Back to bikes

This British data is interesting.

Cycling of about as dangerous as being a pedestrian

Our mob doesn’t even measure this stuff. They just count overall numbers of deaths and accidents but do not normalise it to distances travelled, or anything else for that matter.

Actually thinking about it, it isn’t the distance travelled that matters – its the time spent exposed to danger. Assuming that cars and motorbikes travel at an average of 50 km/h, bicycles at say 15 km/h and pedestrians at 5 km/h then in the UK:

Deaths in cars are at a rate of 70 per billion hours travelled.

Deaths in motorbikes are at a rate of 3610 per billion hours travelled.

Deaths for bicycles are at a rate of 326 per billion hours travelled, and

Deaths for pedestrians are at a rate of 130 per billion hours travelled.

That is, cycling is only 4.65 more dangerous than driving a car in a period of time.

Which is interesting because my cycle daily commute saves me about two thirds of the time because I can avoid a lot of traffic. Which means I am only increasing my risk of death by a factor of 1.55 using this UK data – which probably isn’t that different to Sydney.