DOT directed FHWA staff to strip bike lane safety data from federal websites

On July 9, 2026, staff in the Federal Highway Administration's safety office received an internal email with the subject line "URGENT ACTION: Update Website," directing them to remove references to bike lanes and related safety materials from FHWA's public-facing web content. The directive followed a July 7 post on X by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in which he declared that the Biden administration had "used YOUR MONEY for DEI bike lanes" and that his department was ending that approach.

In the weeks after the directive, bike lanes and speed cameras were quietly removed from FHWA's "Proven Safety Countermeasures" list — a federal inventory of road-design techniques with demonstrated records of reducing crash fatalities — and the Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Analysis Tool (PBCAT) was taken offline. The crash analysis tool had been used by state and local transportation engineers to study pedestrian and cyclist crash patterns and design interventions. FHWA's Highway Safety Information System had already been removed approximately 18 months earlier and had not been restored.

A DOT spokesperson said the department ensures its guidance "promotes safety, efficiency, and common sense," and noted that "nearly 80% of the population uses cars to get to work." Safety researchers and industry experts pushed back: David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said it was "important that proven tools ... are available for safety professionals." An anonymous FHWA web support staffer told NPR, "Why do you need to take down bicycle safety, of all thing[s]?" More than 36,000 people are killed annually on U.S. roads; pedestrians and cyclists account for a disproportionate share of fatalities relative to their share of road use.