Bicycling Safety for Experts     beginner contents current next > expert contents current next   driver contents current next

1 Introduction

Especially in crowded urban/suburban areas where distances are short and parking next to impossible to find, bicycling can provide a useful and convenient alternative to driving. When a sufficient number of people use bicycles for short trips, the result is to free up otherwise scarce parking for people who live further away, as illustrated in the following figure.

To obtain these advantages, the level of bicycling will have to increase. Some of the factors currently discouraging cycling (as of 1999 in the U.S.) include lack of knowledge of how to use a bicycle safely and hostility on the part of a few drivers. This document and companion documents attempt to mitigate both of these problems by providing a readily accessible treatment of bicycling safety from multiple points of view.

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