A very interesting article from this weeks’ Green
Lane Project News (http://greenlaneproject.org/blog/view/what-if-bike-comfort-is-more-important-than-bike-safety).
For anyone who has ever debated “vehicular cycling” there are
several good points regarding whether the debate over what is safer is really
the most important debate or if we should instead being asking ourselves what
is more comfortable and likely to attract new riders. An interesting further
discussion may be should we always seek the most efficient routes for bike
infrastructure even though longer, parallel routes may have the potential to be
more comfortable. - Erik
What
if bike comfort is more important than bike safety?
By
Michael Andersen, Green Lane
August
14, 2013
When I'm
standing near the edge of a high ledge or cliff, I know, rationally, that I'm
unlikely to fall. I've spent most of my life without spontaneously tumbling
sideways, and standing on the edge of a cliff doesn't change that.
I know,
statistically speaking, that I am almost completely safe.
But that
doesn't mean I like to stand near the edge of a cliff.
When I'm
in the front seat of a roller coaster, I know, rationally, that my body is
extremely safe. Tens of thousands of thrill-seekers have raised their hands in
the air without being harmed.
But that
doesn't stop me from being scared of raising my hands in the air in the front
seat of a roller coaster.
When I'm
riding my bike along a five-lane arterial road, I know, rationally, that the
professional truck driver next to me is statistically unlikely to suddenly
swerve to his right, crushing and killing me.
But that
doesn't mean I like to bike on a street like this:
Last
week, I interviewed
a man whose main ideas have been rejected by mainstream bike advocates in the
There's
something to this argument. If there weren't, it wouldn't have been nearly so
successful in the 1970s and 1980s. To Forester and his successors, such as
Bicycle Quarterly's Jan Heine, peoples'
desire to use protected bike lanes is irrational and therefore unjustifiable.
"Most
Americans suffer from bicyclist inferiority complex," Forester told me.
"Most of the things that they like appeal to their phobias."
There's a
standard response to Forester, Heine and others who make this case against
protected bike lanes: that although no intersection is perfect and a given
protected lane might slightly increase the short-term risk of collision at a
given intersection, a city that offers a robust network of protected lanes will
actually become
safer in the long run, because more people will ride bikes.
This is a
pretty strong argument.
But is it
the best one?
What if
Forester, Heine and others are using the wrong metric to measure the success of
a bike lane? What if "safety," as calculated by government statisticians
who sit far away from speeding semi trailers, isn't actually a bike lane's most
precious characteristic?
What if
bike designers, instead of arguing about safety – an argument that, to be
clear, I think protected bike lanes would win – decided that the most important measure of a good bikeway is whether
people tend to like it?
I'm not
arguing that safety is unimportant. Obviously nonprofessionals are imperfect
judges of whether a particular lane or intersection is safe, and cities must
work carefully to design good, safe intersections with few bike-car conflicts.
But when
professionals make safety their only absolute value, they presume that physical
safety is the most important value in people's lives. And that assumption is
demonstrably false. Of course people want safety. But they want other things,
too.
A
restaurant doesn't measure its success by the percentage of people who dine
there without getting sick. It measures success by
the number of people who come in the door, how much they pay and how often they
return. A public transit line isn't funded by the federal government based on
its anticipated vehicle failure rate. It's funded based on the number of people
who are expected to use it.
And as
for bike infrastructure, here's the thing: as one study after another has found, people
go out of their way to use bike lanes, especially protected bike lanes.
Bluebonnet
Lane in
Surprise!
It turns out that, rationally or not, people dislike biking on a street that
constantly reminds them of their own possible demise.
Even if,
rationally, they know they're almost completely safe.
Here's
what a more human-centric way of thinking about bike design would involve:
- In every city, making the number of anticipated
users the primary metric for designing a desired bike project.
- In every city, actually taking efforts to measure
the usage of important bike projects.
- Using the phrase "safety and comfort"
as a pair of core values in street design, but not as a pair of synonyms.
This line
of thinking is why, at the Green Lane Project, we use the phrase
"low-stress" to describe the bike networks we value most. We don't
talk about building "safer bike lanes," though ultimately a network
of good ones is safer.
We simply
talk about building "better bike lanes."
People
aren't robots, and they don't change their behavior based on mathematics. They
change their behavior based on feelings. Until bike advocates and street
designers alike understand this, bikes will never successfully belong.
Green
lane idea of the day: Street designers should
consider making short-term safety a baseline requirement of better bike
facilities, but not the sole measure of bike projects' value.
Cycle
track photo from
Regards,
Suite
ph:
(204) 927-3444 ext. 242
fax: (204) 927-3443
web: www.scatliff.ca
blog: http://scatliff.tumblr.com
Please consider our
environment before printing this message.