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Readers React: Cycling is getting safer, but there’s more work to do

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To the editor: We are pleased to see a focus on bicycle safety from the Governor’s Highway Safety Assn. However, any valid effort to measure and benchmark transportation data ought to pay close attention to data quality, reporting and context. (“Bicycle traffic deaths soar; California leads nation,” Oct. 27)

Those considerations do not make an appearance in the GHSA’s new report on bicycling safety. It examines year-to-year data without taking long-term trends into account.

To understand bicycle safety, it is important to look at the fatality rate and not just fatality numbers. A bicyclist fatality rate tells us how many people died as a proportion of the number of people who were riding a bike. Taking into account the increased level of cycling in the United States, the cyclist fatality rate fell by a dramatic 79%.

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In short, cycling has become roughly four times safer per bike trip over the past three decades.

We strongly concur with two of the GHSA’s recommendations. First, that separate cycling infrastructure, including trails, cycle tracks, and bike lanes, will improve cycling safety. Second, that speed is a major contributor to bicycling — and all types of traffic — fatalities.

The GHSA would do well to recommend that its members implement both of these solutions by investing in safe infrastructure and promoting speed reduction techniques. Implementing these solutions would go a long way toward zero deaths, a safety goal we can all agree on.

Keith Laughlin, Andy Clarke and Jeffrey Miller, Washington

Laughlin is president of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Clarke is president of the League of American Bicyclists, and Miller is president of the Alliance for Bicycling and Walking.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion

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