Here's How infrastructure could prevent accident in bicycle

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, car sales saw a drastic decline. As a result, people had the time to reconsider their means of transportation. Many turned to more environmentally responsible and considerate modes of transportation, with bicycles playing a significant role alongside trains, which are highly popular in Europe. Today, an increasing number of cyclists also ride for pure pleasure, which has become more accessible with the widespread adoption of electric bikes. Currently, in France, over half of the profits from bicycle sales come from electric bikes.

Although the popularity of bicycles has had significantly positive effects, bike lanes are not always accessible, and cyclists must sometimes use paths where they endanger pedestrians or are endangered by cars. Every year since 2005, between 150 and 200 cyclists have died while riding, in France alone.

On this map, the crosses represent a cyclist who lost their life while cycling or as a result of a cycling accident between the years 2005 and 2021. The dots, on the other hand, represent all other accidents reported to the French authorities. To shed light on this point, five years ago, the French government launched an expanded cycling plan. This plan has since seen many other incentives to promote cycling, beyond the already discussed ecological and economic impact on users. They also see it as beneficial for the cyclist's health. Indeed, cycling helps prevent conditions such as obesity, diabetes, or coronary diseases, which are related to insufficient physical activity or sedentary lifestyles. The use of bicycles also improves air quality in cities when it replaces motorized transportation. Furthermore, cities also benefit from reduced noise pollution, and cycling helps free up valuable public spaces like parking lots.

Today, France has 50,000 kilometers of bike lanes and aims to increase this number to 80,000 by 2027. To achieve this, the government has been subsidizing their construction since 2019, with funding reaching 365 million euros, a sum that will increase to 210 million for the year 2023 alone. Additionally, assistance programs for individuals have been implemented to support the purchase of new or used bicycles sold by professionals.

Faced with these significant means, numerous barriers to purchasing persist. According to the association "Vélo et Territoire," a bicycle theft occurs every minute in France, although the latter admits to a certain approximation of the difficulty in assessing the percentage of unreported thefts. This high figure is due to the difficulty for the bike owner to secure their property once they have reached their destination if local measures have not been specifically implemented. In response to this scourge, although France does not need to pale in comparison to other European countries, a government decree requires train stations (currently all administered by public organizations) with a daily attendance of at least 275 passengers to provide secure bike parking spaces before the beginning of 2030. This decree would help reduce accidents because the government argues that after a theft, victims tend not to buy another bicycle or downgrade to a less safe model with fewer features. However, equipment is a major factor in the severity of a bicycle accident. Just wearing a helmet alone reduces your chances of losing your life from 6.6% without a helmet to 3.7% with one.

In the previous graph, the panel region can be changed using the button at the top of your screen. However, the data used only report accidents that have been reported by the French law enforcement. Since these are more easily accessible in urban areas, the data is likely significantly inflated for the urban accident rate compared to reality. Nevertheless, we can observe a significant reduction in the proportion of accidents occurring in urban areas for all regions, except for Île-de-France, which includes Paris and its surrounding urban areas, and Corsica. This coincides with the implementation of the bike plan, which may have contributed to reducing this proportion by focusing its efforts on urban landscapes. This is due to specific laws aimed at supporting local authorities in obtaining the necessary resources for the establishment and maintenance of Bicycle-sharing systems.

The bicycle plan also aims to raise awareness and educate the younger generations about cycling. It believes that a significant portion of the French population has never been introduced to learning how to ride a bike and therefore does not engage in it for this reason.

In this graph, the age of the victims is represented by four box plots based on the severity of their bicycle accidents between 2005 and 2021. The values depicted include the minimum age by the lower whisker, the first quartile by the lower edge of the box, the median by the line inside the box, the third quartile by the upper edge of the box, and the maximum age by the upper whisker. In fact, all of these values increase progressively with the severity of the accident. It would therefore be wise to educate young people and, more broadly, educate the public about these at-risk individuals represented here.

These reports can then be compared with the acquisition of Motivate, the operator of Citi Bike, a public bicycle sharing system serving New York City, by Lyft, one year before the COVID-19 pandemic. This system is still widely unpopular compared to Vélib', the equivalent in the Paris metropolitan area, which has approximately the same number of bicycles per square kilometer but charges an annual subscription of 111.6€ ($117), which is $88 less than its New York counterpart. Additionally, Vélib' offers the use of electric bicycles at no extra cost when available, which is not offered in the American city. A federal bike plan could therefore seem relevant in the United States and, in a world where environmental concerns are increasingly emphasized in public debates, could attempt to compensate for the lack of local rail lines.