Cycling safety in numbers in Minneapolis

The cyclist-motorist accident rate in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has dropped nearly 25 percent even as the number of commuting cyclists more than doubled between 1993 and 2008, according to the city's data as reported in The Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The number of people who said they primarily bike to work, as opposed to using other forms of transportation, increased from 3,000 in the 1990s to about 8,000 in 2008, the most recent year for which complete data were available. Meanwhile, the number of reported crashes between cyclists and motorists remained at or below 1990s levels, according to the newspaper.

Shaun Murphy, coordinator of the city's nonmotorized transportation program, said crashes are less likely to occur where motorists are used to seeing cyclists. He also credited more bike lanes and bike trails segregating motorized and nonmotorized traffic for reducing collisions.

The city still records 200 to 300 bike-vehicle crashes annually. Statewide, there were 926 crashes and nine cyclists were killed in 2010, the newspaper reported.