Busting myths and crunching numbers: what really adds up to safe cycling?

Is helmet-wearing  the key to safe cycling ? Maybe NOT! Kay Teschke, retired UBC Prof in Occupational and Environmental Health, joins Peter to  debunk misconceptions and talk about what really makes cycling safe. Whether it's helmet laws, safe passing distances,  bike lights, or cyclist-pedestrian conflicts — Kay's got the data and she's not afraid to use it.

Read about the BC Government's controversial Bill 23 legislation regarding safe passing distances around cyclists HERE.

Check here for a great compilation and  systematic debunking of common CYCLING FALLACIES courtesy of the  Cycling Embassy of Great Britain.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Welcome to Bike Tits, the Beastie Cycling Coalition's podcast where we talk about all things related to cycling advocacy, education, and safety. I'm your host, Peter Ladner. I'm the chair of the board of the FC Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. My guest today is Kay Kaski, a retired UBC professor, and we are going to talk about all things related to bike safety. And the great thing when you talk to Kay about bike safety is he can always say, Well, the research shows we have the data that shows XY. So we're not going to be talking about what people like and think and um maybe have hot-headed opinions about. We're going to talk about actual data about what makes a safe route, what is the uh best way to define a safe passing distance, and what she would recommend if she were our legislator, what could be done to make cycling safety. So good morning, Kay. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12

Good morning, Peter. I'm really happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15

Could you just start by telling us how you got into cycling safety? Because I know you were with uh in occupational environmental health, and then cycling. What happened?

SPEAKER_00: 1:26

So true. Um I've always loved cycling, and I cycled to work for most of my career and cycle for holidays and so on. And when my daughter was born, I started to look at the roots in Vancouver a lot differently, which a lot of parents do in our research. It shows that. But anyway, I know that kids have a really difficult time riding in straight lines. And that made me think maybe when I get a little bit more time in my hands after my daughter's older, I'll get into cycling advocacy. And when she was about 10, there was an ad by the Vancouver City Council looking for members of the bicycle advisory committee. And I applied and they accepted me as a member. And when I was on that committee, I started hearing these things that just didn't ring true to me. For example, that you're safer riding on the road rather than on an off-street path, and that you're better riding in the middle of the lane, and lots of things. And since I'm a researcher, I thought, okay, let me look at the literature because lots of times things aren't what you expect when you study them. So I thought I could be wrong, my gut feeling could be wrong. And so when I did the initial literature search, I found that the main problem was that there was very little of good research. And I started to think, well, you know, I'm a researcher, I can see areas for improvement, so why don't I start studying this? And that was the beginning of my career as a bicycling researcher.

SPEAKER_01: 3:04

So, as a researcher, can you tell us what is the biggest reason that people do not want to cycle?

SPEAKER_00: 3:14

This has been shown in our research and in researchers around the world again and again and again, the biggest fear that people have is about cycling safety, and that kind of fear is mainly riding next to motor vehicle traffic. And it is absolutely the dominant fear, and it's if you ask the people who cycle less, for example, women and also people with kids, that's an even stronger fear, and that's one of the reasons that bicycling is one of the most unequal types of uh transportation. We have equal numbers of people approximately walking, driving, taking transit, but for bicycling in North America, about twice as many uh people cycling are men than women. And that's because women are more fearful uh of traffic.

SPEAKER_01: 4:19

Not to say men aren't, but uh well before we get into what can be done about that, how dangerous is it? Are these fears well founded?

SPEAKER_00: 4:30

Uh so it is dangerous to more dangerous to be riding in traffic with motor vehicles, but overall bicycling is quite a safe activity. In fact, if you look at fatality data, there uh for example in BC, the last the average over the last five years is about somewhere just under 10 deaths a year. And in fact, bicycling is about as safe as walking. And so most people aren't afraid of walking. And uh so if you think of it that way, that's the best way to think of cycling safety when you think of cycling for transportation.

