What problem could building bike lanes solve? Write three (3) paragraphs. In the first paragraph, write about the problem and discuss the advantages of bike lanes. In the second paragraph, discuss the disadvantages of bike lanes. In the third paragraph, write a conclusion, and include your opinion.

Not only do bike lanes make the roads safer for cyclists, but they also reduce crashes and near-misses between cars. In Toronto, there was a 71 per cent decrease in car/car conflicts. That’s an even bigger reduction than there was in conflicts between cars and bikes and between cars and pedestrian, both of which fell by more than half.

“The overall tenor of the street changes,” says Tom Babin, a Calgary cyclist and author of the book Frostbike: The Joy, Pain, and Numbness of Winter Cycling.

“It’s a little less car-dominated, a little more human scaled. All of that improves safety for everyone using it.”

In Toronto, there is one caveat: there was a 61 per cent increase in conflicts between bikes and pedestrians, but those tend not to be as serious (a similar study in New York found pedestrian injuries actually fell by more than a fifth) — and crashes overall went down by 44 per cent