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Davis Named Safest City for Cycling

FTR-GFT-Blog-Best-cities-for-bicycle-safety-2The City of Davis has been named the Safest City in the US for Cycling. The report was released by ADT, a home security company, on June 3rd.

6 of the top 10 Cities are located in California, but Los Angeles is rated as the least safe city in the country for cyclists.

10 Safest Cities

  1. DAVIS, California
  2. BERKELEY, California
  3. BOULDER, Colorado
  4. EUGENE, Oregon
  5. PALO ALTO, California
  6. CHICO, California
  7. MOUNTAIN VIEW, California
  8. FORT COLLINS, Colorado
  9. SANTA BARBARA, California
  10. NEW HAVEN, Connecticut

To determine a cycling safety ranking ADT "gathered metrics and data from Census.gov, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, People for Bikes, and The League of American Bicyclists to find the percentage of bike commuters, number of fatal crashes, amount of bike lanes, and what bike laws are in place or in the works in each city." 

Each metric was then added together with the following weight based on a 100-point scale:

  • Bike commuter: x3
  • Fatal crashes: x6
  • Protected bike lanes: x1
  • Proposed protected bike lanes: x.5
  • Complete street law: x1
  • Safe passing law: x1
  • Statewide bike plan: x1
  • Bike safety emphasis area: x1
  • Spending per capita: x1

Finally, the total 790 cities were ranked based on their overall score.

The ADT report can be seen here https://www.yourlocalsecurity.com/blog/2018/07/03/safest-cities-america-cyclists/

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Comments

2 responses to “Davis Named Safest City for Cycling”

  1. Nancy Price

    IMO, the ADT metrics do not take into account what to me makes Davis a very unsafe bike city: a large number of bikers do not have:
    *headlights, only reflectors
    *do not wear stripped or reflective clothing or markers on backpacks (as the do in Portland, OR for example)
    *especially in the downtown, bike through the stop signs; this recent “law/ordinance” is extremely dangerous to all: pedestrians and car/truck drivers
    *near misses aren’t counted of doors opening, bikers not stopping for pedestrians crossing the street, etc……
    Recently, I was broadsided by a biker who had no headlight. He fell over and I was terrified that he’d been badly hurt. He was not but my side mirror was broken off and the side door damaged. When he got up, thank goodness, we talked: turned out he was a married Ph.D student in electrical engineering who just had not had the time to fix his headlight and was not wearing a helmet. I was judged to be at fault, because I was further into the intersection. This was at 7th crossing F Street and I had looked both ways twice and at dusk had just not seen him until my headlights picked him up coming at me up F and slammed on my brakes. In talking with the Davis Police and the UCD police they all complain about the students.

    Reply
  2. Todd Edelman

    Nancy, there is no excuse for not having lights on a bike… except that, the cycling industry makes it difficult to have lights on a bike! Imagine if your car headlights were both an option at purchase (even if required) and they detached, and could be easily stolen: In Western Europe, Japan etc bicycles come with lights that are built-in and with on-board energy generation. Bike shops here recognize the value of this but the consumer mostly doesn’t, so the industry (for USA consumers) doesn’t change, because price points are what they are, i.e. no company is going to add expense that people do not value.
    Everything else in your response stinks of victim-blaming. Helmets would help with a lot of car crashes, adults are not required to wear them outside of competition, it’s not required to wear hi-viz… about stop signs, well…yes in most of Europe local streets without signals are based on priority, and this is safer for everyone and pollutes less.
    So yes clearly markets and laws need to be changed but in the meantime it’s hard to fight for something – this sort of behavior gravity – that simply doesn’t work.

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