SPEAKER_01: 5:07

Do you have any data on where those deaths occur or what the most dangerous situations or geographical areas are?

SPEAKER_00: 5:16

Um the kinds of things that are particularly dangerous are riding uh with on busy streets with uh motor vehicles, riding on rural roads with fast uh motor vehicles or suburban roads with fast uh motor vehicle speeds, riding around heavy vehicles. So those are the things that are most likely when you have a crash that the result can be fatality.

SPEAKER_01: 5:47

So these women who fear cycling, women more than men, are actually uh they're they're smart in that they recognize there actually is a danger there. But you're saying sometimes we inflate the danger in our minds. How can we eliminate that danger or reduce it to the point where people are not fearful about riding?

SPEAKER_00: 6:10

Well, so that's one of the uh things that we studied a lot was what kind of root types would make people feel more comfortable riding, because you want to feel comfortable when you're getting around, and also what are safer. And it turns out that those things mesh really well. And the most safe route types turn to be turn out to be along busy streets, routes that are physically separated from traffic by a curb or a jersey barrier or by uh a grassy verge, for example, anything that physically separates the people on bikes from the people in motor vehicles, and that really makes a big difference to safety. It's about 10 times safer in that separated uh lane compared to riding in the traffic between parked cars and with no bicycling infrastructure, so that's a huge change. It's also uh safer to ride on um residential streets than uh than on busy streets without any bike infrastructure, and it's also safer to ride on bike paths. Bike lanes are next to uh busy streets, but uh bike paths, I didn't understand what the difference between a bike lane and a bike path was at first, but a bike path is um is like in a park or in a setting where there are no motor vehicles.

SPEAKER_01: 7:39

Would that be what we also call multi-use path, the famous MUPS where it's a mix of users, cyclists, pedestrians, dog walkers?

SPEAKER_00: 7:49

So multi-use paths um are used in a few different ways, but you can have separate bike paths that have a bike path that's separated from the pedestrian path. And we have that a lot in Vancouver in Vancouver. But in a lot of the suburban areas where they think that there's not as much uh walking or biking, they make a wide path that is for people walking and biking together. And the idea is that people will sort things out as they're um going along. And some of those multi-use paths in the suburban areas are um in park-like settings, next to railway uh lines and so on, but others are right next to busy streets, so they're similar to a um a separated bike lane, but right next to a busy street, but they're um a combination. So there's a lot of uh tricky parts of the bike infrastructure terminology.

SPEAKER_01: 8:49

Uh oftentimes we hear that cyclists endanger pedestrians, that especially on these multi-use paths, they go too fast. Uh, pedestrians are fearful and sometimes angry about cyclists. Certainly um we hear that at intersections in the city and so on. Are there is there data that shows that cyclists really are a danger to pedestrians?

SPEAKER_00: 9:14

I did a look at this uh because people have been telling me that this is such a problem. And uh the BC government has statistics that look at um pedestrians injured by cyclists and and cyclists injured by pedestrians, it does go both ways when you mix them. Um but it is so small that the statistical agency that provided me with the data had to hide um the numbers because they don't give out numbers less than five for any particular year. So in fact, uh it it's uh you know it's just negligible how many are injured in either direction. But it can happen in either direction. For example, a famous uh crash on the Burard Street Bridge in Vancouver in the 90s, which motivated the new separated bike lanes there, was someone was riding on the sidewalk, which is where they were supposed to ride, on a basically a multi-use path, and coming along, and there were pedestrians too, and the pedestrians gesturing with their arms knocked the cyclist onto the onto the uh car lane, and the person ended up with a massive head injury and sued the city. So that can happen in either direction. It's really sad that people walking and people biking end up um uh kind of fighting each other for the small amount of space that they're allocated. What we really need to do is provide both with their own space because they have different speeds and we don't want neither one wants to scare or hurt the other. And we want best the best case scenario would be to get together and fight for the best possible root types.

