It's More Dangerous NOT To Ride a Bike

I don't oppose the fact that biking is good. However, a better measure of risk is deaths per distance traveled. That would change things significantly. And certainly, this is how airlines can claim that they are a lot safer than cars. Note how they never specify the basis of this statistic.

I'm curious whether or not the bicycle miles are exclusive street miles. In constructing a study, one could easily overlook the fact that many bike miles are incurred in leisure activity on trails and off-road, whereas the vast majority of car miles and bus miles are not.

The vast majority of people contemplating biking to work do not have a bike trail at their disposal, so if they wanted to make an informed decision about the increased collision risk per mile, it would need to be street miles only, not mixed miles and the associated deflated collision risk.

The data is presented in fatalities per 'million hours of activity'. Fatalities per 'million miles of activity' might be a better measure.

I agree with jingojaymes. The bicyclist might travel 12,000,000 miles during this time while the skydiver completes 120,000,000. Anyways, horizontal movement is usually more practical plus I ride a motorcycle to work.

Riding a bike on the road is statistically slightly more dangerous than driving a car, but the benefits far outweigh the risk.

It is interesting to note that driving a car is by far the most dangerous thing that most people do during the course of an average day, and they usually don’t give that a second thought.

I would argue that the neither hours nor miles is the proper measure.

Cycling is often a "third way" that works at medium distances. If you live close to work, you walk, if you live far, you drive. If you live a medium distance, you bike.

Very few people are going to grow tired of their sixty mile commute, and decide to get on a bike. First they need to move within five miles of work, then get on a bike. The vehicles are often used at different scales, so the deaths per miles is meaningless.

So, I think the more important number is something like, "deaths per million life tasks accomplished"

Perhaps 'deaths per trip' ?

The expected fatalities for spending 1,000,000 hours in a burning automobile is 0.0? I'm thinking the people who published these statistics weren't very careful. According to this getting trapped in a wrecked burning car is many times safer than the baseline 1.5 fatalities/million.

I'm guessing that number is really the chances of dying in a car fire per hour of driving.

I'm also guessing cycling is safer now. Hasn't helmet use gone up in the past 13 years? (Might not show in fatalities data. 92% of fatalities are from motor vehicle collision and the helmet is designed more for unintentional dismount accidents.)

It is interesting to note that driving a car is by far the most dangerous thing that most people do during the course of an average day, and they usually don’t give that a second thought.

If they did give it a second thought, the rest of us would be safer.

Note that I drive 35k-50k miles per year and occasionally ride a motorcycle. I realize that everyone's safety is my responsability -- I just wish that others would feel the same way.

Here is another recent post on the subject based on a Canadian study that factors distance and time spent cycling.

we shouldn't look only at deaths to direct participents.

fault and victimhood should count equally.

if a person crossing the street on foot is killed, this person should probably count as both a walking death, and a driving death, since a person was killed due to someone driving. same thing if a plane crash kills people on the ground.

if a rotten bicyclist bombs through an intersection and a driver swirves to avoid and dies hitting a tree, this should count as one death for each cars and bicycles, even if the cyclist is unharmed. for consistency, deaths involving only one mode of transportation should be counted as both victim and fault.

What happens when more people start riding bikes instead of driving cars? Do both cycling and driving get safer?

There are less people bicycling then people driving cars so of course there will be less deaths.

I'm gettin' me an exploding car!

For the safety of it, of course.

Using skydiving as the metric for the extreme end of these statistics is very misleading to the layperson for the following reasons:

1.) Skydiving is not a form of conveyance or travel as most of the other activities mentioned are.

2.) Skydivers keep track of their freefall time, which is undoubtedly the only time measurement that was available and quantifiable to this "researcher". An average skydive consists of about 1 minute of freefall. This means that an hour of skydiving would be equivalent to 60 skydives or 60,000,000 skydives to sync up with the statistic of 128 deaths.

Considering that a FULL day of skydiving would be about 10 jumps (most of the time during the day being used riding the airplane [a low risk activity, based on the stats]), and that those 10 jumps will cost a skydiver somewhere between $200 and $250, it would take significant amounts of cash and time to accrue anywhere close to the number of skydives that would be needed to make that 128 deaths per million hours a more signficant risk that most of the other categories mentioned. (Somewhere around many "natural" lifetimes)

3.) Finally the number of deaths attributed to skydiving includes pilot error when the skydiver is no longer falling, so it is very likely that the two stats used to arrive at the 128 deaths per million hours have no direct correlation to each other, rendering the whole statistic erroneous and misleading.

Yes I am a skydiver, and it's funny see people who know nothing about skydiving trying to make tenuous comparisons to other activities based largely on ignorance and a few unrelated facts that they may have stumbled upon.

Using skydiving as the metric for the extreme end of these statistics is very misleading to the layperson for the following reasons:

1.) Skydiving is not a form of conveyance or travel as most of the other activities mentioned are.

2.) Skydivers keep track of their freefall time, which is undoubtedly the only time measurement that was available and quantifiable to this "researcher". An average skydive consists of about 1 minute of freefall. This means that an hour of skydiving would be equivalent to 60 skydives or 60,000,000 skydives to sync up with the statistic of 128 deaths.

