.. title:  Cycling in K.Lynn: Safety

I've spend quite a bit of time working on cycling safety. This is the start of
me summarising what I know. First of all, I will debunk some abuses of
research.

### Abused Research: Jensen of Trafitek 2007

Some opponents of cycleways will cite this study and may quote parts like:
"The safety effects of bicycle tracks in urban areas are an increase of about
10 percent in both crashes and injuries. The safety effects of bicycle lanes
in urban areas are an increase of 5 percent in crashes and 15 percent in
injuries. Bicyclists’ safety has worsened on roads, where bicycle facilities
have been implemented." rather than link to [the
study](http://trafitec.dk/sites/default/files/publications/bicycle%20tracks%20and%20lanes.pdf)
which shows that those percentages are against the researcher's predictions
(an approach that even the author calls a "second-best methodology" and I feel
that second is ranking it a bit high) and not the pre-implementation figures.
The predictions in Table 2 are debatable but seem to be a linear continuation
of whatever the previous casualty trend was, multiplied by a traffic volume
factor estimated from general data rather than traffic modelling.

In short, the data shows a decrease but it is presented as an increase because
it's a smaller decrease than predicted! [(source
discussion)](https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=99000&p=931451#p931451)

### Abused Research: Lund University 1987

This is not online or widely available, so what is often cited is a graphic
from a conference presentation which summarised it and was put online by
cycleway opponent John S Allen at [German Cycling Federation ADFC background
information on bicycling #173](http://www.bikexprt.com/bikepol/facil/sidepath/adfc173.htm).

The headline figures draw no distinctions for cycleway types, junction layouts
and so on and are used to wrap it all up into one answer which is "clear,
simple and wrong." It falls into the oft-repeated trap of lumping crossroads
in with forks and so on, then ignoring those differences, so it gives only
generalities.

### Flawed Research: Franklin 1988 and 1989

I reply to this in more details on [one of my Redways pages](/blog/2007/redways), but in short they contain many basic factual
errors, the usage data is very weak so the casualty rates may be wildly
inaccurate and there is no attempt to distinguish between route types.

### Further Reading

[Cycling Fallacies](https://cyclingfallacies.com/) has more descriptions of
abused and flawed research in its pages.

If anyone wants to discuss this please [contact me](/cgi-bin/respond.pl).
Thanks.

_9 Feb 2018, [MJR](../../email.html)_