3 ms·

No, riding around on two wheels with no protection besides a foam helmet is just obviously more risky (to the rider) than riding in a steel frame, 4-wheeled veh

by throwaway201103 6y ago

No, riding around on two wheels with no protection besides a foam helmet is just obviously more risky (to the rider) than riding in a steel frame, 4-wheeled vehicle with crumple zones, air bags, and safety restraints. Even given an isolated bike infrastructure with no interaction between bikes and cars, if you hit a rock or a pedestrian or another cyclist and fall, you are going to sustain some type of injury. It takes a pretty major collision to sustain an injury in a modern automobile. There don't appear to be great statistics on bicycle deaths per mile and by cause but what I found is in line with my contention. "Cyclists are either 3.4x or 11.5x as likely to die as motorists, per passenger mile." And that's only fatalities, not injuries. And over 80% of cycling crashes are falls, running into fixed objects, or running into another cyclist. Collision with a moving motor vehicle is only about 11%. https://bicycleuniverse.com/bicycle-safety-almanac/ https://bicycleuniverse.com/bicycle-safety-almanac/

joshuamorton 6y ago
> There don't appear to be great statistics on bicycle deaths per mile and by cause but what I found is in line with my contention. "Cyclists are either 3.4x or 11.5x as likely to die as motorists, per passenger mile." And that's only fatalities, not injuries. That's in the US, notorious for bicycling infrastructure that varies between not-great and abysmal. If you compare cycling fatalities per mile in Denmark or Norway with MV fatalities per mile in the US, things are approximately a wash.
ballenf 6y ago
Don't disagree with anything you said, but do take issue with the stat equating 1 mile of bike distance with 1 mile of automobile distance. Surely the stat should be normalized on a "per commute" basis. At the very least throw out long-haul car trips. At least for the purposes of comparing relative safety of commuting by bike vs. car.
paulgb 6y ago
> (to the rider) But this is my (maybe protracted, admittedly) point about an SUV hitting the bike: if you account for injuries to others outside the vehicle, driving becomes a more dangerous form of transportation. If you only value the lives of those in the vehicle, you're right that it's probably safer per mile.

joshuamorton 6y ago

> There don't appear to be great statistics on bicycle deaths per mile and by cause but what I found is in line with my contention. "Cyclists are either 3.4x or 11.5x as likely to die as motorists, per passenger mile." And that's only fatalities, not injuries. That's in the US, notorious for bicycling infrastructure that varies between not-great and abysmal. If you compare cycling fatalities per mile in Denmark or Norway with MV fatalities per mile in the US, things are approximately a wash.

ballenf 6y ago

Don't disagree with anything you said, but do take issue with the stat equating 1 mile of bike distance with 1 mile of automobile distance. Surely the stat should be normalized on a "per commute" basis. At the very least throw out long-haul car trips. At least for the purposes of comparing relative safety of commuting by bike vs. car.

paulgb 6y ago

> (to the rider) But this is my (maybe protracted, admittedly) point about an SUV hitting the bike: if you account for injuries to others outside the vehicle, driving becomes a more dangerous form of transportation. If you only value the lives of those in the vehicle, you're right that it's probably safer per mile.