NO EVIDENCE NYC TRAFFIC CALMING MEASURES REDUCE CRASHES
[B' Spokes: I have not read the paper (requires registration) but what I speculate is road treatments designed solely to reduce motorist speed by a few mph are not effective in reducing crashes, Or I'll assert road treatments that alert drivers to bicyclists and pedestrians are effective.
I'll note I've seen a lot of studies over the years that just looked at motorists speed, hopefully we will start looking at things more comprehensively now.
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-> According to an Oct. 15th TRB abstract of a report titled Quasi-Experimental Study of Traffic Calming Measures in New York City, “This paper provides a large-scale, rigorous evaluation of traffic calming projects in one U. S. city. The study area is New York City, which treated 391 streets with speed tables between 1996 and 2003. On the basis of crash frequencies for 5 years before treatment and 5 years after for treated streets and well-matched comparison streets, no evidence emerged that New York City's ambitious traffic calming program has led to a reduction in total crashes, pedestrian crashes, or injury crashes. This is in contrast to earlier, less carefully controlled evaluations that have reported significant reductions in crashes with traffic calming.” [Access to full report requires purchase]
Source: <a href="http://bit.ly/HgMjHj">http://bit.ly/HgMjHj</a>;
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.