Traffic safety on bicycle paths: results from a new large scale Danish study

The article describes the results from a large scale study about the traffic safety effect from implementing one-way bicycle paths in build up areas in medium and large town in the western part of Denmark. The study was a before and after study with a comparison group and consisted of 40 km of road distributed on 46 road segments. On these roads, bicycle paths were implemented between 1 January 1989 and 31 December 2000. In general, implementing of bicycle paths resulted in an insignificant increase in the number of injury accidents by 14%. It was mainly caused by a statistical significant increase in the number of injury accidents with vulnerable road users i.e. moped riders, cyclists and pedestrians with 25%. The number of injury accidents that involved vulnerable road users did increase significantly at intersections (34%) while the effect on sections was small and uncertain. The effect in the intersections was the worst for moped riders with a tendency to statistical significant increase with 94%, while a similar but lower trend has been observed for cyclists and pedestrians.