Is Bicycling Safe?

If you follow the rules of the road and ride carefully, cycling is actually much safer than driving.

By Ryan McGreal

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Fatality by Time Spent Cycling

Failure Analysis Associates, Inc. performed a comparative analysis of fatality rates for a variety of activities per million hours spent performing a given activity. They concluded that the fatality rate for every million hours spent cycling is 0.26, compared to 0.47 per million driving hours (on-road motorcycling comes in at a whopping 8.80 deaths per million motorcycling hours).

That is, riding a motor vehicle has nearly twice the risk of fatality as riding a bike for a given duration.

Overall Fatality and Commute Homeostasis

According to the US National Safety Council, for every million cyclists in the US, 16.5 die each year, whereas for every million motorists, 19.9 die each year.

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“Life Years” Gained and Lost

In addition to the direct risk of death or injury, cycling and driving also carry indirect risks that must be factored into account.

According to a study by the British Medical Association, the average gain in “life years” through improved fitness from cycling exceeds the average loss in “life years” through cycling fatalities by a factor of 20 to 1.

Driving confers no commensurate health benefits through improved fitness; in fact, time spent driving actually correlates with poorer overall health and higher risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and related lifestyle diseases.

Psychologically, it’s hard to weigh the slight risk of being hit by a car tomorrow against the vastly reduced risk of having a heart attack in twenty years, but it is far too significant to ignore.

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https://raisethehammer.org/article/617oldId.20110203123303665