SPEAKER_01: 11:05

Kate, you mentioned the incident on the Barard Bridge and somebody falling over and having a head injury. What do you think about helmet laws? Do helmet laws make cycling safer? I'm talking compul requiring people to wear helmets.

SPEAKER_00: 11:26

So the first of all, I just want to say that helmets do reduce injuries if you're in a crash. So they're a post-crash head injury mitigation measure, and they do reduce the chance of a head injury if you hit your head on in this crash by about 50%. But they don't prevent crashes from happening in the first place, and there are many, many wonderful things to do to prevent head injuries from preventing crashes in the first place, and those things are much, much more important because you can be injured in any part of your body, and so the ideal measure would prevent the crash from happening in the first place, like separated bike lanes, for example, are a great example of how you do that. When people so, first of all, helmets help reduce uh head injuries if you're in a crash, but when we have studied helmet laws, so for example, we compared uh provinces with and without helmet laws and tried to look and see which whether they the ones with helmet laws had lower risk of head injury hospitalization than provinces without helmet laws. And there was no difference. So the helmet law did not increase um uh safety, it just meant an extra requirement for people cycling, and there's evidence that there are some people who won't cycle because of helmet laws, they don't like having to wear a helmet. It can be really hot and bothersome in the summertime, and uh women in particular at certain ages find wearing a helmet really, really tough, and in the winter time they can be very hard to wear if uh if it's really cold out. So there's reason to focus the safety effort on infrastructure and other things than uh helmets alone. When I first started my research on cycling safety, if you went to a site like ICBC or various uh police organizations that were touting a message of cycling safety, and in fact, even many bicycling advocacy organizations, they would say the first thing, the main thing you can do to protect yourself when you're cycling is to wear a helmet. And in fact, helmets are a measure of last resort. They're what happen what you should wear, what you you hope you have if you're in a crash. What you really want to do is prevent the crash from happening in the first place. In the public health field, we call that primary prevention. And that's what you want to do, first of all, is prevent the crash from happening.

SPEAKER_01: 14:29

Kay, you've worked on uh with a number of governments and policy agencies. You mentioned the Vancouver Cycling Advocacy Group, but I know you've done more than that. Um you've been recommending changes to legislation that could increase public uh health or cycling safety. Could you point to any particular just before we get into Bill 23 and safe passing distances, can you mention anything you've personally put forward that you're proud of that has actually made a difference?

SPEAKER_00: 15:01

Well, for the for overall, what I have proposed that has actually made a difference is the results of our uh infrastructure research, which shows the types of routes that are safer than other types of routes. And a lot of cities across Canada and across BC and in North America and elsewhere have started to put in much more safe route infrastructure, in particular protected bike lanes along busy city streets. But when it comes to legislation, um so far the element that I've been promoting hasn't been adopted, and that is a 30 kilometer an hour speed limit for residential streets. And right now the default speed limit in urban settings across the country is 50 kilometers an hour, including our residential streets, and it's it's too fast, it makes uh uh urban areas uncomfortable, and in places in the world where they've reduced the speed limit to 30 kilometers an hour in residential settings. For example, in London, there are certain areas they've done it, they found that injuries have been reduced by about 50 percent. So it really makes a difference. And uh I'm it's interesting because in 2016 the the uh predecessor to Bonnie Henry, Perry Kendall, the public provincial health officer, had a report on traffic safety. And in it, one of his recommendations was that the province adopt a 30 kilometer an hour default speed limit in urban settings, and then you have a default in urban settings of 30, and then you can increase the speed limit along uh busy streets like um arterials and shopping streets or whatever. So, but that has not been adopted, and it's a real shame.

