Safely integrating bicyclists onto roadways in the United States has become an important issue as the number of cyclists has steadily increased in recent decades. These concerns have led many city and state legislatures to pass laws requiring drivers to provide a minimum amount of distance between their vehicle and cyclists when passing them on roadways. Many believe these laws are ineffective in reducing the number of bicyclist fatalities because they are difficult for police to enforce, contain loopholes, and the minimum distance required is inadequate. This paper tests this claim empirically using data on 18,534 bicyclist fatalities from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and a differences-in-differences approach, in a negative binomial model, to identify the effect of minimum distance passing laws on bicyclist fatalities. The analysis fails to find a significant effect of enacting a minimum distance passing law on the number of cyclist fatalities after controlling for differences in weather, demographics, bicycling commuter rates, state level traffic, and time variation.

在近几十年来，随着骑自行车者的数量稳步增加，在美国安全地将骑自行车者纳入道路上已成为一个重要问题。这些担忧导致许多城市和州立法机关通过了法律，要求驾驶员在道路上通过时，必须在车辆与骑自行车者之间提供最小距离。许多人认为，这些法律在减少骑车人死亡人数方面无效，因为它们难以执行，存在漏洞并且所需的最小距离不足。本文使用来自致命性分析报告系统的18,534个骑自行车者死亡的数据和负二项式模型中的差异差异方法，通过经验检验了这一说法，以确定最小距离通过法则对骑自行车者死亡的影响。