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but the simple statistical fact is that people who habitually exceed the speed limit by a considerable margin do have more accidents.

Cite please.

This says that driving faster absolutely increases the odds of an accident. The faster you are going the less time you can react, this is intuitively true and no one disputes this. If we all drove 10mph, there would be fewer accidents, virtually nobody would be injured in them when they occur.

And that speed differences between drivers leads to more accidents. In other words, overtaking is dangerous, and lane changes are dangerous. Again, I don't think there is any disagreement here.

http://erso.swov.nl/knowledge/content/20_speed/speed_and_accident_risk.htm

This next link however is really interesting:

Although changes in vehicle speeds were small, driver violations of the speed limits increased when the posted speed limits were lowered. Conversely, violations decreased when limits were raised. This does not reflect a change in driver behavior, but a change in how compliance is measured, i.e., from the posted speed limit.

http://www.motorists.org/speed-limits/effects-raising-lowering

Read that again, they raised and lowered the speed limits in places, and found that drivers for the most part did not change their speed by very much (although did record that it went up slightly when the limits went up and down slightly when speed limits went down). But primarily there were simply more people speeding when they lowered them, and fewer people speeding when they raised them.

Accident rates were not affected.

Thus there are plenty of indications that driving too fast for the conditions (just excessively fast, or significantly faster (or slower) than the cars around you) is dangerous and leads to more accidents.

However it strongly refutes the idea that exceeding the posted speed limit is itself a significant predictor of accidents. As you can lower the speed limit 10mph, and suddenly a lot of people are speeding, and the accident rate doesn't move.

No one has good statistics, for example, on crashes per mile ridden.

In the Netherlands the chance of getting seriously injured or dying in a traffic accident is 4.7 times larger on a bike than in a car (per kilometer). The Netherlands probably has the safest bicycle infrastructure in existence so if we can't do better the situation is clear: riding a bike is much more dangerous than using a car. Note that cycling includes mountain biking and other sports accidents while motor sport accidents are not counted in the car fatalities.

Another thing to consider is that many bicycle related fatalities are related to carelessness of the bicyclist while in cars this is less so. As a bicyclist you probably have more control over on your own fate than you do in your car, where technical problems and the simple fact that you may be a passenger are also a factor. When acting carefully, bicycling is probably much safer than the numbers indicate.

However, that only takes accidents into account. While there are a lot of them, we're still talking about a only few accidents per billion kilometers driven while most people don't get much farther than about 100000 kilometers in a lifetime. So obviously by far most bicyclists never get involved in a serious accident at all. Even though driving a bike is 4.7 times more dangerous than driving a car, the risk is still _extremely_ small.

On average, bicycle accidents are responsible for a shortening of the life expectancy in the Netherlands by about a WEEK while regularly riding a bicycle increases life expectancy by several MONTHS! So while the chance of dying in a bicycle accident is much larger than the chance of dying in a car accident, the certainty of dying when never riding a bike is much larger than when not doing so;-)

Also interesting to note is that additional exposure to polluted air while riding a bike lowers life expectancy by up to a few WEEKS. Obviously that's much more than the traffic accidents.

But that's the Netherlands. Bicycling may very well be MUCH more dangerous in countries that aren't equipped with a ridiculous amount of bicycle lanes. If the chance of a lethal bicycle accident is 10 times or so higher in the USA, the car is probably the better choice. Given the lack of data and given my experiences bicycling in other countries I really wouldn't advice riding a bicycle in actual traffic anywhere but in Netherlands...

Sources (in dutch):
- Article on the 4.7-number: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/D-2012-05.pdfâZ
- Health benefits of cycling: http://www.groen7.nl/gezondheidsvoordelen-fietsen-veel-groter-dan-risicos/
- Accidents/kilometer: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/Factsheets/NL/Factsheet_Risico.pdf
- More numbers: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4492/Nederland/article/detail/3323533/2012/09/28/Ergernis-en-ongelukken-op-drukkere-fietspaden.dhtml

No one has good statistics, for example, on crashes per mile ridden.

In the Netherlands the chance of getting seriously injured or dying in a traffic accident is 4.7 times larger on a bike than in a car (per kilometer). The Netherlands probably has the safest bicycle infrastructure in existence so if we can't do better the situation is clear: riding a bike is much more dangerous than using a car. Note that cycling includes mountain biking and other sports accidents while motor sport accidents are not counted in the car fatalities.

Another thing to consider is that many bicycle related fatalities are related to carelessness of the bicyclist while in cars this is less so. As a bicyclist you probably have more control over on your own fate than you do in your car, where technical problems and the simple fact that you may be a passenger are also a factor. When acting carefully, bicycling is probably much safer than the numbers indicate.

However, that only takes accidents into account. While there are a lot of them, we're still talking about a only few accidents per billion kilometers driven while most people don't get much farther than about 100000 kilometers in a lifetime. So obviously by far most bicyclists never get involved in a serious accident at all. Even though driving a bike is 4.7 times more dangerous than driving a car, the risk is still _extremely_ small.

