|
 Planners could factor in this added risk when designing bike lanes
and other protections for cyclists, the study authors write in
Injury Prevention.
Bicycling offers great health benefits but issues of safety are a
huge barrier to people choosing bikes as their transportation, lead
author Morteza Asgarzadeh of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public
Health in Boston told Reuters Health.
In the U.S., most bicycle-vehicle crashes occur at intersections,
"yet we still don’t have proper protective bicycling infrastructure
at intersections across the country,” Asgarzadeh said by email.
It would be very expensive for cities to overhaul all intersections,
so the research team sought to identify which intersections might
pose the greatest risk, Asgarzadeh said.
The researchers mapped the location of 3,266 bicycle and car crashes
using GPS information recorded by New York police in 2011. They used
police records and Geographic Information Service (GIS) maps to
determine intersection angles, street width, presence of bike lanes,
speed limits and average traffic level at the crash locations.
The study team also collected details about the accidents including
the age and sex of the bicyclist, time of day, road conditions, type
of vehicle involved in the crash and severity of the bikers’ injury.
The majority - 60 percent - of bike and car crashes happened at
street intersections.
Compared with crashes at right-angle intersections, crashes at
non-right angle intersections were 37 percent more likely to results
in severe injury for cyclists.
Crashes that didn’t happen at intersections were also 31 percent
more likely to cause serious injury compared with crashes at
right-angle intersections.
When crashes were not at an intersection, they were more likely to
happen on narrow streets less than 100 feet wide, although street
width wasn’t linked to the severity of cyclist injuries.
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When planning intersections, one key for safety is making sure
drivers can see bicyclists from a distance, said Yinhai Wang, a
transportation researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle
who wasn’t involved in the study.
When intersections are not at right angles, the distance drivers can
see goes way down, Wang told Reuters Health.
Bikers should also take charge of their safety as well, Wang said.
“Education in schools on the proper operations of bicycles and
intersection safety awareness is every effective too,” he said by
email.
Asgarzadeh noted that while cities may need to spend a large amount
to improve intersections, money might be saved by not needing police
officers to monitor dangerous areas.
Wang offered safety advice for bikers: Always follow the traffic
rules and signals, always be cautious when on the road and never
assume automobile drivers can see you and know what you're going to
do next, and pay more attention to safety when riding near a truck
or a bus.
“We hope a more conscientious urban design along with higher
awareness among bicyclists and drivers can improve perception of
safety to help more people choose bicycles as a mode of
transportation to get to work or around cities,” Asgarzadeh said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2f1kDay Injury Prevention, online November 9, 2016.
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