have to call bad statistics on this one.
1) What is the average number of car riding events
2) What is the average number of bicycle riding events.
divide the count of accident in car -- by count of car riding events to get a percentage
divide the count of accidents by bicycle -- by count of bicycle riding events to get a percentage
good math is most important for proper comparisons of situations.
I definitely agree that statistics from good data would be a much better argument for the safety of cycling. Unfortunately, making the direct comparison to automobile travel is very difficult for several reasons.
Cycling properly can reduce your risk of a fatal crash to lower than that a child riding in a school bus!
The data for it is on page 8. The table shows fatalities per million people for different modes of travel with school bus travel at 0.22/mil and bicycling at 0.26/mil. Bicycling is higher, but it accounts for all fatalities, including those of people biking intoxicated, without lights at night, and disobeying the rules of the road. The study goes on to look at the types of crashes and reasons for them and shows that your risk of a crash can be reduced by more than 90% by riding safely (This does not mean riding on the sidewalk all the time!). You could definitely say I'm extrapolating a bit but it's close enough for me.
Exactly. Which I mentioned in my original post:
Assuming that they ride in the street with traffic, stopping at stop signs and lights and obeying all other traffic laws, and use lights and bright clothing in low visibility, then bicycling is actually statistically safer than driving (at least driving at highway speeds).
The majority of bike-car collisions are (at least partially) because the cyclist was doing something stupid.
But you don't have to take my word for it: I quoted some statistics and sources here: http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2012/06/please-ride-your-bike-in-street.html
You can't just compare miles traveled or hours of activity. You have to compare apples to apples, and that includes driver/rider behavior.
Obviously if you regularly run red lights or drive down the wrong side of the street in your car, you will have a much much higher the average rate of accidents, and your chances of dying in a car jump dramatically. You don't need any statistics to be confident of that. Almost no one does these things in a car. Yet people do these things on bikes ALL THE TIME. Even people who are safety conscious (but not knowledgeable) regularly ride bikes on the sidewalk, increasing their risk of injury or death.
So, in order to figure out the risk to YOU specifically, as someone who knows to follow the law, you have to correct for the percentage of accidents caused in full or in part by the cyclist.
If our risk of a crash is reduced by 90% by your choices as a rider, than your statistical risk is only 10% of the overall risk for bike crashes.
The reason I posted the numbers for car crashes is not to say "look how dangerous this is comparatively" (thats specifically why I avoided posting the numbers for bikes -
that would have been misleading in the way you are suggesting) - it was to point out that it is really dangerous, and we all take it for granted. Car accidents are the number 1 cause of death of American's under 40. Is that partially due to how much we do it? Well sure it is! Which is a damn good reason to do less of it.