SPEAKER_01: 17:01

That's been endorsed by the UBC, the Union of BC municipalities, various city councils, some municipalities, Saanich, for example, have implemented it on their own. But why do you think it's widely supported by public uh health by surveys of people? Somebody said something like 90% of people when asked if you think that the speed limit should be reduced in their immediate neighborhood said yes. But somehow for some reason it never happens. Have you any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00: 17:33

Yeah, I mean what you just quoted there about over 90% of people would like the neighborhoods, their own neighborhood streets have a reduced speed limit, is from um the BC or from the Canadian Automobile Association survey. So it's not uh just uh bicyclists or pedestrians who are hoping for that, it's people who own cars and uh and belong to this association. The other interesting thing is that if you when in our injury study, we used uh radar to measure speeds at various um sites around the cities that we were studying. And on residential streets, the median speed was about 30 kilometers an hour, and the uh 85th percentile speed was 37 kilometers an hour. So people are already driving much more slowly on the on uh neighborhood streets on average, but there are some people who are driving still above 30. Um, but we seem so hesitant. I think politicians have this thing in their mind that reducing the speed limit is really a scary step to take, and they don't know these data about how the public wants slower speed limits and how the public already on average drive more slowly on these streets. And I think if they uh would be perhaps a little braver and uh and test it out, they might be quite pleasantly surprised with a public reaction. Especially if the public was allowed to petition their municipal government to raise the speed limit on their street as an option. I'm betting that uh they'd find out pretty quickly that not many neighborhoods want to raise their speed limit.

SPEAKER_01: 19:24

Okay, let's talk about Bill 23. Uh for those who are deeply into this, like some of us, uh this is a bill that the BC government has brought forward enabling uh regulations which are still to come to set a safe distance between cyclist and a passing car, and cyclist and a car behind. Um at this point, the the distances put forward were one meter to the side and three meters to behind. And uh this is still uh to be determined. But uh I know there are differing opinions about this, and I know you have some. What is your uh recommend what would your recommendation be for the the distance that should be required by this new law?

SPEAKER_00: 20:12

Right. So this is something passing distance laws is something that's been happening in um the English-speaking world, so in the US, in Australia, in uh the UK, and to a certain extent in Canada. And the initial uh group of laws that have been put out were a meter passing distance or three feet in the US. And it hadn't been studied ahead of time very seriously. But what happened was there have been now a number of studies that have come out in two different types. One was just looking at before and after these um these uh laws were put in effect. What was the passing distance? They used these fancy cameras and radar setups to tell how far uh traffic was from the person bicycling. And what they found was that before the laws, the typical distance of passing was five to six feet. Whereas after the law, it actually got a little less. So you have a three-foot passing law, you advertise it, and now people think, oh, I didn't have to give that much space, which is not a good thing. Now you're you're telling people they can pass closer because no one figured out what people were already doing, which was giving more space. The other thing that happened is someone compared US states with and without these passing laws, and what they found for bicycling crashes, and what they found is that there was actually a slight in increase after the passing law in the states that put in passing laws versus not. And it wasn't statistically significant, so we would say it's no difference. So that amount of uh passing distance, the three feet, is not enough. And it's interesting because recently in the UK they made a law and they said a minimum of 1.5 and then uh meters and two meters after a certain speed, and I actually can't remember what that speed is. So they've taken the data that has come out in the last few years and made a better passing distance, a better minimum passing distance. And so that's what I would support is 1.5 meters up to probably uh 30 kilometers an hour, and after that you want at least two meters. And it's not unreasonable to think that when someone's on a fast street, for example, if someone's riding on a rural road with no shoulders and you want to pass them, you should just pass them in the other lane because you're going quickly. The default speed limit on a rural road is 80 kilometers an hour. The wind that you create, the turbulence you create when you're driving past a person on a bike is going to cause that bike to wobble. So you want to give them a lot of space, and you already have to give that amount of space to a tractor on that road or another car on that road. Why not also for a person on a bike? The second part, oh, go ahead. Sorry. Uh, you also mentioned a following distance, and that proposal took me by surprise. I hadn't realized that that was going to be a proposal. And it's interesting to the the proposal is that you have to follow a bicyclist by at least three meters. There has to be a three-meter gap. But think about what that's trying to protect the bicyclist from. It's trying to protect you from being rear-ended. A person on a bike, when they brake, they stop quickly because they're light. There's not so much momentum. And a car, although you've got fancier braking systems, it takes more space for them to slow down and stop. And the space it takes them to slow down and stop depends on the time they have to do that. And what affects the time? Well, how what is the reaction time to see that cyclist slow down and put their foot on the brake in that time? Depending on the speed they're already going, they can travel a certain distance. So the faster you're going, the long the further you can travel in your car before even beginning to put the brakes on. And then once you put the brake on, speed also takes uh it's also part of the equation because you have to slow down over a longer distance. So you may have been trained when you were taking driver training about how far you should stay back from the car.

