Article Text
Abstract
Introduction The ’Safety in Numbers’ (SiN) phenomenon refers to a decline of injury risk per time or distance exposed as use of a mode increases. It has been demonstrated for cycling using cross-sectional data, but little evidence exists as to whether the effect applies longitudinally —that is, whether changes in cycling levels correlate with changes in per-cyclist injury risks.
Methods This paper examines cross-sectional and longitudinal SiN effects in 202 local authorities in Britain, using commuting data from 1991, 2001 and 2011 censuses plus police -recorded data on ’killed and seriously injured’ (KSI) road traffic injuries. We modelled a log-linear relationship between number of injuries and number of cycle commuters. Second, we conducted longitudinal analysis to examine whether local authorities where commuter cycling increased became safer (and vice versa).
Results The paper finds a cross-sectional SiN effect exists in the 1991, 2001 and 2011 censuses. The longitudinal analysis also found a SiN effect, that is, places where cycling increased were more likely to become safer than places where it had declined. Finally, these longitudinal results are placed in the context of changes in pedestrian, cyclist and motorist safety. While between 1991 and 2001 all modes saw declines in KSI risk (37% for pedestrians, 36% for cyclists and 27% for motor vehicle users), between 2001 and 2011 pedestrians and motorists saw even more substantial declines (41% and 49%), while risk for cyclists increased by 4%.
Conclusion The SiN mechanism does seem to operate longitudinally as well as cross-sectionally. However, at a national level between 2001–11 it co-existed with an increase in cyclist injury risk both in absolute terms and in relation to other modes.
- bicycle
- cross sectional study
- time series
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Footnotes
Contributors RA had the original idea for the paper and led on writing up. AG led on statistical analysis and contributed to write-up. RG contributed to statistical analysis and contributed to write-up. JW contributed to write-up.
Funding JW’s contribution was supported by the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence funded by the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the Wellcome Trust (MR/K023187/1) and (MR/K023187/1). RG’s contribution was supported by TIGTHAT, an MRC Global Challenges Project MR/P024408/1. JW and AG were also supported by METAHIT, and MRC Methodology Panel project (MR/P02663X/1).
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Data used are publicly available so others can reproduce our analysis based on the detail given in the paper. Supplementary files are also provided following the online version of the article, consisting of the dataset used and the Stata code run.