If we’re going to make bicycling safer in the U.S., we need to be honest about what needs to be done.

The primary safety solution from many groups is to wear a helmet. But, according to research, wearing helmets is not the best way to improve bicycling safety. Creating safe bicycle facilities, increasing bicycle use, and educating users are the best means for improving safety. The results from the Netherlands support this. It’s one of the safest places to bike in the world yet almost no one wears helmets.

What do you call a cyclist wearing a helmet in the Netherlands? A tourist.

One study summarizes the six priorities that Germany and the Netherlands use to make biking so safe:

• Better Facilities for Walking and Cycling
• Traffic Calming of Residential Neighborhoods
• Urban Design Oriented to People and Not Cars
• Restrictions on Motor Vehicle Use
• Traffic Education
• Traffic Regulations and Enforcement

The big challenge in Metro Detroit is many road agencies and municipalities don’t know what better bicycling facilities are. For example, the Road Commission of Oakland County refuses to acknowledge much less use best practices for bicycling facilities. They ignore the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHTO) guidelines for bicycling facilities. They ignore Federal Highway Administration guidance. They ignore bicycling safety studies that show their policies have been consistently found to be unsafe.

And similarly, many cities have followed the Road Commission’s lead. Rochester Hills and West Bloomfield have pursued wide sidewalks (ironically called “safety” paths) despite the overwhelming evidence that these are not safe options for cyclists.

If we truly want safe cycling, we need to start by forcing our local road agencies and municipalities to use best practices and provide safe non-motorized transportation options for cyclists. This should be our primary campaign. And that message needs to come from cyclists, citizens, AAA, medical professionals, health experts, the Traffic Improvement Association (TIA), and others.

This doesn’t mean helmet use should be discouraged. Helmets can lessen injuries when cyclists are hit. But it’s much better to prevent those “hits” in the first place.

They’re new and still experimental, but are expected to become formalized signage method by next year.

They’re called “sharrows” and they are pavement markings that help mark bike routes on roads. These are a complement to bike lane pavement markings. The difference is bike lanes are separated facilities (from motor vehicles) where shared lanes have both cars and bikes.

According to draft MUTCD language, the benefit of sharrow pavement markings are they:

• Assist bicyclists with lateral positioning in a shared lane with on-street parallel parking in order to reduce the chance of a bicyclist’s impacting the open door of a parked vehicle,
• Assist bicyclists with lateral positioning in lanes that are too narrow for a motor vehicle and a bicycle to travel side by side within the same traffic lane,
• Alert road users of the lateral location bicyclists are likely to occupy within the traveled way,
• Encourage safe passing of bicyclists by motorists, and
• Reduce the incidence of wrong-way bicycling.

There are limits to their use.

• They should not be on roads where the speed limits above 35 MPH.
• They should not be on shoulders or in bike lanes

Sharrows may also produce cost and time savings.

Sometimes roadways are simply not wide enough for a bike lane.   Sometimes road diets (converting an exising lane of travel into bike lanes) are not practical or possible.  And even when a road diet might be the solution, some cities require traffic studies in advance.  These studies can cost $10K to $30K.  The value of a separated bike lane facility may not justify these costs when a shared lane would work equally well.  And sharrows provide a new and improved means for marking them.

I recently came across this Traffic Justice link via a Centerlines email newsletter. There’s a lot of great info on this site.
BikeWalk.org :: National Center for Bicycling and Walking

The Minnesota Department of Transportation recently published a report entitled TOOLS FOR PREDICTING USAGE AND BENEFITS OF URBAN BICYCLE NETWORK IMPROVEMENTS.

Summary from page 6:
“Generally speaking, the results support the notion that people value bicycle facilities, in that they are willing to incur additional time costs in order to use higher quality facilities. In particular, people value having striped bike lanes. The incremental value of this improvement is much greater than the incremental value of moving the facility off-road entirely. The presence of facilities also appears to be associated with higher amounts of riding, although the precise nature of the impact is still unclear. From this research, it appears that a facility can increase the amount of riding in an area even up to one and a half miles from the ends of the facility, but it is not clear whether the effect is larger for residents that are closer than this.”