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The safest infrastructure are ones that split pedestrian / bicyclist / motor traffic as much as possible, for obvious reasons. But that infrastructure has falle

The safest infrastructure are ones that split pedestrian / bicyclist / motor traffic as much as possible, for obvious reasons. But that infrastructure has fallen out of favor as of late. "Complete streets" are the new fashion trend, and are significantly more dangerous, by combining these forms of traffic altogether and just sort of hoping it all works out. But, "complete" streets are super cheap, and give the illusion of improved infrastructure, so the trend will likely continue for the near future -- further increasing accidents as it does.

wlesieutre 8y ago
What, you don't like to share a narrow lane with no shoulder right up against a concrete barrier that you'd better not go over because the other side is a 20 foot drop down to train tracks? https://i.imgur.com/0cxvaJM.png https://i.imgur.com/0cxvaJM.png At least they put up a no parking sign. EDIT: Not to mention this photo shows the one and only bike symbol on the block. Given how worn off it is I assume most drivers have no idea this is the "bike route."
junga 8y ago
>The safest infrastructure are ones that split pedestrian / bicyclist / motor traffic as much as possible, for obvious reasons. Can you provide a source for this? (especially concerning the separation of bicyclists and motor traffic)
- maxsilver 8y ago
  > Can you provide a source for this? (especially concerning the separation of bicyclists and motor traffic) https://rspcb.safety.fhwa.dot.gov/Dashboard/Default.aspx https://rspcb.safety.fhwa.dot.gov/Dashboard/Default.aspx USDOT routinely finds freeways to be the safest roadway for all involved each year (lowest number of ped/bike/car fatalities), since it separates traffic modes. Pedestrians and bicyclists go over/under/beside it on dedicated infrastructure, they are never on it. And similarly, cars are never on the dedicated ped/bike infrastructure, so collisions are effectively impossible from either side, due to physics.
- cglace 8y ago
  If you completely separate two things they can not collide.
  - admiral_biatch 8y ago
    True, but it's not feasible to separate the traffic completely. Every intersection would have to be collision-free for cars, bikes and pedestrians. How much money and space would that require?
  - anonymou2 8y ago
    There will still be bike-bike collisions, also exclusive roads for bicycles are usually of low quality not up to engineering standards for roads, they will be full of dirt, unmaintained, with potholes. Most bicycle accidents are not even collisions with cars. The truth is, it is more convenient for motorists to remove cyclists from the road so they have them all exclusively for them, that is just not fair nor safer.
    - loeg 8y ago
      > There will still be bike-bike collisions These are both more rare than car-bicycle collisions and less likely to be injurious. > also exclusive roads for bicycles are usually of low quality not up to engineering standards for roads, they will be full of dirt, unmaintained, with potholes Citation needed? The main problem I've experienced on bike paths is tree roots. Roads for bikes don't wear out particularly quickly, because bikes don't make anything like the kind of wear and tear on roads that cars or especially larger vehicles (buses and trucks) do. Road wear is proportional to weight squared. > Most bicycle accidents are not even collisions with cars What are they collisions with? Do you think bike-bike, bike-ped, and bike-fixed object collisions combined are more frequent than bike-car collisions? I don't have numbers on this one way or another. To provide some color, motor vehicle-fixed object collisions are about a third of all motor vehicle crashes[0]. Additionally, 95% of cyclist collision deaths are definitely car-bike collisions[1]. So even if they are not the majority of collisions, they must be disproportionately deadly and worth consideration anyway. [0]: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811059 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... p. 18 (table 5(b)). [1]: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812507 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... p. 5-6.
anonymou2 8y ago
No, cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles: http://www.johnforester.com/ http://www.johnforester.com/
- mytherin 8y ago
  No, the safest option is to separate cycle lanes from roads altogether, as is evidenced by the significantly lower death toll per km that e.g. the NL and Denmark have compared to the US [1]. In those countries, cyclists almost never share the road with car drivers. In roads that are not designed for cycling (where cyclists have to share the road with car drivers), perhaps it is true that they fare best when they act as vehicles. However, the safest option by far is not sharing the road with cars to begin with. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/24/the-more-cyclists-in-a-country-the-fewer-fatal-crashes-report-infographic/#d60003633b31 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/24/the-mo...
  - cr1895 8y ago
    >cyclists almost never share the road with car drivers That's not true...there's plenty of shared road. Drivers are more cautious and aware, but it's not all separate pathways.
    - mcv 8y ago
      Shared road is getting increasingly rare, though. Except in 30 kph zones where cars have to go slow anyway. When I was a kid, there were still plenty of 60-80 kph roads where bikes had to ride on the right side of the car lane, but almost all of those have separate bike lanes or bike paths nowadays.
  - anonymou2 8y ago
    You really can't compare the US and Denmark, you should pick a location and compare before and after segregation. Did it improve safety? There were plenty of bicycle trips in Denmark before cyclists were kicked off the roads for the convenience of motorists.
admiral_biatch 8y ago
In my opinion isolating separate transportation modes is only good if it is complete isolation but that's never feasible in a city. Too expensive and space-inefficient to make every intersection collision-free for cars, bikes and pedestrians. If you separate cars, bikes and pedestrians most of the time but their paths cross at intersections then you have a problem because drivers might not expect a sudden bike lane out of nowhere. It's better to have the bike lane on the street so that cars see it all the time. This makes them drive slower and more carefully because they expect bikes to show up there. I don't have data to back this up although I vaguely remember reading about it in "Streetfight" by Janette Sadik-Khan. If I recall correctly introduction of unseparated bike lanes in New York City didn't increase bike fatalities despite increasing the number of bikers and it also decreased number of pedestrian fatalities thanks to cars driving slower because of bikes. Of course the article shows that now the pedestrian deaths increased so it might have been a premature conclusion on Sadik-Khans part.
- maxsilver 8y ago
  > but that's never feasible in a city. That's kind of funny to hear, because I was going to use real-world Chicago and Seoul as practical examples of this already existing in cities today. Chicago Loop has a dual-layer approach (where faster moving cars are on the ground floor, but a "second street level" is directly above them, for pedestrians + buses). It's not an exact match (cars can drive on both levels, those lanes should all exist on one level), but it's pretty close to this idea already in practice. On the opposite side, Seoul has a "pedestrian highway" slung above 8ish lanes of car traffic below, which is a cheaper (although less effective) version of the same idea.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Paris has it pretty good in the central areas. Wide roads with (outside in) footpaths, cycle lane, road, then a central section with tram, trees and garden or parking. Having massively wide roads helps.
- jnty 8y ago
  Of course drivers in cities do expect 'bikes coming out of nowhere' because, unless you literally separate bikes with a 6ft wall, you can in fact still see them despite there being kerb-separation in place. At car/bike junctions with poor visibility the same interventions are available as for car junctions with poor visibility. If you've ever seen a mangled barrier by the side of a road, you'll understand why encouraging humans into the road as a traffic calming strategy is rather problematic. Enlightened cities such as those in the Netherlands tend to take a risk-elimination approach - residential streets will be designed to keep speeds low, and neighbourhoods designed so that through-traffic doesn't try to take shortcuts along them. This makes it safe for cyclists to use the roads without special infrastructure. Only busier main roads have infrastructure. This is hard to imagine in the US where many cities in the US seem unfamiliar with the concept of any road not being a busy main road!

