I've known a number of people who've given up commuting or riding. It only takes a few close calls for many to realize how vulnerable bicycle riders are in the U.S.

I've posted this before, but it bears repeating:



U.S. roads are the most dangerous of all developed countries. This for people in cars and much more so for people walking or riding. U.S. roads have been designed to be dangerous because the focus of traffic engineers is on reducing delay, not on reducing fatalities, injuries, and crashes. The U.S. has, overwhelmingly, the lowest modal share of bike commuting in the world — because people are rightly scared to share the road with 4000 lb cars being driven by people paying more attention to their phone than to what they are doing with their 4000 lb car all while driving quite fast because, well, why not, the road is wide, no need to slow down or pay attention.

But even in the countries with much safer road systems they recognize that the only way for bicycle riders to be remotely safe is to provide protected bikeways. The quality of protected bikeways matches closely with the safety indicated above; Netherlands is safest, Denmark next, etc.