Chris Boardman confuses thousands with millions and terrifies me

[jefmcg]

For a few minutes, I was wondering if I had a 20% chance of dying on my cycle last year (> 7000km travelled), based on what I heard on a podcast while lying in my bath after a 95km ride (.3% chance of death)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/20264553

CYCLING​

Cycling legend Chris Boardman was a guest on 5 live this morning and made some interesting points in reference to the recent high-profile accidents involving Bradley Wiggins and British Cycling's Shane Sutton.​

"Cycling is statistically safer it's been getting safer for 20-odd years, 35,000km are travelled per death in the UK it's safer than walking per km and safer than going to your own bathroom," he says.​

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio/newspod/newspod_20121109-1721a.mp3 (around the 31 minute mark).

Anyway, after finding an older clip of Boardman here http://www.cyclechat.net/threads/wiggins-down.117226/post-2142784, it's clear he was either confusing thousands and millions or swapping the number of people who die of obesity related conditions (35,000) with the number of kilometres travelled per fatality (35,000,000).

Phew. I will continue my daily commute tomorrow.

 

[mark st1]

For a minute i thought this thread title was referring to how many complaints he has read about Halfords !