SPEAKER_01: 25:15

Two-second rule.

SPEAKER_00: 25:17

Two-second rule, absolutely. And uh the reason for the two-second rule is because in two seconds you you uh have a greater distance between you and the car in front if you're going faster, and a lesser distance if you're going slower. So it that using time as the basis for uh the rule takes into account the velocity that you're traveling at. And in fact, in the ICBC training materials, they recommend a longer time rule, three seconds, when you're driving behind a vehicle that can stop more quickly than you, for example, a motorcycle. So a three-second rule uh for bicycling seems appropriate. And when I did the calculations, um there is no speed that uh would result in a only three-meter distance. You have to be stopped, where a three-meter distance would be satisfactory uh distance behind a bicyclist. So, and at uh some very reasonable speeds, you need to be uh 30 meters behind. So it's terrifying, this uh proposal, and I am really, really alarmed about it. I think it's an emergency to get uh uh the provincial government to realize that they made a big mistake. And uh, there's even some rumors about that maybe someone had the three-second rule in their mind, but uh thought of it as three meters and just made an error. Um and if that was the case, I hope someone just says, we made a mistake. Let's change this, let's not endanger cyclists.

SPEAKER_01: 27:02

I I feel compelled to say that the BC Cycling Coalition is working closely with the the provincial government on this and recognizing that we uh uh many cycling organizations, not just us, have asked for the safe passing distance for many years, and now we're finally getting it. And uh so we're we're engaged in a bit of a dance about um don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But I I I hear your queer point that it may not just be perfect, but even good to have something different from what was originally proposed. But our feeling has been that uh, well, at least we've got some legislative uh recognition that cyclists and vulnerable road users need to have some space around them. And uh I look forward to the continuing debate about how to make that truly effective based on the data, because I I do like your your uh uh approach to these things where you measure and look at the research and uh try to come up with something that actually has proven to be effective. Okay, is there anything else you'd like you think we need to know about cycling safety or uh the safety for vulnerable road users? Um we haven't talked about intersection cameras or speed cameras. I presume that if you were an advocate of 30k default speed limits in residential areas, you might be a supporter of that as well.

SPEAKER_00: 28:27

Yeah, I think all these speed camera enforcement is such a good idea. Um we talk a lot about equity uh these days, and we know that when police officers need to go out and enforce traffic laws in person with a radar gun, first of all, it's uh it's not comprehensive because it's just in at certain times of year or certain places. So you want to have it be equitable in time and space, and you want everyone to be treated the same way. And there have been lots of studies showing that people are treated differently when they interact with a police officer. So it's an equitable, fair uh solution, and uh to have um speed cameras or red light cameras. I think it's a great idea. People worry about those things um being money grabs, so there are solutions to that. In Sweden for a while they had a trial of putting all the money earned in these uh situ uh in with these uh systems into a pot, and uh there'd be a lottery at the end of the year that everyone who hadn't been caught violating these uh laws uh could um could be a potential winner of some of that pot of money, which was a cool idea. Um but the other thing that some people have advocated for uh is making clear that this intersection. Section, it does have a speed camera, does have a red light camera. And so that people have fair warning, and that seems also reasonable to do. Yeah, so those I definitely am for it. One of the other big safety features that I really think needs to be implemented, it's not a legal one, it's an infrastructure one, and it would make such a difference for people walking and biking. And it's a very common feature in rural areas and in suburban areas, and that is slip lanes. So you talked about intersections. So when you come to an intersection in many of our suburban areas, you get to the intersection. If you're going straight, you just stay in your lane. But if you're turning right, there's this little lane, it's almost like a freeway entrance or a freeway, it's a cut that allows you to just continue to going right. And so if you're walking or cycling across, you have to go across that slip lane. And then you start on the intersection. And slip lanes are a real problem. They're a source of not only crashes that involve people biking and walking, but also car-car crashes. Because when you're making that turn, if the traffic is going in the same direction you're hoping to get to, you have to look back at such an angle that it's hard for you to see the traffic coming along that lane. So that is a huge infrastructure improvement, is to remove slip lanes.

