By the league of American Bicyclists
The United States should have a national goal to reduce the number of bicyclists and pedestrians killed on our roadways.
Please ask your Senators and Representative to co-sponsor HR 3494/S 1708 to institute a nonmotorized safety performance measure.
It seems like a common sense request, but US DOT and the Federal Highway Administration has refused to set a performance measure to reduce bicycle and pedestrian deaths. We are now asking Congress to require such a measure.
Here’s why:
- MAP-21, the new federal transportation law, requires USDOT and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to establish safety performance measures for states to meet – but, no performance measure related to the safety of people who bike and walk is currently being considered by FHWA.
- The number of bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities has risen for the past two years (2010 and 2011) while overall traffic deaths have gone down quite dramatically — that means the percentage of fatalities that are bike/ped has risen from 12% to nearly 16%.
- MAP-21 almost doubled the amount of funding available for the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), a program run by state Departments of Transportation. Unfortunately, that program has woefully small investments in bike/ped safety projects: Only seven states have spent any of these funds on bike/ped projects, and combined they’ve spent less than 0.5% of the funds annually.
Without a specific performance measure to focus on nonmotorized safety, bicyclists and pedestrians will remain firmly in the blindspot of traffic safety.
Please ask Congress to co-sponsor HR 3494/S 1708 to set a national goal to reduce the number of bicyclists and pedestrians injured and killed on our roads.
To take action https://cqrcengage.com/lab/app/write-a-letter