Safety

A new report from the International Transport Forum shows America is only falling farther behind all of its peer nations on street safety [PDF].

What makes people feel that a street is safe, and what do those perceptions tell us about different streets? A group of researchers at MIT have developed a formula designed to approximate people's subjective reactions to the way streets look. They hope it will help chart shifts in the quality of city environments over time and prove useful to urban planners and architects seeking to better understand what makes streets appealing.

This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh.

This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh.

How can you turn a car-dependent city into a place where most people feel safe cycling for transportation?

Bicyclists, pacificists, and reasonable people everywhere are up in arms today about Courtland Milloy’s outrageous column, published last night on Washington Post’s website, in which he suggests drivers should go ahead and intentionally hit cyclists if they feel like it. By somehow casting people on bicycles as “bullies” and “terrorists” -- for reasons that never become clear -- Milloy sees fit to justify bullying and terrorizing the cyclists themselves.

Did you wear your helmet when you biked to work this morning? Whether you did or you didn't, it's up to you. So why are there so many people shrieking about it? On one side, the 85-percenters, overstating the protection helmets offer against head injuries. On the other side, the 3-footers, claiming that it's actually safer to go helmetless because drivers give you more space and a host of other reasons. Some recent hysteria around bike-share and head injuries fueled this fire. I'm not sure Jeff and I put that fire out with our discussion, but we at least tried to make some sense of it.

Converting fast-moving one-way streets to calmer two-way corridors may make them safer in more ways than one, according to a study by John Gilderbloom, a professor at the University of Louisville.

The metro is coming to Loudon County, Virginia. Eventually.