How dangerous is cycling?

[snorri]

They are, in spite of what's just happened the roads are getting safer.

I think your analysis of the statistics is faulty.

There has been a dramatic decrease in the numbers of vulnerable road users on our UK roads (London possibly excepted) in the last 50 years. Many people now consider the roads to dangerous to walk or cycle on, horse riders on the road are now as scarce as hens teeth. Our roads are more dangerous than they have ever been, but the reduction in vulnerable users has led to a decrease in the KSI figures leading some to conclude the roads have become safer.

 

[ferret fur]

I'm sorry, but I am really suspicious of a lot of the stats produced about cycling. For example in the Wardlaw paper quoted above he says things which don't make sense:

'The average cyclist has a death risk of 0.0083%' but 136 cyclists are killed in a year. Which if my calculations are correct means that there should be around 17million cyclists in this country. Yet he also says that only 7% of the population cycle regularly which adds up to 4.2million. Based on the latter figure the risk becomes 0.032%: not high I grant you but 4 times greater than Wardlaw implies

You can kick around these figures as much as you like, & I have no idea how accurate the various methodologies are but ultimately I know that in my 5000 miles a year I cycle I am exposed to far more risk than when I drive or walk. It doesn't stop me riding a bike, but it makes me think that a lot of the attempts to quantify the risk are deeply suspect.

 

[yello]

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong.

No, YOU'RE wrong and my dad's a fireman!

To argue that something is dangerous in the face of overwhelming evidence that this is not so is to demonstrate that your personal opinion is incorrect.

Well I didn't actually say whether I considered cycling dangerous or not but, that aside, danger is a personal assessment based on your own experience and abilities. For instance, I'd consider sky diving to be dangerous but a trained and practised sky diver wouldn't necessarily agree. Opinion can never be incorrect; you are fully entitled to disagree with it but it cannot be wrong. I suggest you look up the word "subjective" in the dictionary!

 

[Cab]

I agree on paper it is hard to show going on those stats.But its a dangerous thing in some situations,but we can minimise that risk by our cycling ways,I suppose its a common sense thing,but i wouldnt try to claim for one second that cycling on roads where cars busses and lorries are is generally a 100%safe thing to do.

Go look at the numbers again. Cycling is generally a 100% safe thing to do. Thats as clear as getting on the bus being generally a 100% safe thing to do.

 

[Cab]

I wonder how long the average car journey is? I'm sure that my 11 mile each way commute is longer than the kind of trips made by most car commuters and school-runners, but their average is bumped up enormously by very long journeys at week-ends and holidays when they use motorways - roads with all the hazards designed out of them and consequently a relatively low accident rate.

Precisely so; we simply don't use the roads that are specifically designed with great visibility for fast, long distance travel. Not just the motorways, but many of the dual carriageway A-roads are also as near as dammit off limits. I'll wager that if you could take those out of the equation and actually do a like for like comparison on the same roads, there would be very little difference in risk.

 

[Cab]

No, YOU'RE wrong and my dad's a fireman!

Is he? My dads more stubborn than your dad though.

Well I didn't actually say whether I considered cycling dangerous or not but, that aside, danger is a personal assessment based on your own experience and abilities. For instance, I'd consider sky diving to be dangerous but a trained and practised sky diver wouldn't necessarily agree. Opinion can never be incorrect; you are fully entitled to disagree with it but it cannot be wrong. I suggest you look up the word "subjective" in the dictionary!

Risk is not a subjective judgement though, its a measruable phenomenon. Perception of risk is very variable. I think perhaps we mean the same thing but are using different terminology.

 

[marinyork]

Opinion can never be incorrect? Surely disagreements are minor, we're more talking perceptions.

I live near two junctions both that have had ped, motorist and cycling fatalities over the years. The stats aren't that wrong but of course there are particular places that are dangerous but it's important to say why they are dangerous and which ones are more/less applicable to cyclists. The place is dangerous because you get RLJing of motorists and the centre of the road is raised leading to a partial blind view of oncoming traffic. Couple with incredibly aggression it's been the scene of many a near miss over the years.

