As bicycle use climbs, rate of crashes with vehicles falls

I couldn’t have said it better, from the Star Tribune online…

As bicycle use climbs, rate of crashes with vehicles falls

City data seem to bear out idea that seeing more bikers leads drivers to watch for them.

By STEVE BRANDT, Star Tribune

Last update: February 6, 2011 - 8:42 PM

The more people bike in Minneapolis, the safer they seem to be.

What's new? Recently crunched city data show the reported cyclist-motorist accident rate dropping as the number of bike commuters grows. For 2008, the most recent year for which complete data were available, the crash rate was one-quarter that of 10 years earlier. Moreover, a trend line shows a steady decrease in the crash rate even as the number of commuting cyclists more than doubled.

There are some limits to the Minneapolis data. The number of cyclists is taken from the number of people ages 16 or older who tell census takers that their main transportation to work the previous week was a bike. That figure grew from about 3,000 in the 1990s to about 8,000 in 2008. It excludes infrequent commuters and recreational bikers. Meanwhile, the number of crashes involved only those reported to the city between bikers and motorists, which remain at or below 1990s levels. That means the crash rate has fallen sharply while commuting bikers are on the rise.

Read on here.