Putting Things in Perspective
I don't know about you, but I'm always having people tell me how dangerous cycling is. I ride to work every day, and these comments irritate me. I sincerely believe that if you know what you're doing, cycling is at least as safe as any other kind of transport.
But without any firm statistics, it was always difficult to counter these wide-eyed anecdotes about people they knew who got hurt because they rode into a sewer grate or something.
So I looked up some real data collected by the U.S. government's National Center for Health Statistics, which is a part of the Centers for Disease Control:
Year: 2006
Deaths from automobile accidents: 44,000
Deaths from cycling accidents: 700
Deaths from choking on food: 700
Deaths from falling out of bed, off chairs, etc.: 650
Ha! Along with your bike, you probably have both food AND furniture at home, too, don't you?! Beware the hidden danger.
One of the most interesting things about this for me too was that among the cases of cycling fatalities, other studies have shown that around 70% involved cyclists who were either drunk themselves and/or riding after dark with no lights.
These statistics are nicely summarized here, and include complete reference details.
David, I agree with you that the dangers are over-hyped however the number of deaths per person engaged in the activity is the important statistic to look at. 44,000 people die in car accidents so that is 62 times more than from cycling however I think there are probably way more than 62 people driving for every cyclist commuting to work. If you look at miles driven for miles biked the ratio is probably even more skewed to favor drivers.
The people eating and using furniture are well … off the charts!
These statistics don’t tell the story and you can’t compared the 700 cycling deaths with the 14,000 car deaths. The number you really want to look at is percentage of cycling deaths among cyclist. Then you could compare that percentage with the percentage of car deaths among car occupants. The statistics you quoted are over the total population whether they cycle or not.
David, I’m with you on this one because of your statement, “if you know what you’re doing…”. Statistics mean little when you put yourself in the group who never has an accident because you do everything you can to insure a safe ride. It’s not statistically accurate to lump safe riders in with that percentage of idiots who ride like they have a death wish. Common sense tells me that if you could separate those two groups, the numbers would look much more favorable for “safe” riders.
Oh yeah, I just heard from the CDC that 36,000 people will die of seasonal flu this year too.