Safe cycling routes: Seven road safety indicators for cycling routes

Cycling is healthy, environmentally friendly, faster than walking, and uses less public space than a car, making the bicycle an attractive mode of transportation, especially for shorter journeys. Unfortunately, however, the numbers of fatalities and serious injuries among cyclists have been increasing in recent years in the Netherlands. A proactive approach to preventing bicycle crashes and reducing crash severity requires identifying and avoiding risks to cyclists in the bicycle infrastructure network. Studies investigating safe cycling infrastructure often focus on design choices at road level, such as the provision of separated bicycle paths. In the Netherlands this has led to the development of Safety Performance Indicators to prioritize safe road design choices. However, sometimes the safest option may be an alternative route altogether; therefore, it is worthwhile to consider how safety varies across different types of cycling routes. For cars, route safety indicators have already been proposed in 2011 [3]. With these as a starting point, this study proposes route safety indicators for cyclists based on established literature on safe cycling infrastructure. [From introduction]