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How Safe Is Cycling?
theodp writes "With new bike sharing programs all the rage, spending tens of millions of dollars to make city streets more bike friendly with hundreds of miles of bike lanes has become a priority for bike-loving mayors like NYC's Michael Bloomberg and Chicago's Rahm Emanuel. 'You cannot be for a startup, high-tech economy and not be pro-bike,' claimed Emanuel, who credited bike-sharing and bike lanes for attracting Google and Motorola Mobility to downtown Chicago. Now, with huge bike-sharing contracts awarded and programs underway, the NY Times asks the big question, How Safe Is Cycling? Because bike accidents rarely make front page news and are likely to be dramatically underreported, it's hard to say, concludes the NYT's Gina Kolata. UCSF trauma surgeon Dr. Rochelle Dicker, who studied hospital and police records for 2,504 bicyclists treated at San Francisco General Hospital, told Kolata,'Lots of my colleagues do not want to ride after seeing these [city biking] injuries.' On the other hand, Andy Pruitt, the founder of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine and an avid lifelong cyclist, said the dangers were overstated, noting he's only broken his collarbone twice and hip once in four decades of long-distance cycling. So, is cycling safe, especially in the city? And is it OK to follow Mayor Emanuel's lead and lose the helmet?"
Google is your friend, it can show you every last killed and injured biker.
http://www.nhtsa.gov/Bicycles
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811743.pdf
OTOH there are 89 car related deaths each and every day in the US, those too do not make the front page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
It will show you every last *reported* injured biker. That's a very big and important distinction. Equally important is how many of those injuries were on public roads. Whether or not some kid on an off-road course injured himself is of little importance.
he's only broken his collarbone twice and hip once
Only? That sounds like proof of concept rather than a proof of overstatement.
If you were to see the actual quote, you may feel differently:
Dr. Pruitt cites his own example. Now 62, he was a bicycle racer and has been riding for the past four decades. He covers 5,000 to 10,000 miles a year.
In all that time, he has had four serious crashes. He broke his collarbone twice while racing and had two crashes on a mountain bike, breaking a hip one time and spraining a wrist the other.
This is a worthless data point.
He broke his collarbone twice while racing and had two crashes on a mountain bike
Okay, you get the win on this one. Slashdot description is deceptive; thanks for the clarification these injuries were not in the street use the article is about.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
I am over forty, don't bike, and have never borken ANY bone.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This is of course a complex question. Sure, cyclist are more prone to accidents and air pollution than those who commute by private car or by public transport. Then again, cycling to work is a "free" daily exercise – a benefit too often overlooked. A Danish study published in 2000 found that in a group of 30,000 randomly selected individuals, those who did not cycle to work experienced a 39% higher mortality rate than those who did – even after adjusting for other risk factors. So considering the overall effect, it seems that cycling is actually safer than not cycling, probably due to its positive effect on your physical fitness.
In The Netherlands. Nobody wears a helmet, with a few exception for very young kids (Always flanked and shielded by a overly concerned parent.)
I could show a graph that nicely shows that helmets are correlated with higher death rates. (No the helmet doesn't kill, its because helmets are worn in countries with low separation of slow cyclists and fast cars)
There is also a correlation between more helmets (by law) leading to LESS cyclers. Its a burden.
Seperation of slow and fast traffic is BY FAR the biggest factor here. Then also consider the health benefit of the exercise.
Regular exercise will make you more healthy and prolong your life! So, on bike lanes, Cycling is Super Awesome Safe! No helmet needed.
ps, incidents are on the rise due to old folks going faster on their electric assisted bikes.
ps2 mopeds, scooters, especially those that clock 50km/h are more and more forced into the car lane in The Netherlands, the speeds fits better.
ps3 Watch your juveniles, those pesky 12-18 y/o have a high incident rate. They are also likely to be offended by a helmet..
Motorcycle helmets actually offer good protection, while bicycle helmets don't. For any impact over about 10 mph, they are not going to signifcantly reduce the peak accelerations your brain experiences (it's your brain sloshing that does the damage). I guess they can prevent lacerations, but that's about it. Helmet advocates always quote a study from the 1980s (funded by helmet manufacturers) that showed an 84% reduction in brain injuries, but other work has not borne this out. (example)
Wearing a helmet is applying a different standard to risk than we do in many other situations. Cycling is actually slightly safer per mile than walking, yet we don't make peds wear helmets. Just the same, we could make drivers wear helmets just like race car drivers do. That would actually prevent a huge number of deaths. But we don't. So why are cyclists singled out to wear the safety yarmulkes?
As an additional point, helment laws are actually terrible for cycling safety. After Australia made helmets mandatory, cycling went down 1/3 overnight. Fewer cyclists means drivers are less likely to expect them. In addition, there is evidence that cyclists wearing helments engage in riskier behavior as a form of risk-compensation.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
but what about one that runs over a pedestrian because he was riding on the sidewalk?
If you bothered to google this: cyclists are involved in collisions with .6% of pedestrian injuries in NYC that warrant a trip to the doctor, ER, or a police report.
The other 99.4% are motor vehicle drivers.
The statistics do not account for whether the cyclist or pedestrian is at fault. Quite a few pedestrians rely on hearing to tell if a vehicle is coming - I have people step right into the road in front of me all the time, and it's particularly annoying since I'm more likely to be injured trying to avoid them and hitting something or crashing, or glancing off them and then crashing. They're likely to only get a bruised rib, whereas I'll probably get a broken arm.
Please help metamoderate.