Research/Policy

This guest post comes to us from Chris McCahill, a senior associate with the State Smart Transportation Initiative. Despite gradual improvements, the U.S. is falling behind its peers in terms of traffic safety. Making matters worse, our nation’s most vulnerable road users—pedestrians and cyclists—make up a growing share of traffic fatalities in recent years. In response, the U.S. DOT has made bicycle and pedestrian safety a high priority, state laws are beginning to address the needs of non-motorized road users, and many cities are installing new bike facilities and stepping up traffic enforcement.

Their claim that bicycling has become much more dangerous is based on only data from 2010 to 2012 and is extremely misleading. Using official data from the US Department of Transportation, the total number of bike trips more than tripled from 1,272 million in 1977 to 4,081 million in 2009. During the same period, the number of cyclist fatalities fell from 922 in 1977 to 628 in 2009, a decrease of 32%. Taking into account the increased level of cycling, the cyclist fatality rate fell by a dramatic 79%. In short, cycling has become roughly four times safer per bike trip over the past three decades.

If all you read was the press release of a new report by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), “Bicyclist Safety,” you would be forgiven if your take-away was: More bicyclists are being killed on American roads but they’re mostly helmet-less drunks — and there aren’t enough deaths to make it a national issue anyway. The tone-deaf press release focuses on the share of fatalities of helmet-less riders and those with a high blood-alcohol level, without a single mention of speeding or driving behavior, and only a passing reference to Complete Streets.

Last week, we released our Where We Ride report, analyzing U.S. Census Bureau data on national bike commuting trends. Shortly following our release of the report, we became aware of more comprehensive data that should be included in the report. Today, we’re releasing our revised Where We Ride report, with more communities and data points included. Download it here.

UPDATE: We’ve released an extensive analysis of the new bike commuting data in a new report called “Where We Ride: An Analysis of Bicycle Commuting in American Cities.” Click here to download it (PDF), or scroll through the report below. This morning, the American Community Survey (ACS) released new data on bicycle commuting in the United States.

Perhaps the most widely used dataset related to bicycling in the United States is the annual American Community Survey (ACS), the successor to the decennial Census’ so-called “long form.” This survey asks a sub-sample of American households to provide information on a variety of topics such as income, health insurance, disability, housing, and—thankfully—transportation.

This number — 51% — made me think. How much of what we say about women is true and how much is myth? And how much has the bike retail industry bought into, and continued to sell these myths right back to women? I was overwhelmed by how well the webinar was attended. It’s an indicator to me of how invested the industry is in seeking out numbers-based solutions. The other thing that got me excited was how interested folks were in continuing the conversation. We have these numbers that indicate a huge potential for growth in women’s bike retail, but what about solutions to capitalize on that potential? How do we fix it? How do we get more women on bikes?

How do we know how many people are biking? In most cases, we rely upon the American Community Survey. Each year the Census Bureau releases data on how people get to work, including whether they bike to work. This is the most consistent and widespread data on the number of people regularly biking in the United States. We use it in many ways -– to compare cities large and small, to evaluate communities and states using Bicycle Friendly America programs, and to better understand bicycle safety.