It has become a kind of conventional wisdom that more cyclists on the road means more bicycle accidents. But in the last decade some of the bicycle-friendly cities of the country most showed that safety in numbers means that the cities with the most cyclists on the road the least bicycle accidents of witnesses. This is certainly the case in California, Davis, which is a Mecca for cyclists where 16% of the population to mountain bikes to work, and has a fatality rate 90 percent lower than the California average. Newer evidence suggests that in addition to safety in numbers, California cities of structural measures the cyclists benefit, keep safe.

For the journal environmental practice Wesley Marshall and Norman Garrick studied evidence from 24 medium-sized California cities with all types of bicycle use. In the Chamber, they found that the highest traffic had bike cities of the lowest mortality rate. Great bike cities, reported, for example, an average 2.5 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 9 deaths per 100,000 bicycle used in the cities. What's more is surprising that Marshall and Garrick found that the mortality rate was much lower for all types of transport in the high traffic cycling cities

Of the report are clear about the disturbing nature of their findings: that with a few cyclists reports twice the cities so many deaths bike compared to the cities with many more cyclists. "That is, for all brave enough, cities use a bike in this low-biking" the authors write for Planetizen, "The risk of injury or death was astronomical." "Conversely, the traffic is risk death by bike bicycle friendly cities is much less than generally recognized."

This trend is not only for cities in California. Others combined traditional bike friendly cities such as Cambridge, Massachusetts and Portland, Oregon also an increase in passenger numbers have seen bicycle with a decline of bicycle deaths. This supports the concept that by means of improving the road safety could save lives and trim the city budget by a bunch in the long run.

Photo credit: Dustinj

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