Bike Safety in Cambridge

Next year’s freshmen can expect to be briefed on yet another issue that their forbears were not: bike safety in Cambridge. Last week, the Cambridge City Council unanimously passed three resolutions that will eventually lead to the mandatory distribution of bike safety information by both the city and its colleges to new residents and students. Sponsored by Mayor E. Denise Simmons, these initiatives are designed to improve road safety and decrease the risk that cyclers, pedestrians, and drivers suffer death or serious injury in preventable accidents.

The move to require that Cambridge and its colleges educate residents and students about cycling safety is but one of many measures that the city has implemented recently in its commitment to “Vision Zero,” a global movement that aims to end deaths and serious injuries from traffic accidents. Though we cannot yet know how this latest measure on biking will be implemented, the mandates seem to simply require better dissemination of pre-existing laws and traffic safety literature.

Knowing full well that biking in Cambridge can be wildly dangerous, we wholeheartedly support efforts to make Cambridge a safer city through incorporating specific bike safety information into its Vision Zero plans. To be effective, however, the city must buttress its new commitment to disseminating bike safety information with more substantive measures, including stricter enforcement of current bike laws, the introduction of more comprehensive bike regulations, and the creation of more bike-friendly roads.

Certainly, better dissemination of the bike safety rules currently on the books can do no harm, but this tactic seems to us a rather circuitous and ineffective one in the overall endeavor to make Cambridge’s streets noticeably safer. Bikers, pedestrians, and drivers alike often break the law knowingly, and more education may not end bad practices that have developed out of habit and convenience. The passive approach to fixing street safety—telling Cantabrigians that they need to remain alert while driving, look both ways before they cross street, and remain in their designated lane when biking—should be only the first component of a more thorough revamping of traffic safety.