Duffy Deletes Proven Road Safety Tools to Fight 'DEI Bike Lanes'

The Great Federal Website Purge

Here's the short version. The Federal Highway Administration maintained a list of "proven safety countermeasures," meaning tools backed by evidence that they keep people from dying in crashes. After Duffy's July post about "DEI bike lanes," five of them vanished: bike lanes, road diets, automated camera enforcement, variable speed limits, and another speed management tool, as The Guardian reported.

Barbara McCann spotted it first. She spent more than a decade on road safety policy at the US Department of Transportation across multiple administrations and retired in January 2025, just before Trump's second term began. She checked the site after Duffy's post and found the list gutted. Her word for it was "gobsmacking."

Pages about pedestrian and bicyclist safety got deleted too. An internet archive still holds the old list, which is the only reason anyone can prove what the government used to say.

A Quick Reminder of What Duffy Said

In July, Duffy posted on X: "Remember when Biden and Boot-edge-edge used YOUR MONEY for DEI bike lanes and climate change? THAT'S OVER." He claimed to have diverted $1.73 billion in grants away from "Biden-era DEI pet projects" and toward roads, bridges, and ports.

Read that again. A bike lane, which is a strip of paint and maybe some plastic posts, is now a diversity initiative. The Cabinet secretary responsible for the nation's transportation system is mocking a former colleague's name in all caps and treating pedestrian safety like a culture war trophy.

One of his orders lists improving safety as a benefit USDOT "may include" in decision-making "to the extent practicable." May include. To the extent practicable. That is not a safety mandate. That is a shrug with a letterhead.

The Math Is Not on His Side

Duffy's own department estimates that 36,640 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2025. He wrote that number himself in the letter introducing the 2026 safety strategy, adding that "millions more were seriously injured."

Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths jumped 72% between 2009 and 2024. Cyclist deaths rose 73% from 2010 to 2024, according to federal data gathered by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Speeding is a factor in nearly a third of fatal crashes every year.

So the country has a speeding problem and a body count, and the response was to delete the speed management tools from the guidebook. Automated speed cameras are the clearest example. They photograph a plate, mail a ticket, and communities install them near schools because the evidence says they work. Jessica Cicchino of the IIHS called them "really effective at bringing down serious injuries and fatalities." Federal authorities no longer promote them.

Data Goes Missing Too

The deletions aren't limited to web pages. Cicchino flagged another worry: federal databases disappearing with little explanation. The Highway Safety Information System, maintained by the FHWA, holds complex data on crashes and roadway characteristics across several states. It went offline last year and, per the Guardian's reporting, is still missing.

FHWA told the paper the site "was down last year for a few months" while the agency updated guidebooks. That is a lovely explanation if you don't mind that researchers say the data is still not back.

When you can't study crashes, you can't prove which fixes work. That might be a feature for an administration that would prefer the argument be about vibes. Evidence is inconvenient when your policy is that bike lanes are woke.

The Official Defense: Most People Drive

A USDOT spokesperson sent a statement saying the Trump administration "supports transportation systems that benefit Americans, including the nearly 80% who rely on cars to get where they need to go safely and efficiently."

Notice the sleight of hand. Nobody is proposing to ban cars. The question is whether the 80% who drive, and the rest who walk, bike, or get hit while crossing the street, are safer when the government stops telling cities what works. Road diets and speed cameras protect drivers too. Slower speeds mean fewer funerals regardless of what you're sitting in.

McCann nailed the real logic. "You pick someone who's vulnerable and attack them," she said. "They decided that bicyclists are vulnerable and that they could use that as a political wedge. It didn't seem to have anything to do with actual safety."

Deadlier Than Everyone Else Already

American exceptionalism has a grim version, and this is it. US roads are deadlier than those in dozens of other high-income countries. Other wealthy nations looked at the same traffic physics and decided to build streets that don't kill people. We looked at it and decided to argue about whether paint is liberal.

The experts the Guardian spoke with, including a former USDOT official, say the department is putting ideology ahead of decades of science-based evidence. Nobody is claiming Duffy wants people dead. The claim is simpler and worse: he doesn't care enough to check.