The Safety-in-Numbers Effect Surfaces in Minneapolis Bike Crash Data [StreetsBlog]

New data from Minneapolis confirms: the more cyclists on the road, the safer they will be. Image: Twin City Sidewalks via the City of Minneapolis

Minneapolis’s public works department just completed a rigorous, long-term analysis of bike-car collisions, and they’ve released a trove of data.

Bill Lindeke at Network blog Twin City Sidewalks says it might be “as good a study of crash data as you’re ever likely to see in this country.” There were a number of interesting findings, many of which bolstered previous research.

For example, as shown in the chart above, a confirmation of the safety-in-numbers effect popularized by researcher Peter Jacobsen:

It’s long been a truism in nonmotorized transportation planning that safety improves dramatically as the overall number of bicyclists and pedestrians rise. Well, this seems to hold true for Minneapolis over the last decade, and is one of the most hope-inspiring pieces of the bicycling puzzle…
What this suggests to me is that bicycle advocates should focus their efforts on increasing the total number of cyclists. In a way, safety issues will take care of themselves once we begin to increase the overall awareness and frequency of bicycling in the Twin Cities.

[Keep reading at StreetsBlog]