That is true (about the definition of safety incidents), but it's also convenient to blame the bike lanes when there is more at work. I know that's the situation in my city (SFIrish was literally in the room for all of those decisions over the last decade), and I'm confident it is common elsewhere. Painting with a broad brush, we Americans tend to overvalue what we perceive as our convenience with cars, and we devalue safety as a result. And we often make traffic/road construction decisions in the worst possible way, with public comment guiding engineering decisions, as if the public has any idea how to engineer something. The public should guide design intent, engineers should do the actual design. We would never allow the public to comment on the construction of a massive building the way we allow the public to comment on roads, but both have important safety impacts.
Anyway, my main point here is that it isn't just the bikes. And our car-focused culture is often obtuse about safety.
FWIW, I agree that many of these "improvements" end up being silly window dressing that don't actually improve anything, and often make things worse. Sigh.
(And the Juniper Street project may be one of those.)
