OTTAWA-CARLETON COMMUTER CYCLIST ON-ROAD AND OFF-ROAD INCIDENT RATES

This analysis overcomes the known limitations of police and emergency room bicycle accident databases through use of a survey that asked cyc lists to indicate their accident history as well as their regular comm ute route to work or school. By relating the route information of the 1604 respondents (52.5% of the distributed questionnaires) to facility attributes in a Geographic Information System, defensible estimates o f travel exposure on roads, off-road paths and sidewalks were develope d. The relative rates of collisions on the three different facility ty pes were not statistically different from 1.0. The relative rates for falls and injuries suggest it is safest to cycle on-road followed by o ff-road paths and trails, and finally least safe on sidewalks. While t here were no major injuries reported on sidewalks, the relative rate f or these events on paths was greater than the rate for roads. The abso lute event rates per bicycle kilometre were found to be between 10 and 41 times higher than similar rates for automobile travel. Results sug gest a need to discourage sidewalk cycling, and to further investigate the safety of off-road paths/trails. The analysis also demonstrates t he need for bicycle travel exposure information and the use of more th an just collision databases for bicycle safety analysis. (C) 1998 Else vier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.