A new research study indicates that cities who have separate cycling infrastructure saw major improvements with regard to safety and higher numbers of ridership. Bike lanes are an important component of a lot of urban planning today. The study published in the American Journal of Public Health indicated that those cities that have invested significantly in order to provide fully protected bike paths over the last 10 years have seen the biggest safety improvements as well as surges in ridership.

According to the study’s managers, it is not a matter of just expanding existing bicycle infrastructure but it matters to move bike lanes away from motor vehicle traffic on heavily traveled roads. Bike lane segregation appears to be extremely beneficial for this purpose. Some of the cities that saw the biggest safety improvements when separating out bike lanes and bike paths were New York City, Seattle, Washington DC and Chicago. In the first 6 months of 2016, fatalities for cyclists increased by more than 10% from 2015 which was the reversal of a 40-year trend. This is one of the leading reasons why planners began considering bike lanes to begin with.

One of the biggest reasons for this is that drivers are increasingly unable to resist the call of their smartphone and are therefore engaging in distracted driving and not seeing bicyclists until it’s too late. Separated bike lanes appear to be extremely effective especially when they are combined with bike share systems that have become more and more popular over the last several years. If you have already been injured in a bicycle accident as a result of another driver’s negligence, you may be entitled to recover compensation with the help of an experienced personal injury attorney.