wlesieutre 8y ago

What, you don't like to share a narrow lane with no shoulder right up against a concrete barrier that you'd better not go over because the other side is a 20 foot drop down to train tracks? https://i.imgur.com/0cxvaJM.png https://i.imgur.com/0cxvaJM.png At least they put up a no parking sign. EDIT: Not to mention this photo shows the one and only bike symbol on the block. Given how worn off it is I assume most drivers have no idea this is the "bike route."

junga 8y ago

>The safest infrastructure are ones that split pedestrian / bicyclist / motor traffic as much as possible, for obvious reasons. Can you provide a source for this? (especially concerning the separation of bicyclists and motor traffic)

maxsilver 8y ago
> Can you provide a source for this? (especially concerning the separation of bicyclists and motor traffic) https://rspcb.safety.fhwa.dot.gov/Dashboard/Default.aspx https://rspcb.safety.fhwa.dot.gov/Dashboard/Default.aspx USDOT routinely finds freeways to be the safest roadway for all involved each year (lowest number of ped/bike/car fatalities), since it separates traffic modes. Pedestrians and bicyclists go over/under/beside it on dedicated infrastructure, they are never on it. And similarly, cars are never on the dedicated ped/bike infrastructure, so collisions are effectively impossible from either side, due to physics.
cglace 8y ago
If you completely separate two things they can not collide.
- admiral_biatch 8y ago
  True, but it's not feasible to separate the traffic completely. Every intersection would have to be collision-free for cars, bikes and pedestrians. How much money and space would that require?
- anonymou2 8y ago
  There will still be bike-bike collisions, also exclusive roads for bicycles are usually of low quality not up to engineering standards for roads, they will be full of dirt, unmaintained, with potholes. Most bicycle accidents are not even collisions with cars. The truth is, it is more convenient for motorists to remove cyclists from the road so they have them all exclusively for them, that is just not fair nor safer.
  - loeg 8y ago
    > There will still be bike-bike collisions These are both more rare than car-bicycle collisions and less likely to be injurious. > also exclusive roads for bicycles are usually of low quality not up to engineering standards for roads, they will be full of dirt, unmaintained, with potholes Citation needed? The main problem I've experienced on bike paths is tree roots. Roads for bikes don't wear out particularly quickly, because bikes don't make anything like the kind of wear and tear on roads that cars or especially larger vehicles (buses and trucks) do. Road wear is proportional to weight squared. > Most bicycle accidents are not even collisions with cars What are they collisions with? Do you think bike-bike, bike-ped, and bike-fixed object collisions combined are more frequent than bike-car collisions? I don't have numbers on this one way or another. To provide some color, motor vehicle-fixed object collisions are about a third of all motor vehicle crashes[0]. Additionally, 95% of cyclist collision deaths are definitely car-bike collisions[1]. So even if they are not the majority of collisions, they must be disproportionately deadly and worth consideration anyway. [0]: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811059 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... p. 18 (table 5(b)). [1]: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812507 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... p. 5-6.

