There is no evidence that segregated cycle facilities improve cyclist safety. The majority of serious bicycle accidents are right-of-way disputes, occurring at junctions. It is just as likely that segregated facilities could increase the number of accidents, by making the movements of cyclists less predictable to motorists when they merge onto general roads. It is known that sidewalk cyclists are significantly more vulnerable than cyclists who use the roadway, possibly because their movements are more difficult for motorists to predict.
The evidence for the efficacy of cycle helmets is extremely poor. There are a great many people with strong opinions on helmets, but we simply do not have the evidence and it is likely that they are a relatively unimportant factor. While we know that helmets moderately reduce head injuries, we do not have good evidence that they improve rider safety overall. We do have some evidence of risk compensation, with both drivers and riders taking more risks when helmets are used, based on the belief that the helmet provides safety. Head injuries are an important class of injury, particularly in the most severe incidents, but they represent only a minority of the serious injuries suffered by cyclists.
The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. Most Americans believe that the numbers of cyclists will increase when action is taken to improve safety, but in fact the inverse is true. An increase in the number of cyclists invariably leads to a decrease in the number of accidents per km. That is the key message and everything else is just noise. Meaningful improvements in cycle safety are wholly reliant on increasing the number of cyclists and normalising cycling. Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.
> The majority of serious bicycle accidents are right-of-way disputes, occurring at junctions.
Makes sense, really. I recently started regularly driving a car again, and I've noticed that there's just no way motorists can be reasonably expected to anticipate something that's in the pedestrian right-of-way but moving at five times the speed of normal pedestrian traffic. In a denser area where a driver's view of the sidewalk might be obscured by parked cars, it's probably more-or-less impossible to adequately check for that kind of hazard.
Heck, pedestrians can't do it either. 6 or 7 years ago a woman was killed a couple blocks away from my house when a sidewalk cyclist hit her. There was a tall hedge at the corner impeding visibility, and they both rounded the corner at the same time - the pedestrian at a walking (i.e., perfectly safe for the sidewalk) speed, and the cyclist at bike (i.e., completely reckless for the sidewalk) speed.
By contrast, a cyclist who's in the vehicular right-of-way where they belong (and not erratically dipping into and out of the parking lane) is every bit as visible as motorized traffic. And, assuming they bother to use turn signals and at least pay lip service to traffic laws (which many don't in my city), just as predictable too.
When one ton of metal hits you naked at 50kph (the legal speed limit in traffic areas of cities here in France) the acceleration alone can tear or damage your aorta with impressive odds (IIRC about 50% chance). A helmet is an extremely marginal protection.
On a pure energy analysis, I'd rather have cyclists navigate with pedestrians than with cars. The latter result in a basically non-elastic collision transmitting most of the kinetic energy (1T@30~50kph) to the human body (75kg@5~20kph) while the former is much, much more even.
I don't know the state of streets in the U.S but his is especially true in old european cities, where streets are often narrow and there's simply not enough room for both cyclists and cars on the road, especially when cycling is thought of after the fact.
Existing pedestrian facilities are simply unsuitable for cyclists.
My regular 3km ride to the shops takes me about five minutes by bicycle. If I had to ride in the footway with pedestrians, I would be faced with two choices - either to recklessly continue at each junction and cross the road at speed, or to stop and start like a pedestrian. Doing the former would quickly prove fatal, the latter would increase my journey time fourfold.
Most footways are far too narrow, too tightly radiused and contain substantial amounts of furniture like lighting and mailboxes, which pose no danger to pedestrians but are a potentially fatal hazard to cyclists.
It also bears pointing out that European roads were built for cyclists, not motorcars. The invention of the safety bicycle prompted the widespread development of smoothly surfaced roads. Motorcar traffic represented a minority of journeys in most of Europe until long after the Second World War. Bicycles are perfectly well suited to the narrow streets of old towns, it is the motorcar that is out of place; Many enlightened local authorities are making the sensible decision to prohibit non-essential motor vehicles from town centres, improving conditions for both cyclists and pedestrians.
There is no infrastructure problem. There are many cities with substantial amounts of cycling infrastructure but low rates of cycling and poor safety; There are many cities with practically no infrastructure but huge numbers of cyclists and very good safety.
