Re: "Danger! Danger!" - or not!

On 5/31/2025 4:58 PM, Roger Merriman wrote:

Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

I'm constantly amazed at the "Danger! Danger!" warnings heaped on
ordinary bicycling. It seems that millions of people "know" that one
cannot be safe riding a bike unless they wear a very weird styrofoam
hat; or garish, hi-viz clothing; or run bright lights front and back,
even in full daylight; or ride only on flat, boring multi-use paths,
because riding anywhere near motor vehicles can't possibly be safe.

 

>
Yet research comparisons between various activities almost always show
ordinary cycling (i.e. not gonzo off-road downhilling) to be quite safe.
I came across another relevant research paper today: "Active Living and
Injury Risk" by Parkkari, in the International Journal of Sports Medicine.
http://bionics.seas.ucla.edu/education/Rowing/Injury_2004_01.pdf
>

Your missing the point that if something feels risky, or isn’t wildly
comfortable to do, your unlikely to persuade folks to do so particularly if
it generally for leisure.

One way something can "feel" risky is if the person has been subject to years of propaganda claiming it's risky. People tend to believe those sorts of warnings, true or not. My point is that the warnings typically given regarding bicycling are grossly exaggerated, and perhaps purposely dishonest.

 

They used extensive surveys to evaluate risk of injuries per 1000 hours
of activity in dozens of activities. Here are results for some common
activities - with lower numbers being better:
>
Ordinary (e.g. commuting) bicycling: 0.42 injuries per 1000 hours.
Walking;   0.19 injuries per 1000 hours
Gardening: 1.01
Home Repair: 0.54
Basketball: 9.1
Soccer: 7.8
Tennis: 4.7
Badminton: 4.6
Running: 3.6
Competitive cycling: 2.0
Dancing: 0.7 injuries per 1000 hours.
>
So if you're afraid to ride a bike on a normal road, you should be more
afraid of gardening. (And this is not the only study that found
gardening to be riskier than cycling!) Also, think twice before going
dancing, let alone the scary sport of badminton!
>
BTW, the paper says "when commuting to shop, office or school it is
safer to walk rather than ride a bike." I think that's a mistake. Since
whatever shop you're heading for is a fixed distance away, what matters
is the risk per km or per mile, not per hour. Bicycling's per hour risk
was found to be 2.2 times that of walking; but I think almost all
bicyclists ride faster than 6.6 miles per hour - that is, faster than
2.2 times the normal walking pace of 3 mph. So per mile, cycling is
safer than walking, a fact that pops up consistently in relative risk
studies.
>
Zen is apparently the only one posting here who still races. He should
take comfort in the fact that they found racing to be safer than badminton!
>
>

Probably differs on type of injury’s some folks MTB for example do jumps
and so on, and so do ride with armour such as back protection/full face
helmets, my new hydration pack is one of few that doesn’t have a back
protection built in from that brand.

If you read the paper, you'll see they surveyed about 3500 people repeatedly over a year. That should result in data that represents the actual practices of participants during the time they participate in each activity. So as with Tom's "descending mountains in the rain at 58 mph" I suspect the time doing jumps in full face helmets and body armor is a small sliver of the total time spent riding bikes. Also note they had a separate category for what I call "ordinary" cycling - they called it cycling as a "commuting activity" or more accurately, cycling as transportation, to just get somewhere.
--
- Frank Krygowski