Relative Risk of Cycling?

[DCLiz]

A friend, who is planning to bike the length of the Mississippi River next year, has been posting news stories about cycling fatalities. Yesterday, he posted a story with this comment: “This is another of too many sad stories this year that really impact our plans for next year.”

This got me thinking – what is the relative risk of cycling compared to driving, particularly in the U.S.? In other words, given X miles/hours traveled, there are Y fatalities or serious injuries. I’d like to think that cycling is not inherently riskier, but that we just hear about the fatalities more often than we hear about fatal car crashes (since those happen so often), but I just don’t know.

I was hoping someone on this forum may know of figures like that.

Topic

[lordofthemark]

http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?5467-Biking-is-SAFEST&p=59101#post59101

short answer – safer per hour, less safe per mile. Ergo any given “average” trip safer by car, a bike focused lifestyle with short bike trips instead of long car trips would eb safer. Sounds like your friend doesn’t really want to do that trip.

Do they bike regularly now?

[americancyclo]

I would wonder if the number differ as well geographically varying with the cycling infrastructure.

[consularrider]

There is a tread on the bikejournal.com forum where one of the members links to reports of cycling related wrecks.

[PeteD]

I’d expect that bikeleague.org would have the 2012 numbers for cyclist deaths.

National Highway Trafic and Saftey Admin: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/cats/listpublications.aspx?Id=A&ShowBy=DocType
Though the latest is 2011.

I don’t think the NHTSA site has any reports of cyclist fatalities that didn’t include an auto though. The Bike League might have a listing of all deaths that involved a bicyclist.

–Pete

[DCLiz]

@PeteD 62166 wrote:

National Highway Trafic and Saftey Admin: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/cats/listpublications.aspx?Id=A&ShowBy=DocType

Wow, the stats on “pedacycling” deaths here are really interesting. For instance, 28% involve alcohol consumption by the cyclist and 30% occur between 4 pm and 7:59 pm.

Also, I missed that earlier threat about cycling being the safest. Thanks for the link.

[Author]

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