On average, bicycle accidents are responsible for a shortening of the life expectancy in the Netherlands by about a WEEK while regularly riding a bicycle increases life expectancy by several MONTHS! So while the chance of dying in a bicycle accident is much larger than the chance of dying in a car accident, the certainty of dying when never riding a bike is much larger than when not doing so;-)

Also interesting to note is that additional exposure to polluted air while riding a bike lowers life expectancy by up to a few WEEKS. Obviously that's much more than the traffic accidents.

But that's the Netherlands. Bicycling may very well be MUCH more dangerous in countries that aren't equipped with a ridiculous amount of bicycle lanes. If the chance of a lethal bicycle accident is 10 times or so higher in the USA, the car is probably the better choice. Given the lack of data and given my experiences bicycling in other countries I really wouldn't advice riding a bicycle in actual traffic anywhere but in Netherlands...

Sources (in dutch):
- Article on the 4.7-number: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/D-2012-05.pdfâZ
- Health benefits of cycling: http://www.groen7.nl/gezondheidsvoordelen-fietsen-veel-groter-dan-risicos/
- Accidents/kilometer: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/Factsheets/NL/Factsheet_Risico.pdf
- More numbers: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4492/Nederland/article/detail/3323533/2012/09/28/Ergernis-en-ongelukken-op-drukkere-fietspaden.dhtml

That WOULD be possible. Something like a Chevy Sprint would work reasonably well. My dad had one. That 1 liter 3 cylinder engine could deliver 50 MPG without trying too hard and had reasonable acceleration if you didn't load it down. Bit of a deathtrap for people in the back seat, but people in the front weren't that badly protected in a crash.

The problem is that it is simply impossible to deliver on that price point with the current regulations in place. Airbags are a failure from a cost/benefit standpoint, a point the government would rather you not know about. (Benefits are only about one third of the cost. http://www.swov.nl/uk/research/kennisbank/inhoud/50_maatregel/50_voertuig/airbags.htm ) Sure they save lives, they also kill people and their high cost per life saved, high cost per vehicle, and mandated use has delayed other, potentially superior, passive safety features into cars, like metal foam crumple zones which would increase the effectiveness of seat-belts and other passive safety systems by improving structural integrety and lowering g-loads on the occupants in a crash.

In the end we have to ask ourselves what is better: For the working man/woman to be driving 20 year old cars with 20 year old safety systems or driving more modern cars with better passive safety systems, but without the expensive active safety systems that push those cars out of their price range. Let the buyer decide what they want and the car insurance companies set rates for cars with and without those systems and if the Ralph Naders of the world have a problem with that then let them convince people to change their ways on their own dime rather than forcing things upon them.

The simple fact is that by mandating all these new safety systems the government is forcing more and more people into older and less safe cars as the price for new and newer used cars gets pushed higher and higher, meaning cars that would have been scrapped in the past are kept on the road. The average age of a passenger car in 1995 was 8.4 years. In 2011 it is now 11.1 years. Part of that is because of improved quality, but part of it is also due to the increasing cost of new cars.

https://www.polk.com/images/uploads/20120117-tablea.jpg

If I had to be in a car crash with only seat-belts and the cars structure to protect me, I know I'd rather be in a car made in 2005 than 1995.

Well, it depends on where you live, but I believe the actuarial tables do say that it is a 10x greater risk of serious injury or death over a car.

A study in the Netherlands puts it at 25x greater.

The crash rate, i.e. the number of crashes or casualties per kilometre ridden, is relatively high for motorcyclists. The number of deaths per kilometre travelled was almost 25 times higher for motorcyclists than for car occupants in the period 2003-2006. The number of in-patients per kilometre was 20 times higher for motorcyclists than for car users.

DUI's are nothing more than "feel good" legislation, like seatbelt, and helmet laws that pad city and county bank accounts while making the cattle feel safer.

DUI's are nothing more than "feel good" legislation, like seatbelt, and helmet laws that pad city and county bank accounts while making the cattle feel safer.

Research showed an increase of rougly 3% in accidents for every increase of 1 km/h in average speed on a given road. You can find a report here: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/Factsheets/Factsheet_Sn elheid.pdf but it's Dutch, and a pdf.

The RAC Foundation, an independent body established to protect the interests of motorists, believes the naked street concept can work -- but only in certain situations.

It's worried about the safety implications of such a scheme along Exhibition Road, where free museums annually attract millions of visitors, including schoolchildren.

Currently pedestrians in the area are encouraged to elude the street-level turmoil by using a drab underground walkway.

"We have a concern that introducing a scheme which means drivers must make eye contact with pedestrians could backfire if you have a busload of 10-year-olds trying to cross the road," said Edmund King, the RAC Foundation's executive director.

"There are surely other things that can be done to help pedestrians without compromising safety," he said. "It is an interesting idea in completely the wrong place."