Bike Share Programs Lead To Lower Overall Head Injuries For Cyclists

After a bit of digging and a deep level of reporting Boston Magazine has a great article about how bike share programs have reduced overall injuries for cyclists, including head injuries.

Then there’s the good news, which takes a bit more digging through the data to locate. As The Atlantic’s CityLabs reported in a corrective to the fear-inducing headlines that preceded it, a focus on proportion aside, both overall head injuries and total overall injuries actually declinedin cities that implemented bike share programs. CityLabs reports:

Total injuries per year in [bike-share cities] decreased about 28 percent, and total head injuries decreased about 14 percent … By comparison, in the non-bike-share cities, total injuries increased slightly … and head injuries decreased just 4 percent over the same period.

Comparing proportion of head injuries to total injuries paints a very different impression of the impact bike-share had on cycling safety than just looking at total injuries themselves, which decreased far more than in cities without bike-share. The study doesn’t explain what might have caused either the net decline in injuries or the proportionate increase in head injuries. But the decline in injuries seems to align with the “safety in numbers” theory, which suggests that the more cyclists take the road, the more cars moderate their behavior, the more cycling is normalized, and the safer cycling becomes. If, in fact, bike-share systems spurred an increase in cycling (and it is, in fact, on the rise in Boston) then this might cause a drop in injuries. CityLab also suggests that cities with bike-share also have better bicycling infrastructure, which both increases the number of bikes on the road (and thus the safety in numbers effects) and makes all those bicyclists safer. (via)

I have to admit many years ago I thought that a bike share program in this town would leave the streets running red with blood, but over the years I have really come around to the idea that we need to put as many cyclists as possible in the streets to make them safer, and its good to see that the math is backing that idea up.

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