Fred Wegman (Director-manager SWOV, the Dutch road Safety Institute), Netherlands writes on cycling safety: Safety in numbers: more cyclists, lower risks? A swarm of birds or insects, a school of fish, a flock of sheep, a pack of wolves. Language has many possibilities to indicate a group of animals. Biology has taught us that a group offers protection and increases safety for the individual members of the group. It is more difficult for a predator to attack a group than one single animal. For this reason a predator uses the strategy to isolate an animal from its flock before attacking it. This is also the thought that occurred to me when studying cyclist safety: why not compare the safety of one individual cyclist with the safety of a group of cyclists. The risk of the one single cyclists is greater than that of a cyclist who is part of a group. The American researcher Jacobsen compared the casualties among cyclists in different countries and tried to establish a relation with the amount of bicycle traffic. He concluded that “Policies that increase the numbers of people bicycling appear to be an effective route to improving the safety of people bicycling”. In other words: add more cyclists to traffic and cyclist safety will increase. This is a popular idea among those who put effort into stimulating cycling and therefore Jacobsen’s conclusion is quoted frequently in these circles. However, I believe that this conclusion is not correct. I will try to explain why. If there is much cycling in a country, the risk for cyclists is indeed lower. Comparison of statistics of different countries offers conclusive evidence. The risks in countries that have a lot of cycling like the Netherlands and Denmark are (much) lower than in countries where cycling is a less important mode of transport. The explanation may be twofold. Firstly, there are the expectations of the other road user. If a driver does indeed expect a cyclist on the road, as is the case in the Netherlands and Denmark, the risk is lower. But a second explanation is conceivable: if there are more cyclists, more safe cycling facilities will be constructed (which in turn make cycling more pleasant). We have sufficient evidence that cycling facilities (like bicycle tracks) reduce the risks of cycling. Not only do the Netherlands and Denmark have many cyclists, there are also many cycling facilities. I do not expect that just a greater number of cyclists will on its own result in a risk reduction for the cyclist. On the other hand, I do expect that more cycling facilities will lead to lower risks. Policy that only focuses on an increase in cycling and at the same time ignores the construction of more cycling facilities, will not have a positive effect on road safety. Unless, of course this policy also takes care of cyclists only cycling close to one another: in a swarm, school, flock, or pack of cyclists.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:16:26 +0000
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