No, the safest option is to separate cycle lanes from roads altogether, as is evidenced by the significantly lower death toll per km that e.g. the NL and Denmark have compared to the US [1]. In those countries, cyclists almost never share the road with car drivers.
In roads that are not designed for cycling (where cyclists have to share the road with car drivers), perhaps it is true that they fare best when they act as vehicles. However, the safest option by far is not sharing the road with cars to begin with.
You really can't compare the US and Denmark, you should pick a location and compare before and after segregation. Did it improve safety? There were plenty of bicycle trips in Denmark before cyclists were kicked off the roads for the convenience of motorists.
If it’s convenient for motorists that I get a segregated cycle lane, I’d be very happy to go along with it. Are there cyclists who don’t like cycle lanes and prefer to share with cars?
I don't like them when they aren't adjacent to the main lane. You end up outside the zone where drivers are looking for fast vehicles.
An improved shoulder wide enough to not have storm drains or debris to deal with is ideal. You can enter the roadway proper as needed to take the lane or prepare for turns like every other vehicle. You don't get abuse from ignorant drivers who expect you to stay in your designated space.
I do, I have been driving my bicycle to work for 12 years now. Not only I prefer regular roads, which are much better, whenever there is a segregated lane I avoid it. It is very obvious what segregation is for when you get hostile behavior on the part of motorists when you ignore the cycle lane and they complain that you don't use it.
Someday you will be old, unable to accelerate like a car and keep up with traffic, and you will instead wish that you could ride on the sidewalk. Part of the reason why bicycle use is unusual is that very few people can ride well enough to be out in the road.
How old do you think I am? What do you mean by keeping up with traffic? when I go uphill I do not ride as fast as cars by all means, that doesn't mean I can not use the road. If a faster driver comes behind me he either: 1. slows down and waits, 2. passes if it is safe to do it. The good thing about the road system is that it allows for vehicles of all types and speeds. Can't you drive your car in a road where there are ferraries and big trucks? Learning to ride well is easy, it doesn't requiere superhuman skills. Building separate infraestructure does not help to learn to ride, quite the opposite it encourages people to think that bicycle drivers are inferior and incapable of learning, it creates the Cyclist ghetto.
Shared road is getting increasingly rare, though. Except in 30 kph zones where cars have to go slow anyway.
When I was a kid, there were still plenty of 60-80 kph roads where bikes had to ride on the right side of the car lane, but almost all of those have separate bike lanes or bike paths nowadays.
This is plainly wrong. The biggest threat to a biker is being hit by an automobile. If that biker is in a lane completely away from automobile traffic, that threat vanishes.
Being hit how? What type of accidents are more likely to happen? A bike path with no interaction at all with cars will of course prevent any bike-car collision, there will still be bike-bike collisions and other types of accidents (the majority of bike accidents are not car-bike collisions anyway). That kind of exclusive bicycle path is delusional anyway, specially in a urban settings, where you always have to interact with the regular roadway. And it is there, in those interactions where most bike-car collisions happen, in fact most collisions in general happen in intersections. Segregating by vehicle type only makes intersections, which is were accidents happen, more complicated. It makes no sense to have an exterior lane being a thru lane when the adjacent lane is allowed to turn right, that is a contradiction to traffic engineering principles and it is what many bike lanes do.
> Being hit how? What type of accidents are more likely to happen?
95% of bicycle deaths are a result of motor-vehicle bike collision, and the vast majority of collisions are between the front of the motor vehicle and a bicycle.[0]
> there will still be bike-bike collisions and other types of accidents
Sure, but these collisions are far less deadly and injurious. Exchanging car-bike collisions for bike-bike collisions is a good tradeoff from a public health perspective.
No, what is good for a public health perspective is to avoid collisions (and falls which is the #1 accident with bikes). It is quite easy to avoid car-bike collisions, in fact car drivers are far more predictable than ignorant cyclists. Of course in order to do that you have to know what the most frequent type of car-bike collisions are, guess what? they are not cars hitting a bicycle from behind, they happen in intersections due to crossing traffic and bike segregation only increases them by making intersections more complicated.
Your argument hinges upon the notion that separated grades increases incidence of car-bike collision per capita. I concede that if that that core fact is true, you're correct — separate grades would be worse from a public health standpoint.
So, do you have evidence for that central claim, or is it just speculation?
Segregated bike paths, at some point, have to intersect with roads and driveways. So you can never eliminate the risk of accidents.
I can’t find any hard data on this, but from what I can see online (and my own experience riding in the road), the most common types of accidents are when cars are turning, and fail to yield to a cyclist. Being rear ended or sideswiped seems to be much more rare than accidents where the car is turning and doesn’t see the cyclist.
For example, a cyclist is riding in a bike lane, and a car is turning left into a driveway. The car is looking for oncoming traffic in the road, so the cyclist is most visible in the road or bike lane, where the driver is expecting fast moving traffic to be. If we build a segregated bike path, cyclists will be much less visible, and it’s more likely that a driver will fail to see them when turning.
In roads that are not designed for cycling (where cyclists have to share the road with car drivers), perhaps it is true that they fare best when they act as vehicles. However, the safest option by far is not sharing the road with cars to begin with.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/24/the-mo...