personal safety & signed bike routes in residential neighbourhoods

[Eden]

My problem is that it is not actual safety, but only the illusion of…. There's plenty of data to back that up and one rather flawed Canadian study to refute it (they studied a 10 or so block section of separated bike track with *no* intersections and declared that separated cycle tracks reduce cyclist accidents by an amazing 80-90%!!! - total BS- though I do suppose that it prove well that intersections are the problem area… a place that cannot be separated, and the rest of the cycle track is simply window dressing)

I know that some people advocate for making people feel safer, even if it is totally fake, just to get more people out riding. I simply cannot agree with that approach. I don't think it's any coincidence that since Seattle started with these lanes the collision rate for cyclists has increased and it's not just because there are more people out there - the rate of collisions per 1,000 riders has increased, it's been proportional. I think that it's ridiculous that they installed facilities downtown that simply confused drivers… they actually have had to station volunteers and police officers down there to stop people making left turns on red across the lane when the cycling signals are green-straight and some of the volunteers were nearly hit by cars…

All these markings and signage confuse people more than ever… There was a fascinating experiment in Europe. There was a bad intersection in a small town - lots of collision between cars, lots of accidents with pedestrians. It had multiple crosswalks and signs, an ever increasing number of them. The town decided to strip them all away. Took away the lines, the signs, everything. People slowed down and paid more attention because they didn't think the signs and lines were doing the job for them. They started paying attention to what was happening, rather than trying to read all of the signs telling them what to do.. Accident rates went down.