Mixing cyclists and pedestrians is extremely dangerous in locations where pedestrians aren't used to cyclists, because pedestrians have a tendency to change directions very quickly.
Having a bell on your cycle helps a lot with this - just give it a ring a few times before overtaking people on a combined cycle/foot path and they will generally (although not always) try and do the sensible thing.
In my own experience I was somewhat surprised to find that using a bell actually works a lot better than saying "Excuse me please".
Also, some pedestrians will do intentionally stupid things when encountering a cyclist on a cycle path, but fortunately them seem pretty rare and far less common than cyclists who do stupid things.
I am generally a pedestrian, and in my experience when I am running on a paved path and cyclists go around me, they sometimes say "on your left" which works pretty well, but bells are great.
> I am generally a pedestrian, and in my experience when I am running on a paved path and cyclists go around me, they sometimes say "on your left" which works pretty well, but bells are great.
As a cyclist, I don't feel like it works very well. About 50% of the time the pedestrian startles and dodges when they hear you say it. In about 50% of those cases, the direction they dodge is to the left. And this is on the bike path where pedestrians are presumably accustomed to and expecting bicycle traffic.
I still do it for the sake of courtesy (and the hope that it will eventually become a common and well-understood practice), but I don't rely on it and give pedestrians as wide a berth as possible as well.
Single pedestrians/runners are almost never a problem. Even couples are OK. What can be risky is when you have a group of 3, 4 or more - they tend to be focusing more on each other than their environment and when they get startled they will often all jump in different directions.
[NB This isn't a serious problem, but I do spend a reasonable amount of time on cycle paths trying to co-exist with other path users on civilised terms!]
In which way? Unless the cyclist is moving like a madman in a crowd, the worse that usually happens is a bruise (and in rare cases, a broken bone).
When I'm riding, cars pass centimeters away from me, and that's not because they're careless but because in some areas there's simply no other choice, except riding on the sidewalk.
> aren't used to cyclists
Unless you organize like here[0], people need to cooperate with cyclists, whether in a car or on foot.
As arrethuza mentions, a bell on your bicycle helps a lot (and cars simply don't hear that bell). It's not aggressive in any way (entirely unlike a horn on a car), and people just move out of the way of cyclists without much thinking about it.
You do realize that there will always be an initial conflict when introducing a new system. I am fairly fresh out of college, and where I went to school (now over 20,000 students) all of what used to be streets in the middle of campus are for pedestrian traffic only. We all got along just fine with bikes being everywhere. Look at Stanford and Boulder, two very bike friendly places.
As far as helmets are concerned, I rode for my college road team, and I wore a helmet every time I touched the pedals for training and racing. We went very fast, and the competitions justified it. When I rode my beater bike to class I never wore a helmet. I was just fine.
A major reason people don't want to ride bikes to work when a helmet is required is really cosmetic, because they don't want to screw up their hair! Have you met a girl who wakes up and gets ready for work then says, "oh yeah let me mess up my hair on the way to work"? I am a dude, and If I had the option to ride A bike to work, I might not just because I need to look professional.
> The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. [...] Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.
The reason for increased safety may have less to do with better prediction and more to do with the fact that the motorized traffic speed slows to slowest cyclist speed as the number of cyclists increases. There is no way to go fast if there is a cyclist every 100ft in the same lane as the cars.
The evidence for the efficacy of cycle helmets is extremely poor. There are a great many people with strong opinions on helmets, but we simply do not have the evidence and it is likely that they are a relatively unimportant factor. While we know that helmets moderately reduce head injuries, we do not have good evidence that they improve rider safety overall. We do have some evidence of risk compensation, with both drivers and riders taking more risks when helmets are used, based on the belief that the helmet provides safety. Head injuries are an important class of injury, particularly in the most severe incidents, but they represent only a minority of the serious injuries suffered by cyclists.
The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. Most Americans believe that the numbers of cyclists will increase when action is taken to improve safety, but in fact the inverse is true. An increase in the number of cyclists invariably leads to a decrease in the number of accidents per km. That is the key message and everything else is just noise. Meaningful improvements in cycle safety are wholly reliant on increasing the number of cyclists and normalising cycling. Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.