 

[col]

Go look at the numbers again. Cycling is generally a 100% safe thing to do. Thats as clear as getting on the bus being generally a 100% safe thing to do.

Thats just it,according to the stats.But the reality is we move around and amongst large heavy and sometimes it seems blind vehicles,so what percentage would you give to being safe with all these around you?

 

[hackbike 6]

Go look at the numbers again. Cycling is generally a 100% safe thing to do. Thats as clear as getting on the bus being generally a 100% safe thing to do.

eh?

 

[col]

How do you want the numbers presented? Deaths per bike, per rider, per mile travelled, per journey, per mile on-road?

None thanks,ill just use common sense.

 

[yello]

Perception of risk is very variable. I think perhaps we mean the same thing but are using different terminology.

Yep, agreed. On both counts.

 

[col]

I don't understand. If you want a measure, then common sense isn't enough.

i dont want a measure,ill just be as carefull as i can on the road,you can have a measure of x number killed in x number of miles,and still claim its safe,but that is misleading.

 

[yello]

Opinion can never be incorrect? Surely disagreements are minor, we're more talking perceptions..

I don't really understand the bit I put in bold but, yes, I'm talking perceptions. Perceptions and, to a degree, semantics.

Apologies, I have an interest in language use and I sometimes see disagreements as fundamentally about a difference in the understanding of the terminology rather than a substantive difference of opinion (which is, I suspect, what you've just said marinyork but in much fewer words!). So, if one considers opinions as based on a personal understanding of the language and personal perception then, yes, opinions cannot be incorrect.

Conversely, if you think opinion is fact based and you can find universal agreement on both the facts and the terminology used to describe those facts then opinions can be false.

"When I use the word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less."

 

[ferret fur]

If you were told that one car driver is killed for every commuting 10,000 miles driven, and one cyclist is killed for every commuting 3,000 miles driven, would you accept that one is more dangerous than the other, or just go off what you think?

Yes but... If your personal experience is really at odds with the facts, there are one of two options. Either you are wrong or the facts are.

The people coming out with the stats are clearly not unbiased. I applaud their commitment to cycling but what they are saying about relative safety is hugely different from my subjective experience as a cyclist. I just don't accept that their risk statistics are accurate.
Here's an example of how the figures seem unreliable:

Wardlaws figures say the average person cycles 36 miles a year but that 'active' cyclists travel 800-1000 miles per year (at an average speed of 8 miles an hour!). Pedestrian figures are given as 190 per year , but no figure is given for 'active' pedestrians. I accept that the ratio between active and average miles is likely to be greater when considering cycling, but you are still not comparing like with like. Even if you only double the figure for active pedestrians (as opposed to multiplying by 22 for cycling) you still considerably reduce the effective risk to an active pedestrian. (halve it in fact)

Until the figures are shown to be reliable I don't think it is irrational to prefer personal experience on the road to dodgy stats.

 

[col]

But how careful are you planning on being, if you don't know how dangerous it is?

If you were told that one car driver is killed for every commuting 10,000 miles driven, and one cyclist is killed for every commuting 3,000 miles driven, would you accept that one is more dangerous than the other, or just go off what you think?

The problem with being on the roads is it is unpradictable,you just dont know if someone is going to be looking or not at the right time,this is why some get rear ended,a figure cant tell you how dangerous it is,it just records something that happened,but there are lots more times when it was just blind luck or the skill /awareness of the cyclist that stopped anything happening.None of us can say how dangerous it is,but it gets that way in different ways,just keep your wits about you and cycle in the safest way you can.
Is there stats for bruises,or broken bones,or if knocked off but got on again to cycle away?These are things that it doesnt say on the number of deaths yearly ,but ill bet a good few could have been pretty close to it,or just lucky in not being killed.