How common are cycle deaths?

[Red Light]

There are probably more deaths from suicide caused by money than cyclist killed on the roads

Perhaps if we took all the money saved by banning helmets and gave it to the suicidees we would save more lives overall

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

Are we statistically worse off then motorbikes or less?. Does anyone know the statistics?. And whats the chance of being injured or involved in an accident?.




Thanks.

About 110-120 a year in the UK.

Low enough to give a lie to " A friend of a friend of mine wouldn;t be here now if..." or " If you had seen as many dead cyclists as I have ..."

but not low enough.

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

I am a driver not a motorcyclist although I would love to pass my CBT and buy a HD Chopper

ARGHHHHH Pass the mind bleach! :-(

 

[Little yellow Brompton]

"This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." H2G2

I'll get my towel.

 

[stowie]

Those figures are misleading. They are based on the road fatalities in which at least one vehicle is involved. So if you fall off your bike with no-one else involved they count you. If you trip over a kerb while walking, you are not. The only pedestrian fatalities are those that are hit by a motor vehicle or bicycle.

There are no fatalities figures for trips and falls on the road but if you look at the serious injuries there are about six times as many serious pedestrian injuries from trips and falls on the road as there are in collisions with a vehicle. Even allowing for about half of those trips and falls being in the elderly, it is still a large excess of pedestrian serious injuries over those from the source you used (Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2009 Table 52)

I guess any figures are going to only give part of the picture. Fatalities on either a bicycle or walking with no vehicle involved (ie falling off / tripping up) I would imagine aren't huge, but injuries and probably serious injuries would make a difference.

Anyway taking the numbers as a very rough guide, I would say that walking and cycling are roughly equal in risk, motorcycling is much more dangerous, car journeys are quite a bit safer. But this is only part of the story as I have become much fitter and healthier since cycling regularly and consider it outweighs the risk on balance. Also cycling is far quicker much of the time and more pleasant than sitting in traffic, so another win which cannot be easily quantified.

I am not surprised that cars are safer since untold money has gone into safety features in cars, and the fact that roads generally are completely geared towards the car. All the money that has gone into design of motorways, armaco, slip lanes and so on is for the benefit of car users. Put as much money into cycle safety and infrastructure and we would probably reap the same rewards.

 

[Red Light]

I guess any figures are going to only give part of the picture. Fatalities on either a bicycle or walking with no vehicle involved (ie falling off / tripping up) I would imagine aren't huge, but injuries and probably serious injuries would make a difference.

You may have missed the point. With a bicycle there is always a vehicle involved - the bicycle - so all accidents go onto the database. If you are walking, only those with a vehicle involved go on and a whole range of pedestrian accidents not involving a vehicle are not featured. So you are looking at the totality of cycling road accidents but only a tiny proportion (about 15%*) of pedestrian road accidents in those figures.

* About 5,500 pedestrians p.a. seriously injured in collisions with a vehicle, a further 28,500 seriously injured in trips and falls on the highway with no vehicle involved making 34,000 seriously injured pedestrians a year, not the 5,500 used in the datasets the OP presented from. Pedestrians are also more likely to suffer a head injury (48% of admissions) than a cyclist (38%). But nobody thinks being a pedestrian is dangerous even though its higher risk than being a cyclist.

 

[400bhp]

About one death per 40 million km cycled. So if you cycled say 2,500 miles a year, it would be 10,000 years on average before you had a fatal accident. For a serious injury, most of which are fairly minor and recoverable from, its once every 400 years. That's less than the risk of walking where you want to go and a third of the risk of motorcycling.

The problem is its a bit like flying. People's perception of the risk is massively greater than the actual riks

That's true.

But most people can't distinguish between risk and severity. having an accident whilst flying is pretty much binary in severity. You die.

This is, I believe to some extent, the main reason for the over inflated perception of the riskiness of riding a bicycle.

 

[fossyant]

That's true.

But most people can't distinguish between risk and severity. having an accident whilst flying is pretty much binary in severity. You die.

This is, I believe to some extent, the main reason for the over inflated perception of the riskiness of riding a bicycle.

Spot on - not reading the full post, but cycling deaths are lower 'GENERALLY' than other transport.

We all know the statistics. crash a car etc. etc.

All I will say is our bodies are designed for a hunter chaser life - knocks come and go, but life style makes folk not follow this path.

Being able to take a few knocks is in conditioning - many folk don't think about this now - e.g exercise. I feel my club riding and racing saved me from serious injury in my big off - I did what I could to avoid contact, then when the car came through me, I switched off, and let go - bounced down the road, where someone else might have been killed.

