Safety In Numbers by J.T. Fisher
SAFETY IN NUMBERS by J.T. Fisher
Whenever possible I complement my “weekend warrior” routine with cycling to/from the office. Some weeks I might ride in three times, other weeks not at all, correlating pretty closely with the weather and the hours of daylight — I won’t commute in the dark. These extra miles give me an edge in training over friends who don’t have the option, and even one or two days a week of carbon-neutral activity relieves my conscience and admittedly gives me a smug feeling about getting in shape while often meeting the same cars stoplight after stoplight.
I’d always been fond of the idea of biking to work, but lived too far from the office for it to be practical. Until recently, I was also living in Atlanta, the city that proclaims itself “too busy to hate running over bicyclists.” So when we moved to St. Louis and were scouting for a house, an unspoken criteria of mine was a bike-able route to the office. We ended up 12.5 miles out, or about 40 minutes of pedaling each way. Perfect. Traffic is non-existent compared to LA, NY, Atlanta, or Chicago. Flat sections are almost as rare as mountains, and the roads are in decent shape, so it’s an ideal opportunity for 25 miles a day of training. As to the local drivers, attitudes toward cyclists are generally quite reasonable, and those who seethe, usually do so quietly.
That being said, bicycle commuting elicits interesting reactions from others who feel their transition from bikes to cars was a marker of maturity and responsibility, and a path one finds few reasons to reverse. Reactions range from basic questions (“can you shower at work” – thankfully for all, yes), to one that probably makes bicycle commuting a non-starter for many, i.e., is it safe? A person I work with even quipped during a recent discussion about leadership succession planning (i.e., determining who should take your job “if you get hit by a bus”), that in my case, it might not be an entirely academic, with a nod toward my bike.
Was I putting at greater risk my health and my family’s livelihood when I clip in? I couldn’t say. So I googled bicycle safety, and several million potential answers spilled forth.
Fortunately, on my third or fourth click I found an article that served up some answers ways even I could understand. Better yet, the analysis at http://neptune.spacebears.com/opine/helmets/html (kudos to Mr. Brian F. Scheurs) showed convincingly my odds of surviving were far better when cycling to work than driving in. That wasn’t altogether surprising. On the other hand, I was intrigued to learn that my odds of dying while cycling to work weren’t meaningfully different than if WALKING. Now that’s trivia for the next club ride! Some other juicy facts and figures, are that:
* In terms of fatalities per million miles, bicycles generate 0.2. Put another way, one has to ride, on average, five million miles before one could reasonably be expected to die from it. [I’d like to think I ride 5,000 miles per year; if so, my number would be up in about a thousand years]. Cars generate 1.3 fatalities per million miles, so that’s (hmmm) six and a half times greater chance of dying than cycling, and means you only have to drive 770,000 miles (hint: that’s FAR less than five million) before one is reasonably expected to die in the act. It’s likely I will drive three quarters of a million miles in my lifetime (50 years driving 15,000 miles/year) — but there’s NO CHANCE I’ll come close to pedaling 5 million miles. So the way I see it, miles out of the car and onto the bike, I improve my chances of dying for some other reason altogether. The study also discusses motorcycles, and concludes (okay, it doesn’t conclude, but I did) that even getting close enough to SEE a motorcycle, even if it’s not being ridden, can make large crowds of people fall over dead on the spot. Or, on a relative basis, the risk of dying while motorcycling ranks about even with sleeping naked with rats during the Great Plague
* In terms of serious injuries, the findings were relatively similar, except that motorcycling appears to become even far riskier. I know you shouldn’t apply statistics about a population to one data point, lest you beg assault from Harley riding actuaries, but nevertheless if one did, the math would say you need ride only about 1,800 miles on a motorcycle to become a serious accident looking for a place to happen. For me, that’s a measly 36 round trips between home and office. In the hospital before Thanksgiving, for sure. On the bicycle, I would have to go 66,666.6 miles, or about 5.3 years of riding five days a week to and from the office, to get the same risk. In the car, the math we’re not supposed to do this way says we’re due for an airbags-blown significant injury about every 10,000 miles. [If two people are in the car, one presumes the math goes up to 20,000 miles, but both people have to get injured.]
* Finally, we have to talk about alcohol, because my cycling destination isn’t always the office. The report cites that 24% of bicycling fatalities (and 29% of motorcycling ones) are due to drunk riders . The figures are higher for both walkers (a full 33% of pedestrian deaths) and drivers (40%). Perhaps two things are at work here: The percentages are lower for cyclists and bikers because after a few pints can’t find our machines, or when you drink you realize a two wheeler will be harder to operate, so you take your car or walk home.
Wishing you many safe and happy miles.
Categories: Bicycle Commuting, Readers Submissions
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