Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling to Improve Public Health: Lessons From The Netherlands and Germany
John Pucher, PhD and
Lewis Dijkstra, PhD
John Pucher is with the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Lewis Dijkstra is with the European Commission, Brussels, Belgium.
Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to John Pucher, PhD, Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, 33 Livingston Ave, Room 363, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1900 (e-mail: pucher{at}rci.rutgers.edu).
Objectives. We examined the public health consequences of unsafeand inconvenient walking and bicycling conditions in Americancities to suggest improvements based on successful policiesin The Netherlands and Germany.
Methods. Secondary data from national travel and crash surveyswere used to compute fatality trends from 1975 to 2001 and fatalityand injury rates for pedestrians and cyclists in The Netherlands,Germany, and the United States in 2000.
Results. American pedestrians and cyclists were much more likelyto be killed or injured than were Dutch and German pedestriansand cyclists, both on a per-trip and on a per-kilometer basis.
Conclusions. A wide range of measures are available to improvethe safety of walking and cycling in American cities, both toreduce fatalities and injuries and to encourage walking andcycling.
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