Food for thought, from a place where life is not dysfunctional by design.
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In the Netherlands cyclists are fairly vulnerable, given the chance of injury per kilometre covered. However, in recent decades, the safety of cyclists has steadily improved. The annual number of road accident victims has halved since 1980, both in terms of cyclists and those in cars.
This decline must also be set against the enormous rise in car and bicycle use. In total, both cars and cyclists covered 32% more distance in 2001 than in 1980. Statistically, the number of potential confrontations between cars and bicycles should thus increase exponentially.
Consequently, the decline in danger is spectacular.
More traffic and a high bicycle use do not therefore automatically mean more traffic danger. Besides making a comparison over time, this can also be demonstrated by comparing countries and even Dutch municipalities.
Figure 8 (page 14) clearly shows that the risks for cyclists are lower in countries with a higher bicycle use. The same pattern is visible when Dutch municipalities are compared. In municipalities with high bicycle use, the risk of a cyclist being injured in a traffic accident is on average 35% lower than in municipalities with fewer cyclists.
The same pattern recurs in various studies: the higher the bicycle use, the safer it is for cyclists.
There are a number of explanations for this, involving the conduct of road users and the attention that policy-makers pay to the bicycle.
Firstly, higher bicycle use leads to modified conduct on the part of all traffic participants, because cyclists are more dominant in the overall road picture and because more traffic participants have cycling experience.
Secondly, higher bicycle use often goes together with lower car use, thus reducing the chance of conflict with car traffic.
Thirdly, almost every car driver is also a bicyclist (60% of the Dutch cycle at least three times a week, 80% at least once a week), which implies that car drivers know how cyclists behave.
Finally the policy explanation: high bicycle use creates more support for bicycle policy, so that more is invested in a safer cycling infrastructure.
Something that should not be overlooked in the safety section: Liability.
In some countries, bicycling is seen as causing danger, which sometimes ends up in an anti-cycling policy. The Dutch philosophy is: Cyclists are not dangerous; cars and car drivers are: so car drivers should take the responsibility for avoiding collisions with cyclists. This implies that car drivers are almost always liable when a collision with a bicycle occurs and should adapt their speed when bicycles share the roads with cyclists.