anonymou2 8y ago

No, cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles: http://www.johnforester.com/ http://www.johnforester.com/

mytherin 8y ago
No, the safest option is to separate cycle lanes from roads altogether, as is evidenced by the significantly lower death toll per km that e.g. the NL and Denmark have compared to the US [1]. In those countries, cyclists almost never share the road with car drivers. In roads that are not designed for cycling (where cyclists have to share the road with car drivers), perhaps it is true that they fare best when they act as vehicles. However, the safest option by far is not sharing the road with cars to begin with. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/24/the-more-cyclists-in-a-country-the-fewer-fatal-crashes-report-infographic/#d60003633b31 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/24/the-mo...
- cr1895 8y ago
  >cyclists almost never share the road with car drivers That's not true...there's plenty of shared road. Drivers are more cautious and aware, but it's not all separate pathways.
  - mcv 8y ago
    Shared road is getting increasingly rare, though. Except in 30 kph zones where cars have to go slow anyway. When I was a kid, there were still plenty of 60-80 kph roads where bikes had to ride on the right side of the car lane, but almost all of those have separate bike lanes or bike paths nowadays.
- anonymou2 8y ago
  You really can't compare the US and Denmark, you should pick a location and compare before and after segregation. Did it improve safety? There were plenty of bicycle trips in Denmark before cyclists were kicked off the roads for the convenience of motorists.

admiral_biatch 8y ago

In my opinion isolating separate transportation modes is only good if it is complete isolation but that's never feasible in a city. Too expensive and space-inefficient to make every intersection collision-free for cars, bikes and pedestrians. If you separate cars, bikes and pedestrians most of the time but their paths cross at intersections then you have a problem because drivers might not expect a sudden bike lane out of nowhere. It's better to have the bike lane on the street so that cars see it all the time. This makes them drive slower and more carefully because they expect bikes to show up there. I don't have data to back this up although I vaguely remember reading about it in "Streetfight" by Janette Sadik-Khan. If I recall correctly introduction of unseparated bike lanes in New York City didn't increase bike fatalities despite increasing the number of bikers and it also decreased number of pedestrian fatalities thanks to cars driving slower because of bikes. Of course the article shows that now the pedestrian deaths increased so it might have been a premature conclusion on Sadik-Khans part.

maxsilver 8y ago
> but that's never feasible in a city. That's kind of funny to hear, because I was going to use real-world Chicago and Seoul as practical examples of this already existing in cities today. Chicago Loop has a dual-layer approach (where faster moving cars are on the ground floor, but a "second street level" is directly above them, for pedestrians + buses). It's not an exact match (cars can drive on both levels, those lanes should all exist on one level), but it's pretty close to this idea already in practice. On the opposite side, Seoul has a "pedestrian highway" slung above 8ish lanes of car traffic below, which is a cheaper (although less effective) version of the same idea.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  Paris has it pretty good in the central areas. Wide roads with (outside in) footpaths, cycle lane, road, then a central section with tram, trees and garden or parking. Having massively wide roads helps.
jnty 8y ago
Of course drivers in cities do expect 'bikes coming out of nowhere' because, unless you literally separate bikes with a 6ft wall, you can in fact still see them despite there being kerb-separation in place. At car/bike junctions with poor visibility the same interventions are available as for car junctions with poor visibility. If you've ever seen a mangled barrier by the side of a road, you'll understand why encouraging humans into the road as a traffic calming strategy is rather problematic. Enlightened cities such as those in the Netherlands tend to take a risk-elimination approach - residential streets will be designed to keep speeds low, and neighbourhoods designed so that through-traffic doesn't try to take shortcuts along them. This makes it safe for cyclists to use the roads without special infrastructure. Only busier main roads have infrastructure. This is hard to imagine in the US where many cities in the US seem unfamiliar with the concept of any road not being a busy main road!