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Between walking, driving, and biking, biking is the _most_ dangerous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Tra

Between walking, driving, and biking, biking is the _most_ dangerous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Travel Given the same commute you can expect riding a bike to be 23 times more dangerous than driving a car. Put another way, it looks like people get into car accidents roughly once every 18 years. If instead of driving your car for your commute you rode your bike, you can expect to get into an accident every single year (and then some).

aoeusnth1 8y ago
And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife , the first 20 minutes of moderate exercise is worth 2 microlifes (or -2 micromorts). At 15 miles/hour, the means the first 5 miles of biking costs you about 0.25-0.5 micromorts of accident risk and gives you +2 microlifes of fitness. Riding in a car, on the other hand, incurs accident risk AND has effects on fitness.
- photojosh 8y ago
  23x sounded pretty high, and indeed the GP's Wikipedia article cites 23x as one option from the original 1979 work, or 11.5x as a more recent one. The latter seems much more reasonable, and a quick look at stats for Australia suggests current stats put it at something like 6-10x. But the more interesting article to me was [0] which presents a study that says around 30% of "cycling" deaths are due to natural causes such as heart disease. [0]: https://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/09/01/is-it-just-vehicles-or-are-mamils-killing-themselves-too/ https://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/09/01/is-it-jus...
  - fyfy18 8y ago
    The key part of your clickbait article is this: > It also signals that older males need to be mindful that vigorous cycling – as with any form of exercise – can be fatal if the rider has a serious medical condition like heart disease. It’s likely though that the exercise benefit of cycling prevents many more premature deaths from disease that it causes. It would be interesting to break down the statistics on cycling to seperate those who cycle to commute, and those who cycle for leisure. I’d assume they have vastly different mortality causes.
btrettel 8y ago
Only the first estimate given there is reasonably sourced. And it's almost 40 years old. Bike safety has improved dramatically since then, so I doubt it's as bad as you suggest. [1] suggests that the number of trips made by bike increased from 1.7 billion in 2001 to 4 billion in 2009, but [2] suggests that the number of cyclist deaths was roughly constant over that range. So per-capita, cycling safety has likely improved dramatically. I couldn't find any data on the number of cyclists or number of trips by bike going back to 1979 in the 5 minutes I spent on it, but I suspect the trend is similar going back that far. For comparison, the car number quoted on Wikipedia appears to be from 2009. Also, you have a lot of control over your own safety on a bike. I think there are many cyclists who are an order of magnitude safer than your average cyclist. To be clear, I don't doubt that cycling is risker than driving. I just don't find the typically quoted numbers to be accurate. [1] http://bikeleague.org/commutingdata http://bikeleague.org/commutingdata [2] http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1258.html http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1258.html
- djrogers 8y ago
  > I think there are many cyclists who are an order of magnitude safer than your average cyclist. Statiscally, that’s not likely - maybe even not possible. There will be some who are that much safer, but not many - otherwise the average would just be pulled up.

aoeusnth1 8y ago

And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlife , the first 20 minutes of moderate exercise is worth 2 microlifes (or -2 micromorts). At 15 miles/hour, the means the first 5 miles of biking costs you about 0.25-0.5 micromorts of accident risk and gives you +2 microlifes of fitness. Riding in a car, on the other hand, incurs accident risk AND has effects on fitness.

photojosh 8y ago
23x sounded pretty high, and indeed the GP's Wikipedia article cites 23x as one option from the original 1979 work, or 11.5x as a more recent one. The latter seems much more reasonable, and a quick look at stats for Australia suggests current stats put it at something like 6-10x. But the more interesting article to me was [0] which presents a study that says around 30% of "cycling" deaths are due to natural causes such as heart disease. [0]: https://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/09/01/is-it-just-vehicles-or-are-mamils-killing-themselves-too/ https://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/09/01/is-it-jus...
- fyfy18 8y ago
  The key part of your clickbait article is this: > It also signals that older males need to be mindful that vigorous cycling – as with any form of exercise – can be fatal if the rider has a serious medical condition like heart disease. It’s likely though that the exercise benefit of cycling prevents many more premature deaths from disease that it causes. It would be interesting to break down the statistics on cycling to seperate those who cycle to commute, and those who cycle for leisure. I’d assume they have vastly different mortality causes.

btrettel 8y ago

Only the first estimate given there is reasonably sourced. And it's almost 40 years old. Bike safety has improved dramatically since then, so I doubt it's as bad as you suggest. [1] suggests that the number of trips made by bike increased from 1.7 billion in 2001 to 4 billion in 2009, but [2] suggests that the number of cyclist deaths was roughly constant over that range. So per-capita, cycling safety has likely improved dramatically. I couldn't find any data on the number of cyclists or number of trips by bike going back to 1979 in the 5 minutes I spent on it, but I suspect the trend is similar going back that far. For comparison, the car number quoted on Wikipedia appears to be from 2009. Also, you have a lot of control over your own safety on a bike. I think there are many cyclists who are an order of magnitude safer than your average cyclist. To be clear, I don't doubt that cycling is risker than driving. I just don't find the typically quoted numbers to be accurate. [1] http://bikeleague.org/commutingdata http://bikeleague.org/commutingdata [2] http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1258.html http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1258.html

djrogers 8y ago
> I think there are many cyclists who are an order of magnitude safer than your average cyclist. Statiscally, that’s not likely - maybe even not possible. There will be some who are that much safer, but not many - otherwise the average would just be pulled up.