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How Safe Is Cycling?

Posted by timothy on from the endoskeleon-vs-exoskeleton dept.

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?"

3 of 947 comments (clear)

  1. How safe? by nospam007 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    1. Re:How safe? by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 5, Informative

      Okay, when I did an analysis of US stats last year, I found that cyclists are:

      1% of traffic
      2% of traffic injuries and fatalities

      You're more likely to get seriously hurt when you get into an accident on a bike. That's just obvious, since you're cruising around in nothing but skintanium. There's no way -- none -- that a bike is going to come out ahead in a collision with a motorized vehicle. A fight with someone that's got 20 pounds on you is one-sided, so imagine a fight against someone that's got 2 tons on you and is made out of steel. This is why, when I bike, I assume that I never ever, under any circumstances ever, ever think that I have the right of way. A bike never has the right of way. I say this because of the laws of physics -- if a delivery van blows a stop sign and t-bones you, he can hose down his van and get back to work tomorrow. If you're really, really lucky and you have good medical care, you might be able to pee on your own in a couple of months. So whose fault is it? Who cares? As the cyclist, you're always "all in" when you're biking, so you always assume that every accident is your fault.

      I started biking to school 17 years and 90 pounds ago. I bike to work 4/5 days a week unless it's snowing. (I don't bike when it's snowing; it's too dangerous with the cars out there, and on Thursdays I jog in.) In all that time, I've been hit one time. A woman on a road bike that was drafting behind me. A car was approaching the intersection (they have a stop) but they were approaching a little too fast for my liking. I hit my brakes, and they're tuned to stop my bike from full speed to stopped in about 2 meters. She couldn't stop nearly that well, and she rear-ended me. She tacoed her wheel and broke one of my rear lights. A lot of close calls, drivers that don't pay attention, but I pay enough attention for both of us.

      Ironically, I do have a spinal injury, but I was hours away from the closest car when I got it.

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
  2. Re:only? by frinkster · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.