If you follow the rules of the road and ride carefully, cycling is actually much safer than driving.<\/p>\n
By Ryan McGreal<\/p>\n
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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).<\/p>\n
That is, riding a motor vehicle has nearly twice the risk of fatality as riding a bike for a given duration.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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In addition to the direct risk of death or injury, cycling and driving also carry indirect risks that must be factored into account.<\/p>\n
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<\/em>.<\/p>\n Driving confers no commensurate health benefits through improved fitness; in fact, time spent driving actually correlates with poorer<\/em> overall health and higher risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and related lifestyle diseases.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n