Originally Posted by
Bekologist
protected bike lanes offer vast safety advantage
"researchers found that in Vancouver and Toronto, protected green lanes reduce non-fatal road injuries by 90 percent.
That's a huge impact. When it comes to reducing major injuries, these findings suggest that converting a painted bike lane to a separated cycle track would be twice as effective as painting the bike lane was."
Michael Andersen is full of ****. First of all, that graphic does not appear in the cited publication. It is something that Michael Andersen concocted based on ignorance of basic statistics. Attributing that graphic to the manuscript in question is unethical.
The simple regression analysis conducted by Teschke et al did not compare bike lanes to cycle tracks. It compared cycle tracks to a reference sample. There is absolutely no evidence in that manuscript that cycle tracks are statistically safer than bike lanes. Moreover, the fully separated MUP category was nominally more dangerous than bike lanes. This is, of course, just as meaningless statistically as the comparison Andersen ignorantly tried to make. I should also point out that the "n" for cycle tracks was "10" and that intersections were not properly considered in that study.
If you do not believe me here is the manuscript source:
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi...PH.2012.300762
Jan Heine is correct when he stated that the bulk of studies in Europe (with "n"s far larger than 10) suggest that cycle tracks are less safe than on street paths due to increased risk at intersections.
Quotes from his blog posting with links to PDFs of published manuscripts:
Separate paths are less safe: Numerous people posted links to safety studies. There appears to be general agreement that separated cycle paths are less safe at intersections. Data from Berlin and Denmark show a marked increase of cyclist (and pedestrian) injuries at intersections after cycle paths were put in. (The results were adjusted for the increase in ridership.)