Which would you prefer on a dark street, to be enlightened by activist statistics - or a blinky taillight?

My friend Brendan emailed me a link to a well executed piece about cycling safety. It was written by a father who'd been shocked by a near-miss in traffic and minor injuries suffered by his bike-rider son. The father investigated the danger of cycling relative to the dangers of other pursuits - and relative to the health and longevity benefits we'd like to think we derive.

Much of the article focused on cycling's accident and injury record, compiled by various means in various places. Those parts of the piece were interesting but not life-changing. We're probably not going to believe anyone who tells us that our experience on the streets is invalid and that if we only look at it THEIR way, we'll see that there's no danger at all: those hulking GMCs are our friends.

The couple of paragraphs that put the glowing lightbulb over MY head were these:


...because of the widespread perception that cycling is dangerous, the existing population of cyclists may be disproportionately made up of risk-takers. If everyone thinks biking is unsafe, the people who do it will be the ones who don't mind danger. And such people are more likely to get hurt in just about any activity.

In his 2004 book The Art of Urban Cycling, Robert Hurst cites evidence that as many as half of car-bike crashes are the cyclist's fault: the cyclist ran a stop sign, made an illegal turn, rode against traffic, or otherwise broke the law.

What this means is that if you're a cautious, law-abiding, risk-averse cyclist, biking is far safer than you'd think from the aggregate statistics, which are inflated by the proliferation of two-wheeling daredevils.


Hey, I'm law-abiding and risk-averse... I don't blow through lights at 20mph; I don't jump on and off of the sidewalk, frightening pedestrians; I don't ride the wrong way on one-way streets...

If it's so safe out there, if those of us whose riding could be called geriatric and defensive are so statistically unlikely to be hit, why does it feel so scary on the streets of this Great Nation?

What kind of place is this? We're sending our sons and daughters halfway around the world to fight over oil, but if we choose not to drive, we're scared off the streets by those who do...

Here's the link to the article: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/8/143547/109