BeyondDC has long maintained that the most important factor in urban bicycling safety is for there to be lots of other cyclists around. When there are lots of cyclists, car drivers expect to see them, watch for them, and drive carefully. When there aren’t, car drivers don’t expect to see them, feel entitled to own the road, and don’t drive carefully.

A study from New York firm Transportation Alternatives that was posted to Streetsblog shows that safety in numbers has manifested itself in a big way in that city. As more and more New Yorkers pick up bicycling, fewer and fewer bicyclists are getting hurt or killed. In absolute numbers, not just by rate. It’s pretty compelling:

Graph from Transportation Alternatives, via Streetsblog.