Accident stats for mountainbiking?

Anyone know of any?

Following on from my teasing of people who believe MTBing to be dangerous I thought I would look into this a bit further but I can find nothing that gives me any hard data on mountain biking injuries especially deaths – deaths make a good comparison because it cannot be fudged.

Personally I have never heard of a Mountain biking death in the UK.

I found a fairly inflammatory article in one of the scottish newspapers bemoaning the number of injuries as seen by folk going into borders general and Fort William hospitals but no mention of any deaths and I would have thought there would be some mention if there had been any.

The stats on road casualties give 100 ish a year dead, 2500 serious injuries, 14000 minor injuries ( but serious enough to report) but that specifically excludes off road cycling

I found this 1997 paper from NZ which is part of a thesis.http://www.mountainbike.co.nz/politics/articles/anstiss/
One death in the year studied. and some very contradictory findings.and no source of stats separate for mountainbiking

A few academic papers but not a lot of initial relevance However a ten year study from Vancouver into mountainbiker injuries in the north shore had one death in ten years in the whole area.
http://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2006/02000/Mountain_Biking_Injuries_Requiring_Trauma_Center.10.aspx

Borders general gets 5-10 A&E attendees per week but GT and Innerleithan get thousands of visitors a week

I found one press report of a death in NZ and no Fatal accident inquiries involving mountainbikes in Scotland

So – It would appear that minor injuries are common – one study I looked at had a 80%+ incidence of minor injuries – cuts and bruises, moderate injuries such as broken collar bones happen but are relativly uncommon, serious injuries are rare events and deaths appear to be very rare but thats extrapolated from bugger all data

Anyone got any sources of better data or thoughts?

@TJ – I am not sure deaths is the right stat to determine whether mountain biking is dangerous. Also as far as I recall road deaths are around 300 with most of those being pedestrians who are hit by vehicles. Also from memory deaths amongst road cyclists in London number around 25.

Sadly I know of one death whilst mountain biking but it was related to un-diagnosed heart disease.

How do you propose to use the information to make the world a better place?

Well, I remember a lad collapsing and dying years and years (maybe a decade) ago at a downhill race after suffering a TBI.

There have been a few killed in Whistler that I know of, although at least one of these is due to Bears.

I do know of a lot of people/cases who have broken their necks mtbing though.

Road deaths of cyclists is around a 100 each year.111 in 2010
http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/adviceandinformation/cycling/facts-figures.aspx

The reason for looking at deaths is its an exact count. Injuries you get differences in classification and reporting. I do accept tho that there culd be a lot of non fatal accidents but few fatal ones.

Edit

I am not trying to prove a point – genuinely interested in putting some hard facts together

Not deaths, but this is an interesting stat from a fairly recent study into injury in recreational mtbing (http://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2010/07/19/emj.2009.086991.full)

The overall injury rate of 1.54 injuries per 1000 biker exposures suggests that recreational mountain biking compares favourably with many other popular sports. Studies looking at indoor and outdoor soccer have found injury rates of between 4.0 and 18.0 injuries per 1000 player exposures, while rates in competitive rugby union often exceed 100.0 per 1000 player games.

So relatively safe (in those terms at least)

there was a poster on here ~2yrs ago who had a heart attack & died on a ride. some posts about it after.

can’t be the only one.

was there not something a while ago about Borders General Hosp getting a new lease of life due to a steady stream of injuries from GT and Inners ? Think there have been a couple of deaths at 7Stanes but were due to underlying heart or other conditions I recall rather than mtb injuries

In the past I had found a searchable database on accidents in th UK but cannot find it now

any thoughts?

found it but not much use
http://www.rospa.com/about/oursites/hass-lass.aspx

I know someone who had a heat attack on a ride (I wasn’t there), he survived though, he might have had the attack walking the dog though so hard to link directly to MTBing (although the climb will now of course be for ever known as heartattack hill).

Think there have been a couple of deaths at 7Stanes but were due to underlying heart or other conditions I recall rather than mtb injuries

yup, probably around 3-4 years ago and both in quite a short space of time. As you say though an underlying (but unknown) condition was to blame, the sort of thing that could happen if they were doing any sport though

I think if there where figures I don’t think cycling would be near the top.

This would however mainly depend if they determine the difference between cycling for pleasure and cycling for transport.

was there not something a while ago about Borders General Hosp getting a new lease of life due to a steady stream of injuries from GT and Inners ? Think there have been a couple of deaths at 7Stanes but were due to underlying heart or other conditions I recall rather than mtb injuries

Yes I knew 2 of the guys from the D&G area, been a few at GT. 1 did have a known, hereditary condition but chose to live life to the full
The 1st person to be helivaced from Mabie with a broken back died last year in a wheelchair accident.he either had a heart attack and upended his motorised wheelchair or had the attack as a cause of the incident.

