Studies have found that protected bike lanes significantly affect safety for cyclists. Some reports note that they can “decrease risk by 90%.” When a city has no dedicated cycling infrastructure and no protected bike lanes, cyclists face greater risks.
Protected bike lanes do look much different from one case to the next. In some cases, there will be a median or a concrete divider separating the bike lane from the street. Some bike lanes may use bollards or pylons. In other cases, the bike lane is just slightly elevated so that it is a few inches higher than the surrounding street.
Why does this increase safety?
Protected bike lanes make it much harder for cyclists to be inadvertently struck by the motorists around them. If there is a physical divider in place, an inattentive or impaired motorist will hit that before swerving into the bike lane.
Even when the bike lane is just slightly higher, the bump onto the elevated level serves as a warning for the driver. If someone is distracted by their phone, for example, they will feel the car hit the bump on the edge of the road and return their attention to the street.
This does not mean that cyclists are perfectly safe. Aggressive drivers could still make major mistakes and drive into a protected bike lane. But, statistically speaking, it is clear that this is much safer than simply instructing cyclists to ride next to the edge of the road—without providing them with any dedicated infrastructure at all.
This helps to show why municipalities need to focus on road designs that are safe for cyclists, preventing accidents and saving lives. But since protected bike lanes are not in use everywhere, cyclists do face significant risks, and those who have been injured need to know what legal steps to take to seek compensation.
