How Safe Is Cycling? 947
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?"
How safe? (Score:5, Informative)
Google is your friend, it can show you every last killed and injured biker.
http://www.nhtsa.gov/Bicycles [nhtsa.gov]
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811743.pdf [dot.gov]
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 [wikipedia.org]
An important distinction (Score:5, Informative)
Re:only? (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.
context (Score:5, Informative)
He broke his collarbone twice while racing and had two crashes on a mountain bike
Okay, you get the win on this one. Slashdot description is deceptive; thanks for the clarification these injuries were not in the street use the article is about.
"ONLY????" (Score:3, Informative)
I am over forty, don't bike, and have never borken ANY bone.
Overall, cyclists live longer (Score:4, Informative)
Loads of prior research has been done (Score:4, Informative)
In The Netherlands. Nobody wears a helmet, with a few exception for very young kids (Always flanked and shielded by a overly concerned parent.)
I could show a graph that nicely shows that helmets are correlated with higher death rates. (No the helmet doesn't kill, its because helmets are worn in countries with low separation of slow cyclists and fast cars)
There is also a correlation between more helmets (by law) leading to LESS cyclers. Its a burden.
Seperation of slow and fast traffic is BY FAR the biggest factor here. Then also consider the health benefit of the exercise.
Regular exercise will make you more healthy and prolong your life! So, on bike lanes, Cycling is Super Awesome Safe! No helmet needed.
ps, incidents are on the rise due to old folks going faster on their electric assisted bikes.
ps2 mopeds, scooters, especially those that clock 50km/h are more and more forced into the car lane in The Netherlands, the speeds fits better.
ps3 Watch your juveniles, those pesky 12-18 y/o have a high incident rate. They are also likely to be offended by a helmet..
Re:Please (Score:5, Informative)
Motorcycle helmets actually offer good protection, while bicycle helmets don't. For any impact over about 10 mph, they are not going to signifcantly reduce the peak accelerations your brain experiences (it's your brain sloshing that does the damage). I guess they can prevent lacerations, but that's about it. Helmet advocates always quote a study from the 1980s (funded by helmet manufacturers) that showed an 84% reduction in brain injuries, but other work has not borne this out. (example [nih.gov])
Wearing a helmet is applying a different standard to risk than we do in many other situations. Cycling is actually slightly safer per mile than walking, yet we don't make peds wear helmets. Just the same, we could make drivers wear helmets just like race car drivers do. That would actually prevent a huge number of deaths. But we don't. So why are cyclists singled out to wear the safety yarmulkes?
As an additional point, helment laws are actually terrible for cycling safety. After Australia made helmets mandatory, cycling went down 1/3 overnight. Fewer cyclists means drivers are less likely to expect them. In addition, there is evidence that cyclists wearing helments engage in riskier behavior as a form of risk-compensation.
Re:How safe? (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.
Re:How safe? (Score:5, Informative)
While I'm sure it's a good book I don't think you summary is right in anyway. First of all most bicycle accidents leading to serisou injury (at least a day in hospital) happen only to the cyclist, with no one else involved. The biggest cause of accidents is bad infrastructure and maintainance, i.e. gravel on the bicycle lane, or other surprises such as tight curves .
It's of course possible that things are completely different here in Sweden, and it's also possible to blame this on the cyclist saying that bad judgement is the cause of these accidents, but you have to put it in a perspective you do not have the same types of problems in car lanes, no one would dig a hole in the middle of the road without giving motorist lots of warning and protection. This happens quite often in bicycle infrastructure.
These are stats from Sweden [www.vti.se]
27% can be related to operation and maintenance
20% to road design
27% to cyclist-bicycle interaction
15% to the behaviour and state of the cyclist,
11% to the interaction of the cyclist with other road users
statistically, cyclists don't hit pedestrians (Score:4, Informative)
but what about one that runs over a pedestrian because he was riding on the sidewalk?
If you bothered to google this: cyclists are involved in collisions with .6% of pedestrian injuries in NYC that warrant a trip to the doctor, ER, or a police report.
The other 99.4% are motor vehicle drivers.
The statistics do not account for whether the cyclist or pedestrian is at fault. Quite a few pedestrians rely on hearing to tell if a vehicle is coming - I have people step right into the road in front of me all the time, and it's particularly annoying since I'm more likely to be injured trying to avoid them and hitting something or crashing, or glancing off them and then crashing. They're likely to only get a bruised rib, whereas I'll probably get a broken arm.
Re:How safe? (Score:5, Informative)
...effectively the injury/death rate is mostly effected by poor decisions by the cyclist, not the car.
This is incorrect. In any study regarding bike-car collisions I have seen, the overwhelming majority of them are caused by motorist negligence. Take a look at this study by the City of Toronto based on police reports:
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation/publications/bicycle_motor-vehicle/ [toronto.ca]
It shows something like @83% of bike-car collisions were caused by the motorist, not the cyclist. This basic finding has been replicated in many other cities as well. I can't find the link at the moment, but IIRC it was like 90%+ caused by motorists in NYC.
Re:How safe? (Score:4, Informative)
And if you hit them, you will be the one in the wrong.
No, you won't. Not if they haven't taken the proper steps to be visible.
Here, for example, is the California law that includes what cyclists must do to legally ride on the road after dark.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc21201.htm [ca.gov]
Re:How safe? (Score:4, Informative)
In the Netherlands, kids take a fairly thorough cycling exam to learn this stuff:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.veiligverkeernederland.nl%2Fverkeersexamen [google.com]
Theory examples:
http://www.veiligverkeernederland.nl/node/67294 [veiligverk...derland.nl] (Dutch, but it doesn't really matter)
On the other hand, there are still about 80.000 people (out of 17.000.000 inhabitants; ~0,5%) requiring immediate medical care yearly due to accidents on their bicycle (although many of them are older people breaking their hip):
http://www.veiligheid.nl/cijfers/fietsongevallen-algemeen [veiligheid.nl] (Dutch)