I would imagine the incidence of and range of injury is different from road cycling. Perhaps more ‘falls per hour’ but at slower speeds and minus a lot of the ‘road rash’ and fatal head injuries associated with high speeds and being hit by something that weighs at least a ton and is travelling between 30 and 60 mph (e=mc squared etc)

I wonder about the effects of location and ‘the golden hour’ on injuries too. No stats to contribute, but recently on a local club moutain bike ride someone was immobilised by injury: had this occurred on the road he could have been in an ambulance within 20 minutes and hospital within 40. As the access to the very off-road ‘crash site’ was so poor, it took a couple of hours and the poor guy was nearly hypothermic by the time he got anywhere warm. This was not in the depths of winter, but a few weeks ago before it got ridiculously cold again.

I read somewhere a few years ago that on average a mountain biker has one day off work each year as a result of a biking injury.

I wonder how many days per year are saved as a result of being healthier from the exercise and generally being cool :-)

My guess would be yo are right Julian
Found a few articles on injuries
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=mountainbike+injury&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on

My hunch is that looking at deaths only won’t be much benefit, they are probably very rare and won’t tell us much about how ‘dangerous’ MTBing is.

When I was in East Surrey ortho ward being treated for a broken wrist, that I broke MTBing, the surgeon told me that MTbers were their third most frequent patient source for trauma injuries, after motorcyclists and footballers.

My hunch is that, in terms of serious injuries, it’s pretty dangerous.

Mountain biking is increasing in popularity worldwide. The injury patterns associated with elite level and competitive mountain biking are known. This study analysed the incidence, spectrum and risk factors for injuries sustained during recreational mountain biking.

The injury rate was 1.54 injuries per 1000 biker exposures. Men were more commonly injured than women, with those aged 30–39?years at highest risk. The commonest types of injury were wounding, skeletal fracture and musculoskeletal soft tissue injury. Joint dislocations occurred more commonly in older mountain bikers. The limbs were more commonly injured than the axial skeleton. The highest hospital admission rates were observed with head, neck and torso injuries. Protective body armour, clip-in pedals and the use of a full-suspension bicycle may confer a protective effect.
http://emj.bmj.com/content/28/4/274.abstract

Travel insurance companies must have a good idea of the risks involved. The premium that I’ve paid while racing abroad recently wasn’t particularly expensive – so the risk is probable quite low, certainly lower than parachuting, paragliding, white water rafting etc

There was a death on the Marin trail last year, but I believe it was a heart attach.

The guys at Llandegla keep very detail records of all incidents that are reported to them. They also have rider numbers. Not sure they’d share it with you, but they may. They seem to have a couple of ambulances a day at the weekends 8O

Teej you are such a bullshitter, I had a massive row with you last year about helicopters and MTB accidents where you claimed to have access to all the stats. Fligging liar.

Ooo- how do clip in pedals ‘confer a protective effect.’?

Toys – I suggest you check that. Yo claimed superior knowledge as yo had access to the journals. I know what I said which was that having an athens password I could get to all the journals which I could.

This is a different situation – I cannot find any stats or decent info and was looking for a bit of discussion around the subject. I wondered if I had missed any sources of info. NHS has mucked up my athens access as well so I can only get abstracts now

stuey – Member

Ooo- how do clip in pedals ‘confer a protective effect.’?

Goodness knows. I suspect that clip in users has less severe injuries

Not sure what they mean by 1000 biker exposures.
I suspect this is bike hours so 1 rider for 1000 hours, 2 for 500 and so on.
Looking at my Endomondo history I do about 250 hours per year so this means I will have a significant injury every 4 years.
I doing alot worse than this with 3 moderate injuries all requiring surgery in 4 years. :(

The stats on road casualties give 100 ish a year dead, 2500 serious injuries, 14000 minor injuries ( but serious enough to report) but that specifically excludes off road cycling

can you be 100% sure off road cycling is excluded? One of the issues I’ve heard aired about comparing the relative risks of journeys by car bike or on foot is that any cyclist treated for injury is presumed to be transport/road related, overstating the risk to cyclists on the roads, whereas pedestrian injuries are only reported as journey related if they are hit by a car – if you trip over the curb and break your neck on the way to work its not counted as a pedestrian stat.

In terms of reported accidents, it’s low. Lower than cricket. Whether that’s a reflection of the reporting threshold (a bruise from a cricket ball may prompt the first aid kit to come out, a bruise from mountain biking may prompt some pointing and laughing from your mates), I don’t know.

Some data from the USA would appear to back up my suspicions that you’re far more likely to knacker yourself playing a contact sport:

The most practical method of assessing risk potential in a sport is to measure the number of injuries per 1,000 athlete exposures — i.e. the number of times a participant engages in the activity over the course of a year. Using this method, Boxing ranks first with 5.2 injuries per 1,000 exposures, followed by Tackle Football (3.8), Snowboarding (3.8), Ice Hockey (3.7), Alpine Skiing (3.0), Soccer (2.4), Softball (2.2) and Basketball (1.9).

