Cunobelin said:If you express the number of pedestrian deaths on pavements caused by cyclists in terms of total miles travelled and then the number of deaths caused by "white vans" with miles traveled you will find that pedestrians are more at risk from cyclists!
As a pedestrian who needs to know whether I should exercise greater caution around cyclists or around motorists, it doesn't matter worth diddly who has ridden further to get to me. The reason for considering "miles travelled", as far as I can see, is to account for cycling being less popular than driving: that is, to attempt to answer the question of which is more dangerous if equal numbers of people practiced both.
But there are a couple of problems with trying to scale the figures this way. First and most obvious is that even if equal numbers of people were driving as cycling, they would not in all probability be cycling the same distances anyway: bikes are typically used for shorter trips. Second is that the "miles travelled" numbers is for the entire road network including motorways (which account for a goodly number of them) and as a pedestrian I'm not allowed to walk on those anyway
Indeed :-)Cunobelin said:Be careful how you read statistics!