sggoodri

Be careful with your conclusions. The study showed that streets where bike lanes were added had lower crash rates than all other streets in general. But it didn't compare apples to apples, and so we don't know if stripes make roads safer, or if stripes only get added to roads that are relatively safe for cycling to begin with.

I believe it is the latter. For example, the NC Department of Transportation does not endorse bike lane installation on roads with high speed/high volume traffic or lots of driveways and intersections. And, the striping is not allowed on roads with pavement too narrow to allow adequate passing distance. As a result, many cities including the one where I live will only install striping on low-volume, low-speed streets with few junctions. These roads are inherently safer for cycling before the stripe is added. In fact, that is a deliberate decision by some of the transportation departments, who fear that striping might lure novices out onto busy, more hazardous roads if they stripe the busy roads.

So, until we see an apples-to-apples study that has enough crash data to be statistically significant, it is hard to say anything about the effect of striping on safety for the same width of pavement, junctions, and traffic characterstics. Personally, on those roads that have had bike lane stripes added to previously unstriped wide pavement, I see a lot more debris accumulation, and I have to ride closer to the cars to protect my tires. I would not be surprised if a study eventually found that riding in a clean bike lane beside a busy high-speed travel lane was safer than sharing the same road without the extra stripe. But since there are no clean bike lanes next to busy high-speed roads where I live, I cannot take advantage of this possibility.

-Steve Goodridge