With the exception of Snowboarding (which ranks third), none of the other so-called “Extreme” sports carries a particularly high risk of injury. Surfing is 10th in risk potential (1.8 injuries per 1,000 exposures); Mountain Biking 18th (1.2 per thousand); Skateboarding 22nd (0.8 per thousand); and BMX 24th, also with 0.8. In-Line Roller-Skating places 27th with only 0.4 injuries per 1,000 athlete exposures.

http://naysisportscene.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/sports-injuries-documented.html

Mountain Biking 18th (1.2 per thousand);

I suppose theres a question as what counts as an ‘exposure’

Is this exposure

given the same weight as this exposure

or this one

Obviously the first pic is the most dangerous – as they’ve got a polar bear on a lead!

Last guys in trouble: not clipped in :-)

I would suggest that this would be a statistical minefield. But a fun game to assess the likelihood of injury in the three pictures above:

Picture 1: Suitable footwear, poorly fitting helmet and a dog on a lead….?????

can you be 100% sure off road cycling is excluded?

Road accident figures are compiled from the police submitted stats 19 form. It is only done for road accidents. Serious accidents the police were called to off road like a MTBer would just be recorded under a computer ref no.

http://www.stats19.org.uk/html/stats_20_notes.html

“2.1 All road accidents involving human death or personal injury occurring on the Highway (‘road’ in Scotland) and notified to the police within 30 days of occurrence, and in which one or more vehicles are involved, are to be reported. This is a wider definition of road accidents than that used in Road Traffic Acts.”

By the figures presented above the injury rate seems to be between 1.2 – 1.5 per 1000 exposures.
If you ride twice per week that’s 1 injury per 10 years of riding!
This seems extraordinarily low to me. Every one of my good friends has had at least 1 significant injury and I would hazzard a guess that almost every stw poster has too.

TJ. You could try this route. http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/enquiries.html
MrsT says it all depends on how the cause of death is coded for recording purposes

This seems extraordinarily low to me

Thats what I mean – there is probably quite a gulf between mountain biking as you or I understand it or as non-cycling statistician understands it – in that third pic of mine it wouldn’t be healthy for the rider to think ‘theres only going to be one day in 1000 that I can expect to get hurt riding like this’

“2.1 All road accidents involving human death or personal injury occurring on the Highway (‘road’ in Scotland) and notified to the police within 30 days of occurrence, and in which one or more vehicles are involved, are to be reported. This is a wider definition of road accidents than that used in Road Traffic Acts.”

reported to the police by who though. Incidents involving cars and injury will alway get notified the the police, not necessarily the case that a cyclist that takes a tumble on the road (without a third party involved) will report their case to the police though, same with peds. This is the issue that was highlighted (on ‘More or Less’ on Radio 4 IIRC), hospitals treating injuries report figures as to the relative causes as well, but not every pedestrian injury that happens on or near a highway, as part of a journey, is recorded as and accident on the highway, they are only recorded as such if they are the victim of an incident with a vehicle, where as if someone dressed as cyclist turns up at A&E their injuries tend to be recorded as road/travel related whether they happened on the road, the trail or in competition

TJ,

FC should provide any statistics they have if you FOI request them.

Think you have a problem identifying what is “mountain biking” though. e.g. there was a death in Glasgow in the late 90’s where someone came off a home made ramp and landed on his head. But although it was on a mountain bike and jumping (so probably meets most definitions) it was in an urban setting. Even if you consider all “off road” incidents, then you will be including presumably riskier activities such as downhill and low risk family rides in the woods. Then do you control for number of hours riding or miles covered?

Have a look here (I’ve not read it yet): http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/cons_safe/news/rep_risk_sport_en.pdf

Pubmed reports 62 hits for “mountain bike injury”

Here’s one comparing XC to endurance

And another US study

I can’t be bothered to look through them, but you are welcome to peruse the abstracts. Might come back with a considered opinion if you all calm down :roll:

Off the top of my head in the last 2 summers:

Approx 260 riders doing a week in the Alps, so approx 1300 guided rider-days.

9 went to hospital – of those, there were 3 broken bones (all collar-bones), 1 head injury, 1 semi-degloved finger, 1 “penetrating injury” (to calf), 1 nasty flesh-wound (“peeled” ankle), 1 sprained ankle and 1 I can’t remember!

Any number of cuts & bruises on top of that, but very few enough to stop someone riding the next day.

Hmm. A 1 in 28ish chance of going to hospital following a weeks holiday seems pretty high risk to me..

Well…

On a ski holiday last year 3 of 19 ended in hospital… With major stuff
And this year, 50 of us over 2 weeks, 4 blown ACLs

Any off-road biking is likely to be classed as ‘mountain biking’ so the stats are probs a shade low.

Of all the guys I ride with, I can think of one who hasn’t broken a bone. But that’s guys who ride most weekends, race regularly etc which probably represents a very low number of riding-hours in terms of the total by everyone.