 

[Davidc]

Perhaps if we took all the money saved by banning helmets and gave it to the suicidees we would save more lives overall

Suicidees are already dead!

When it comes to perceptions - why do I feel safer on a bike than in a car?

I suspect it's the sensation of being boxed in in a car, but I've never been able to pin it down.

 

[davefb]

You may have missed the point. With a bicycle there is always a vehicle involved - the bicycle - so all accidents go onto the database. If you are walking, only those with a vehicle involved go on and a whole range of pedestrian accidents not involving a vehicle are not featured. So you are looking at the totality of cycling road accidents but only a tiny proportion (about 15%*) of pedestrian road accidents in those figures.

* About 5,500 pedestrians p.a. seriously injured in collisions with a vehicle, a further 28,500 seriously injured in trips and falls on the highway with no vehicle involved making 34,000 seriously injured pedestrians a year, not the 5,500 used in the datasets the OP presented from. Pedestrians are also more likely to suffer a head injury (48% of admissions) than a cyclist (38%). But nobody thinks being a pedestrian is dangerous even though its higher risk than being a cyclist.

sorry , could you explain the 'higher risk' ?

theres a big flaw people have quoted here, its that the risks have been quoted as 'per km' . which generally skews 'motorways are safer' and 'flying is dead safe'. if you change to 'per journey' it can make a totally different analysis..
(deaths, not injuries)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_safety#Accidents_and_incidents

we should all travel by bus and never even SEE a motorbike !


anyway, we're all doomed , because its most likely we'll die from a meteor strike...

 

[ferret fur]

So you are looking at the totality of cycling road accidents but only a tiny proportion (about 15%*) of pedestrian road accidents in those figures.

Except that when counting pedestrian kms travelled per year they only include people travelling over a certain minimum distance (either 1/2 mile or 500m- can't remember which.) So if I stagger out of the pub and get run over then I count as a ped accident, but my distance travelled = zero. In other words there are loads of pedestrian casualties which occur without the victim troubling the mileage chart. Think of all the drunks, the elderly and small kids who are doing almost no 'distance' annually but who contribute disproportionately to the number of fatalities on the road. This is one of the reasons why people are gaily able to spout the 'cycling is safer than walking' line when anyone who cycles can see it's absolute nonsense.

Pop along to your local high street: count the number of peds. Count the number of cyclists. Is the ratio about 5:1? That is roughly what the ratio of cycling to pedestrian deaths is. If the ratio is higher than that (& it wll be) it represents how much more dangerous cycling is than walking.

 

[Red Light]

Except that when counting pedestrian kms travelled per year they only include people travellimg over a certain minimum distance (either 1/2 mile or 500m- can't remember which.)

50yds.

(National Travel Survey Notes and Definitions)

 

[Red Light]

sorry , could you explain the 'higher risk' ?

Risk per km is the appropriate measure for comparing the safety of making a journey by different modes. So for example you typically are deciding whether to walk or cycle to the shops. You are generally not thinking of walking to the local shops or cycling to shops the other side of town that are the same travel time away. On that basis, even just taking accidents involving a vehicle, the fatality risk per km is about 30% higher for a pedestrian than a cyclist. Taking all accidents in the roadway the risk for pedestrians is about four times higher per km for serious injuries.

So the figures for serious injuries per bn km for 2009 are:

Pedestrian: 2,001
Cycling: 517

or just under 4x higher for pedestrians. If you factor in the higher head injury rate for pedestrians, the risk of a head injury is 4.8 times higher for a pedestrian than a cyclist per km

 

[slowmotion]

stowie's figures...

Fatalities per billion kilometres travelled...

Motorcycle 88.8
Walking 30.9
Bicycle 24.2
Car 1.9
Van 0.5
Bus or coach 0.1
Rail 0.3

That says that for every mile, ridden or driven, you are about twelve times more likely to snuff it on a bike compared to a car.

Leaving aside the peripheral health benefits of riding (which might be considerable), I didn't know that there was such a differential.

I don't care, BTW.

 

[Buddfox]

That's true.

But most people can't distinguish between risk and severity. having an accident whilst flying is pretty much binary in severity. You die.

This is, I believe to some extent, the main reason for the over inflated perception of the riskiness of riding a bicycle.

As relates to air crashes, this is not (surprisingly) true. In the US alone, between 1983 and 2000, there were 568 plane crashes. Out of the collective 53,487 people onboard, 51,207 survived.

The misconception arises because you only read about plane crashes where people die.

How to survive a plane crash