I remember a stat from years ago.... the most deadly job in America was "fork lift operator" (at least in that one particular year). Apparently as a percentage... the fork lift operators... were most likely to be killed at work. Their number of deaths [as a percentage of the total number of operators] exceeded, police, firefighter, miners, truck drivers, all the occupations traditionally thought of as dangerous.
We just don't have really good detailed statical data for cycling. Although I myself would not recommend road cycling as a "safe" hobby or sport.... the total number of deaths are not shockingly high ether. And the numbers appear to be dropping. But the bad thing about the poor data/record keeping in reguards to cycling is we just don't know. Of the [
[COLOR= rgb(0, 0, 205)]what is the actual number of road cyclist deaths?[/COLOR]].... 618, most [both] killed and injured were adults [over 15 years old], about one forth of all killed cyclist had been drinking, about seventy percent were on urban streets, and
nine out of ten cyclist killed.... were NOT wearing helmets.
It would seem... of all the ways to avoid serious injury or death on a bicycle the best things to do would be: 1. wear a helmet, 2. avoid the urban streets, 3. avoid drugs and booze until after your ride.
I don't know what number 4 would be. Use a mirror? Obey traffic laws (
you know actually unclip and stop at signs and such)? Not listen to music? I don't know. But I do get a little comfort in knowing that although my routes do put me on urban streets... by not drinking and always wearing a brain bucket... my risks are greatly reduced.