More Cyclists = Safer Cycling (Montreal Gazette)

From the Montreal Gazette:

cyclechic.be

“The studies are showing that the more cyclists there are on the street, the safer they are,” said Dr. Patrick Morency, a public health and safety specialist with Montreal’s public health department.

A 2003 study published in the Injury Prevention Journal by Peter Lyndon Jacobsen concluded: “A motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking or bicycling if more people walk or bicycle. Policies that increase the numbers of people walking and bicycling appear to be an effective route to improving the safety of people walking and bicycling.”

Another study, called Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling to Improve Public Health: Lessons from the Netherlands and Germany, showed that pedestrians and cyclists in the United States were much more likely to be killed or injured than were Dutch and German pedestrians and cyclists, both on a per-trip and on a per-kilometre basis, even though the European countries had far more cyclists on their streets.

That study showed that Germany and the Netherlands have implemented a wide range of policies over two decades that simultaneously encouraged walking and cycling while dramatically lowering pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities and injuries.

Read the full article here, as it relates to Montreal and Toronto.