables that Robert and I have put forward.

The real fact is, you simply rely on like minded people to put forward the garbage that you all claim in your number games. Quote an article here or a claim there and falsely put it forward as fact.

myrridin

+1. Though this is only one of the MANY statistical analysis errors in such studies.

RobertHurst

Again, you're not grasping the basic point. You won't get a valid result from counting commuter cyclists, then comparing changes in that number to changes in overall reported accidents, to include not only 7-year-old kids, but the late-night drunken riders whose mishaps make up such a disproportionately large percentage of the accident reports.

I haven't seen anything that would steer me away from the conclusion that Safety in Numbers phenomenon is really a measure of the average age and experience level of a cycling population, not about the overall number.... the greater the ratio of adult commuter cyclists to kid cyclists and drunks in a given community, the lower per-rider accident rates there will be. If that ratio grows, the accident rate will go down.

The power of experience is a lot cooler than the alleged power of sheer numbers. The power of experience is proven. I think all Jacobsen was observing was that power of experience, and the vast differences in crash likelihood among different types of bicyclists.

Safety in Numbers is extremely seductive to beginner cyclists and green advocates because it transfers responsibility for the cyclist's safety away from the individual cyclist to drivers. So much easier. People don't want that responsibility. And it provides a seemingly easy answer to the problem of bike safety -- just attract more bicyclists.

It's impressive how bogus the whole thing is, and how people who apparently slept through junior high science class have been beating their Safety in Numbers drums.

Captain Blight

Hey.

How about if both you guys knock it off, huh? Quit arguing ideology and maybe shut the heck up and, you know, LISTEN to what the people who actually live and ride and commute year-round in the city in question have to say about this. If you have a pre-existing problem with each other, take it to PMS and keep your slapfighting out of public, there's no need to drag the rest of us into that mess.

Remember that when you grind an axe it throws sparks.