SPEAKER_01: 31:39

Finally, Kay, a little while ago, you were at at my home and you wanted to get home before dark because you didn't want to cycle in the dark. Is it? I feel when I'm cycling in the dark that I'm actually safer because I'm lit up and there are just a few lights around. There's the car lights and my lights. It should be pretty easy for me to be seen, but you don't feel that way, or is there data to show that it is more dangerous riding at night, even if you have lights?

SPEAKER_00: 32:11

I don't know the data of with lights, without lights. So that's interesting. There is data showing there's a slightly higher risk when you're riding at night. One thing about bike lights compared to motor vehicle lights is they're small and there's so much going, can be so much going on on the street that uh that seeing the bike in amongst all the other lights may be hard. But if you're riding on a residential street, it's it shouldn't be too bad. So my caution is also partly because my eyesight is uh like many people of my age, I'm 71, uh, is not as good at night. And so the combination of uh slightly higher risk and uh my poorer eyesight at night uh um makes me avoid night night cycling uh if I can. I mean I do cycle at night sometimes.

SPEAKER_01: 33:08

Okay, you mentioned that bike lights at night could be small and insignificant. I assume you would then advocate for stronger lights or strong lights if you're riding at night. What about using a light during the day? Does that make any difference?

SPEAKER_00: 33:22

Yes, there is excellent research on using daytime running lights. There was actually a randomized control trial done in Sweden with uh thousands of people uh issued bikes without uh uh permanent running lights, and uh and others randomized to a group that got bikes that had lights that ran as soon as you started using them, the lights were on. And what they found is there were about 50% fewer collisions, so collisions with other road users, which is what you what you would expect to prevent. So it didn't change the number of uh crashes where you're just by yourself, but if you were gonna collide with another person on a bike, a motor vehicle, or pedestrian, those types of collisions were reduced by about 50% using daytime running lights. So it's one of those things that I use all the time. And it, you know, it's a great example of a primary prevention measure that you can control. So as a cyclist, I can choose to wear a helmet. That's a secondary prevention measure if I'm in a crash. But if I want a primary prevention measure uh that will prevent me from or reduce my risk of being in a crash, daytime running lights is a great way to do that.

SPEAKER_01: 34:40

What's more important, front lights or backlights?

SPEAKER_00: 34:44

Uh I'm not going to choose. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 34:48

Okay, thank you very much. This has been really interesting, and uh I hope we can get you and people like you involved in these policy decisions so that we can actually come up with results that will really make a difference because there's obviously still a lot of work to be done to make cycling um and all kinds of active transportation safer. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00: 35:12

Well, thank you for having me, Peter. I really appreciate the chance to let people know some of the uh research results.

SPEAKER_01: 35:25

Thanks for listening to Bike Test and supporting Safe Cycling in BC. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. BC Cycling Coalition relies on your support to continue our work. Please consider becoming a member and adding your voice to the call for safer and more accessible cycling in BC. Special thanks to our sponsors, BC Hydro, Richard Fuel Center, ITBC, Moto, and Device Motor.ca