Considering that a FULL day of skydiving would be about 10 jumps (most of the time during the day being used riding the airplane [a low risk activity, based on the stats]), and that those 10 jumps will cost a skydiver somewhere between $200 and $250, it would take significant amounts of cash and time to accrue anywhere close to the number of skydives that would be needed to make that 128 deaths per million hours a more signficant risk that most of the other categories mentioned. (Somewhere around many "natural" lifetimes)

3.) Finally the number of deaths attributed to skydiving includes pilot error when the skydiver is no longer falling, so it is very likely that the two stats used to arrive at the 128 deaths per million hours have no direct correlation to each other, rendering the whole statistic erroneous and misleading.

Yes I am a skydiver, and it's funny see people who know nothing about skydiving trying to make tenuous comparisons to other activities based largely on ignorance and a few unrelated facts that they may have stumbled upon.

This might not be entirely true. Other studies suggest that bicycling is more dangerous than driving.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/will-bicycling-to-work-get-you-killed/

(For what it's worth, I'm a bike commuter - obviously I think the risk is worth it.)

that's one death for every 380 years of continuous cycling, not bad

hmmm...

external combustion engine. neet

So if it would take 3 times as long to bike to work as to drive then my risk would be about twice as high ...

On the other hand if my risk is lower for driving then for life in general I'm going to start driving 24 hrs a day ... yes that must be a good idea.

they forgot to mention the figure of accidents caused by bicycles i think. darting onto the road pretending to be cars, then off again wanting to be a pedestrian. gliding on the side of the road slowly inviting cars to overtake where they shouldnt, just to pass them at the next set of lights to do it again.

dont get me wrong, i love bikes, and i want to get a izip one. but with the figures, i just think theres one missing as im certain they cause more in their wake than what they are actually involved in. (australia anyhow).

thank you for putting me off skydiving ;-)

Walking is safer, and yes, better measure per distance traveled. You don't get on a bike to choose the time you ride, but the distance.

Per km, cyclists were 12 times more likely than car drivers to suffer a fatal accident, while pedestrians were 23 more times likely, but cyclists’ mortality rates were 39% lower than drivers, showing possibly some value to the exercise.

- The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and The National Automotive Sampling System General Estimates System (NASS GES)

to damo: you have to include deaths cauesd my automobiles, too. from a previous post either here or on freakonomics, someone pointed out that about half of car-bike accidents are car caused, half are bike caused. however, in a car-bike accident it is more likely that if anybody dies, it is the cyclist. where there no doubt are times when the cyclist is fine but the driver or a passenger is killed, there is no concievable way that the stats will break that fewer cyclists die. same thing with pedestrian-car accidents. there is probably a 50-50 chance of fault, but more pedestrians will be killed as a result of such accidents.

in this case, we really need to include deaths caused in addition to victimhood. if we don't we are skewing the fact that automobiles are less safe for outsiders, and rather safe for drivers and passengers.

just consider: if you are walking down the street, who would you rather be hit by: a jogger, a bicyclists, or a car? clearly, the car is most likely to kill you. getting hit by a bike/person combo going at 20mph down a sidewalk not looking where he or she is going is going to cause serious damage to pedestrian. i've had close calls with jerks bombing down the sidewalk... however, if it is a car weighing 2000lb going 25mph or more, the fact is that will cause more damage.

I ride a motor scooter to work whenever the weather permits. I wear an armored jacket, padded gloves and a full-face helmet. If I rode a bike, I'd have to wear thin, skin-tight clothing and a helmet that barely covers the top of my head, let alone my face. Not to mention I'd be on the road and in traffic for twice as long on a bike as my scooter.

Then there's the fact that I can't run a mile, so I'll be winded on a bike and less aware of my surroundings. And that I have a horn, turn signals and a bright headlight on my scooter and reflectors on a bike.

So you can quote me (dubious) statistics all you want, but I still do not feel that biking anywhere is an option for me.

Here in São Paulo (Brazil), one motorcyclist day each day on the streets. You should really see how many of them there are. But the truth is, they have no respect for other people, be them drivers, walkers or cyclists. They pretty much invite death all the time, being really, and I mean really, wreckless.

I have nothing against motorcycles, but it's both dangerous, in my city, to the ones that ride them, and everybody around.

How about adding disabling injuries to the stew. I've met many people severely disabled from auto and motorcycle accident injuries through the course of my life, but only one from bicycles (a 5th grader back before people wore helmets, and that was caused by him looking around when an auto honked at him).

Also, it seems to me that indirect deaths and disability such as from air pollution, misuse of national resources, and so forth should be included.

A 1996 survey ( Moritz, W. Adult Bicyclists in the United States: Characteristics and Riding Experience in 1996. Transportation Research Record 1636: pp. 1-7, 1998.)
of adult cyclists found that only 11% of bicyle accidents involved an automobile.

The survey also found that accidents of all kinds among adult cyclists plummeted when cyclists rode as part of traffic rather than like "pedestians on wheels": using crosswalks to navigate intersections, riding on sidewalks or against traffic, failing to take the full vehicle lane when apropriate, etc.

Ultimately, whatever stats I've seen people throw around here and elsewhere seem to show that bicycling on road is either somewhat more or somewhat less dangerous than driving a car. My pet theory is that the reason motorists are so anxious to convince us that venturing into traffic is comparable to suicide is simply because they don't want us on the road.