"Bike Lanes Safer Than Cycling in Streets"

This is interesting, although I personally tend to agree with the differing opinion expressed by the Bicycle Coalition in the end of the article: http://www.baycitizen.org/bikes/story/harvard-study-bike-lanes-safer-cycling/

"A study by the Harvard School of Public Health released this week shows that separated bike lanes are safer for cyclists than mixing with cars in streets, resulting in 28 percent fewer injuries.

The Harvard research was conducted during an eighth-month period in Montreal, a city with a longstanding network of separated bike lanes, and published this week in the journal Injury Prevention.

“These data suggest that the injury risk of bicycling on cycle tracks is less than bicycling in streets,” the study’s authors wrote. “The construction of cycle tracks should not be discouraged.

But there is also some dissention within the ranks of the bicycle coalition itself about separated lanes. Some avid cyclists consider such lanes too confining, and if more ordinary folks start riding bikes in the city, they’re going to get in the way.

“Experienced cyclists like to go fast,” wrote Matt Baume, “and they don't like to swerve around kids and old people and fatties and tourists.”