On 5/13/2019 8:00 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, May 13, 2019 at 4:42:36 PM UTC-7, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Monday, May 13, 2019 at 7:09:30 PM UTC-4, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, May 13, 2019 at 3:35:04 PM UTC-7, James wrote:
On 12/5/19 8:59 pm, Andre Jute wrote:
Here's my analysis of US national bicycle safety, published in 2010.* Nothing significant has changed since then.

***
HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING?
Surprisingly, cycling can be argued to be "safe enough", given only
that one is willing to count the intangible benefits of health through
exercise, generally acknowledged as substantial. Here I shall make no
effort to quantify those health benefits because the argument I'm
putting forward is conclusively made by harder statistics and
unexceptional general morality.

In the representative year of 2008, the last for which comprehesive
data is available, 716 cyclists died on US roads, and 52,000 were
injured.

Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The most convenient way to grasp the meaning of these statistics is to
compare cycling with motoring, the latter ipso facto by motorists'
average mileage accepted by most Americans as safe enough.

Compared to a motorist a cyclist is:
11 times MORE likely to die PER MILE travelled
2.9 times MORE likely to die PER TRIP taken

By adding information about the relative frequency/length/duration of
journeys of cyclists and motorists, we can further conclude that in
the US:

Compared to a motorist, a cyclist is:
3 to 4 times MORE likely to die PER HOUR riding
3 to 4 times LESS likely to die IN A YEAR's riding

Source:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=htt...Wt7vubH xju7Q

It is the last number, that the average cyclist is 3 to 4 times less
likely to die in a year's riding than a motorist, and enjoys all the
benefits of healthy exercise, that permits us to ignore the greater
per mile/per trip/per hour danger.

***

Andre Jute
* A complete version is at
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!ms...ch/qOFCNhQ1428 . I used the best national figures available then, referring to 2008, but just about nothing has changed since then.


In Australia the number of cyclists killed per year has been relatively
stable for at least a decade, and is close to 40.
https://www.bitre.gov.au/statistics/safety/fatal_road_crash_database.aspx

The national cycling participation survey that is conducted every 2
years since 2011 (2011, 2013, 2015, 2017) shows a statistically
significant decline in participation.
https://www.cycle-helmets.com/ncp-2017.pdf

In 2017, 3.74 million Australians cycled in a typical week, for 2.54
hours each on average.

Excluding the people who cycle less frequently, that is 9.5 million
hours of cycling per week, or a bit shy of 500 million hours annually.
Ok so I've rounded up to include some of those who cycle less frequently.

If those cyclists average 20 km/h, then 10 billion km, or 0.4 deaths per
100 million km.

According to BITRE data, Australia's road toll in 2016 was 0.52 per 100
million vehicle km. That includes motorcyclists as well as car
occupants and everyone else (perhaps even pedestrians).

Cycling doesn't appear particularly dangerous given this.

There is one interesting extra piece of information though, and that is
that cycling serious injuries (requiring a hospital stay of a couple of
weeks at least), have increased nearly 100% over the past 10 years,
where as fatalities have remained relatively constant.

My guess is that there are more low speed crashes occurring in urban
areas. People are trying to use a bicycle for transport to combat car
traffic congestion, and are not skilled ninja cyclists.

I'm amazed that more people in PDX don't get hurt in bike versus bike accidents. Take the commuter herd, throw in some eBikes, jam them in a two-way chute with some pedestrians thrown in, and it gets pretty sketchy. Morning traffic can be brutal. https://media.chatterblock.com/cache...a1f9febee1.png

-- Jay Beattie.

Where are the cars? Speed limit sign of 50. That looks like an organized event closed to motor vehicles. Am I wrong about that?

Disorganized event -- the Providence Bridge Pedal. I'm just kidding about it being morning traffic, which occurs elsewhere for me.

When my kid lived in Portland, she started a "Bridge Ride" one year. She
quit soon after the start, because the riders were so densely packed she
couldn't move above a walking pace.

--
- Frank Krygowski