For years, road engineers widened streets to allow for a forecast increase in traffic congestion, said Leigh Ann Von Hagen, AICP,PP, Executive Director, Voorhees Transportation Center. But wider roads are also an invitation for faster car speeds, Von Hagen said. Since the pandemic began, overall speeds have increased, along with reckless driving, she said.
There are also more cyclists on the road these days. A PeopleForBikes study found more Americans rode in 2024 than at any time in the previous decade. And after a sudden drop-off of driving congestion at the start of the pandemic, traffic has mostly rebounded. With more bikes and vehicles sharing the road, there are more chances for heated and at times deadly encounters.
“People are adopting bicycling more – which is healthy and helps the environment and helps us get to lower energy costs, and it’s a lot less expensive to ride your bike today than it is to fill your gas tank – yet we really haven’t created actual facilities for people to bicycle in,” Von Hagen said.
The documented deaths don’t represent all bike-car collisions. There’s no one source to compile data on such collisions nationwide, especially considering cases that don’t lead to death or serious injury, or instances of conflict or road rage that don’t include a crash, Von Hagen said.
The NHTSA data shows there have been increases in bicycle fatalities in traffic crashes since the start of the COVID pandemic. Pedestrian fatalities have also increased, said Hannah Younes, a senior research specialist at the Rutgers transportation center…
One of the most dangerous places for a bicyclist is at an intersection, where turning vehicles pose an extra hazard when they don’t check for cyclists coming, Younes and Von Hagen said.
There are situations where even in the presence of a dedicated bike lane, unless it is protected by barriers, it may still be safest for a cyclist to ride in the road, Von Hagen said. Bike lanes can be risky if they are too narrow, and it’s all too easy for a car to drift or swipe a rider with a side mirror, she said. Bike lanes tend to be where people illegally park, or where garbage cans or accumulating fall leaves pile up.
The team at Rutgers studied driver and cyclist behavior before and after the implementation of a temporary bike lane in New Jersey. Men are generally more likely than women to ride in the street, while women are more likely to ride on the sidewalk, Younes said. When there is a protected lane, with physical barriers or a parking lane between a bike lane and car traffic, use is more universal, and people who are more risk-averse will use it instead of the sidewalk, Younes said.
States and jurisdictions have varying laws on where bicyclists should ride, but in general, car drivers are required to “share the road” with bicyclists and motorcyclists. Most states (35 and Washington, DC, as of 2021) require car drivers to leave at least 3 feet of space when passing a bike.