NEWEST DATA + UPDATES

[this was originally posted on the League of American Bicyclists blog during National Public Health Week, April 1-7, 2024] It’s National Public Health Week and the League of American Bicyclists is proud to celebrate with a new resource, “Setting Speed Limits for Health and Safety.“ Public health is the science of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities, and one way a community can support public health is by providing access to routes with speeds that support the safe movement of people inside and outside of vehicles. Slower vehicle speeds not only help prevent death and serious injuries,… Read more: New Resource: Setting Speed Limits for Health and Safety

A recent article by Outside magazine highlighted the different data and competing narratives in recent coverage about how much biking is happening. Data from the Census Bureau was typically covered negatively, whether it was Bloomberg lamenting that “Biking to Work Isn’t Gaining Any Ground in the US” or Jalopnik writing “Turns Out A Lot Of People Don’t Want To Bike To Work.” At the same time, data from the company StreetLight was mostly covered positively, as in Axios’ “America’s bicycling hot spots, mapped.” What’s really going on? The short answer is that, mostly, we don’t know because our data on… Read more: New data and competing narratives: A look at Census and Streetlight data

Earlier this month the Census Bureau released its 2022 1-year estimates for the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS is the only annual nationwide dataset that includes estimates of how many people are biking and walking. It provides estimates for only one type of trip and only counts one mode per person, so its estimates reflect the way in which survey respondents get to work for the majority of miles during the last week when they take the survey. The Covid-19 pandemic led to remarkable changes in 1-year ACS estimates. The changes to peoples’ lives meant that no 2020 1-year… Read more: Census Data shows Biking and Walking to Work Bouncing Back

Shared Micromobility has grown and changed significantly in the last decade. According to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, fewer than 80 cities in the United States had a shared micromobility system in 2015 and all systems included docked bikes. Now, their recently released data shows more than 200 cities with a shared micromobility system and dockless e-scooters are the most common system type. Generally speaking micromobility refers to personal mobility devices that are low speed and small in size. Increasingly, micromobility is motorized using electric motors which provide power that assists a person pedaling a bicycle or provides… Read more: NEW DATA ON SHARED MICROMOBILITY SHOWS GROWTH OF E-SCOOTERS, SUCCESS OF LARGE CITIES

In June 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a Standing General Order (SGO) requiring identified manufacturers and operators of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to report certain crashes involving vehicles equipped with those systems. With two years of reporting, 31 incidents with non-motorists have been reported and 24 of those incidents were with bicyclists. Put another way, incidents with bicyclists account for more than 77% of reported incidents with non-motorists. A majority of those incidents occurred within the last year. While there are limitations with the reporting required by the SGO, this… Read more: PRELIMINARY DATA ON AUTOMATED DRIVING SYSTEMS SHOWS MAJORITY OF INCIDENTS WITH NON-MOTORIZED USERS ARE WITH BICYCLISTS