The reality TV guy at the DOT has a new plan to kill cyclists and worsen traffic
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- DOT under Sean Duffy removed 5 of 28 strategies from the FHWA's "Proven Safety Countermeasures" guidance last week, most of them cyclist-related, and deleted the word "bicyclist" from the "pedestrian/bicyclist" section
- Cyclist deaths hit a 40-year high in 2025 and pedestrian deaths reached their highest recorded level in 2022, per the article, even as total US road deaths fell to 36,640 — described as one of the lowest US rates ever recorded
- The US per capita road death rate is nearly six times higher than the UK's, with more than 100 countries including India, Pakistan, and Russia posting lower road-death rates than the US
- The five removed countermeasures — appropriate speed limits for all users, speed safety cameras, variable speed limits, bike lanes, and road diets — each carry documented crash-reduction figures ranging from 19% to 54%
- Sean Duffy, whose transportation "expertise" the article traces to the reality show Road Rules: All Stars, called bike lanes "DEI bike lanes"; an FHWA spokesperson said the changes "put safety first"
- Duffy has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the oil industry and announced $23 billion in additional fuel costs on his first day at DOT, per the article; oil companies paid for his family vacation
Why it matters: Road safety advocates told the article that pulling federally vetted countermeasures from FHWA guidance strips state and local engineers of a key tool for justifying protected bike lanes, neighborhood speed-limit reductions, and speed-camera deployments. The removed strategies each carried published crash-reduction figures between 19% and 54%, so dropping them weakens the evidentiary basis local agencies use to push safety projects past political opposition.
