Bike lanes keeping cyclists a lot safer: study
Posted October 20, 2012 11:30 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Bike lanes always generate heated response in Vancouver. But hate them or love them, a new study shows they keep cyclists a lot safer.
The study out of UBC showed a 50 per cent drop in accidents on routes with a bike lane, and showed a 90 per cent decrease when the lane was separated. But lead researcher Kay Teschke says the expensive bike lanes we have here in Vancouver aren’t the only way to improve safety.
“So for example in Montreal and many other places, we just put one of those six-inch high, concrete curbs up. But they have some places where they just put three-foot high orange, plastic tubes, and that makes a huge difference compared to a painted bike lane,” she explains.
The study looked at 620 biking accidents in Vancouver and Toronto and where cyclists got hurt the most. Here in Vancouver, Teschke says Broadway was one of our worst roads because of parked cars opening their doors.
“On that kind of street, if you put in a bike lane and you take away the parked cars, you half your chance of being in an injury crash. If you put up a separated bike lane, the injury risk in our study was only about a tenth.”
Teschke adds researchers also saw a huge increase in accidents where construction or train tracks were involved.
The study can be found in this month’s American Journal of Public Health.
