Quoted message said:I missed most of this. Has anyone posted any REAL evidence for their POV or is it all just
anecdotal "I read somewhere" stuff.
Nope, and a proper analysis would be very interesting. Some previous efforts from the archive:
tinyurl.comnmapOpen ↗ (Anthony Morton):
Let me run some stats past you, so at least people can argue from an informed perspective rather
than just trading opinions.
Number of fatalities per million hours of activity (Vicroads 1990):
Cyclists: 0.41 Pedestrians: 0.80 MV occupants: 0.46 Motorcyclists: 7.66
Number of deaths from head injury per million hours (Vicroads 1990 and Federal Office of Road
Safety 1992):
Cyclists: 0.19 Pedestrians: 0.34 MV occupants: 0.17 Motorcyclists: 2.9
Hospital admissions for head injury per million hours (above, plus Queensland Health Department)
Cyclists: 2.2 Pedestrians: 2.0 MV occupants: 1.6 Motorcyclists:18.0
And follow up tinyurl.comnmayOpen ↗ (YT):
There are biases in all stats. And it depends what you're comparing.
Say we're comparing cycle commuting with car commuting. A significant bias will be the fact that
more fatal car crashes occur on rural roads than on urban roads (roughly a factor of 2:1, from
memory). Allowing that total vehicle occupant-hours rural vs urban is close to 1:1 (don't know the
real number), then car commuting would be only about half as dangerous as the average car occupancy
risk stats you quoted. And if cycle commuting dominates the cycling stats (a guess), that would make
cycle commuting about twice as dangerous as car commuting.
Then there's a travel-time bias. A recent Brisbane study showed that cycle commuting was on average
about 25% slower than car commuting. Hence the exposure time commuting on the bike is a bit longer,
so in terms of total commuting risk we're now up to cycle commuting being about 2.5 times as
dangerous as car commuting.
The surprising thing, I guess, is that even after correcting for the various biases as carefully as
possible, cycle commuting still doesn't come out all that dangerous, compared with lots of other
things we do.
Of course, the biggest bias of all lies in ignoring the cardio- vascular risk of a sedentary
lifestyle. If you cycle-commute, that, by itself is more than enough exercise to define you as
non-sedentary, from a cardiologist's viewpoint. If you car-commute, are otherwise sedentary (ie most
office workers), and you're also overweight and over 40, then this risk is simply HUGE. At least 10
times any commuting road trauma risk.