OK, here is my number crunching results. I haven't done all the graphing yet so don't know what this is going to reveal in terms of improvement/reduction in cycling safety for the individual.
Points to note;
- I assume the data is reliable and that some normalising has been done to account for any differences in the way figures have been collected/reported over the years.
- Notice the big gaps in reporting prior to the annual figures from the year 2000 going forwards.
- I may be interpreting the data wrongly. I am taking the deaths/serious incident/minor incident figures as total counts for events that year. I am taking the traffic value as a total estimated distance ridden by all cyclists that year (in billions of miles).
- My graphs purely show the number of incident type divided by the total cycle miles reported to give a figure that represents a typical cyclists chance of experiencing that type of incident per mile, year on year. If you cycle a lot then your chance of suffering an incident increases with exposure to the risk.
First, chance of being killed in an accident while riding a bicycle.
That looks pretty good? A steady reduction in risk over time, apart from a rough patch in the mid 00's. If my data analysis is right you could realistically claim that in 2016 your chance of being killed while cycling were the lowest ever in the duration of the data set.
Next, serious incidents. Let's not forget, although this is not a death it can and will likely include many people who receive life changing injuries including near total paralysis or brain damage, either of which could see them needing care for the rest of their lives!
Now that doesn't look so good. A decline during the 80's & 90's reaching a low point during the mid 00's (strangely just when the occurrence of deaths appeared to increase?) but since then an increase of approx 20-25% to when the data finishes in 2016. Could this indicate that the reduction in deaths is not due to fewer serious accidents but may be due to improvements in emergency medical response and treatment?
Finally, let's look at minor incidents. I don't know what they classify as a minor/slight injury incident but I guess it would be anything that requires a hospital attendance but a walk-out within a few hours?
What does that tell us? A general steady decline in the number of minor incidents (what happened in 1995 I wonder?)
To summarise the above info, You have less chance than ever of being killed (possibly due to treatment advances).Your chance of receiving serious injuries have increased since the start of the century by a considerable amount, approx 20%. Minor incidents have been fairly consistent this century but dipped in the latest figures available.
Now, a final way of looking at this is to consider it this way. What are my chances of being knocked off? Never mind the resulting injuries. When I head out on my bike what is the likelihood of me having a coming together with a vehicle? To look at this I need to re-crunch the data, lumping deaths, serious and minor figures together then dividing the total by the 'traffic' number...……. I'll be right back.
