Accident stats for mountainbiking?

“on average a mountain biker has one day off work each year as a result of a biking injury”
😯 6 years of MTBing and no time off, am I due 6 days off due to injury then?

I cant think of many incidents that even cut a ride short of people I know either. One that ended up on crutches for a while and one that got a quick look at in a&e

EDIT: actually, I can think of somebody else who had a cage built up around his leg for some time

“Protective body armour, clip-in pedals and the use of a full-suspension bicycle may confer a protective effect”
Awesome, Ill be sticking with SPDs then!
or are they comparing to toe-straps? ..

“on average a mountain biker has one day off work each year as a result of a biking injury”

I think I’ve only had one day off work as a bike guide in the last 5 years!

I suspect that statistic is heavily skewed by the occasional broken leg which necessitates weeks off…

First of a great idea for a thread.

I’ve been wondering how the risks of rock climbing compare to mountain biking

1.2 incidents per 1000 seems low to me. The link that Poly posted was very vague. It did say that one American Survey said that 48% of MTB regulars questioned had been injured.

My experience of magazine, friend internet anidotes would sugest deaths are higher in rock climbing than mtb but with broken bones being way more common amongst mountain bikers

Not mountain biking but here but child birth is way riskier than rock climbing

http://www.hse.gov.uk/education/statistics.htm

again this one sugests climbing is risky

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090721122848.htm

This is quite good and would be ideal if written for mountain biking. The death rates are quite high but I think that the inclusion of winter mountaineering probably boosts the numbers

http://www.thebmc.co.uk/bmcNews/media/u_content/File/press/factsheets/ParticipationStats03.pdf

I’m running out of steam now

John Ireland is head of recreational health and safety for the Forestry commision and was aske to do a study on bike safety. Maybe worth trying to contact him?

Just found this

john.ireland@forestry.gsi.gov.uk

Haven’t looked at the links ampthill, but I remember the last time I looked at the BMC’s stats that, surprisingly, there were more deaths in rock climbing than in winter climbing. However, there were more accidents/injuries in winter climbing.

I guess winter has more falls, but softer landings!

the issue is complex, in our risk assessments rider and vehicles is probably the biggest risk as the likelihood of a fatality is higher.

We still have the risk of someone going off an edge but it’s more likely to be spectator and or local kids mucking around (where they ride makes me wince)

in our first event, we hospitalised 4 riders, the first a great divide rider, mtb journo and now STW staffer was on the practice lap, the second was an experienced CX/ XC rider and sponsored rider and two more later on for more minor stuff. Now we rarely get an injury despite pushing the courses and riders harder.

At Lee quarry my understanding is the see-saw is the biggest issue followed by some of the jump combo’s. There have been plenty of call outs for R&PMRT but as far as I am aware no fatalities.

If you compare Xc/ DH racing against timetrials then TT’s are far more dangerous when it comes to fatalities, but that always comes down to other vehicles, their speed and the driver.

Preston Arena used to be known as the “carbon graveyard”

Track racing is also prone to crashes

Ok had a browse around the journals last night

the 1: 1000 (approx) figure keeps on coming up. remember this is for injuries requiring hospital treatment . Assuming riding once a week thats one person in 20 gets a injury requiring hospital treatment a year. Sounds like an over estimate to me. I know a lot of MTBers for many years and only know of two injuries that fall into that category. Not all mincers either.

One US study found injury rates falling

I suspect there is a huge variation in this tho and it includes all sorts of MTBers

One study was from the Vancouver area including the north shore – still did not have high rates.

Howver if you look at minor injuries – cuts and bruises then rates leap up to 3 in 4 🙂 Deaths seem to be very rare indeed

so from what I have seen – minor injuries – every gets them regulalry. Even me.

Injuries requiring hospital treatment – much rarer – 1: 1000 rides. very approximately that includes DH racers, serious freeriders as well as XC mincers

Deaths are very very rare indeed. I can only find reference to 3 or 4 worldwide in ten years. there may be more but its clearly a very rare event.

Interesting stuff

So I guess its about how yo see this as to if you think its dangerous or not as a pastime. To me I don’t care about bumps and bruises and teh serious injuries are rare enough for me to consider it not to be dangerous. I am suprised at 1:1000 tho – I would have thought from what I have seen much much lower.

300 000 people a year go to GT and Innerlithan IIRC – 300 -500 visit borders General thats 1:600 / 1000 and that while not the most dangerous of groups is surely more risky than riding outside of trail centres / DH tracks?

I wouldn’t say I’m that active in Mopuntain biking but

Last year I crushed 2 fingers and did something to my ribs/ thorasic joints. Fingers x-rayed physio on back

The I took my son to casualty for a minor soft tissue injury

My cousin took up downhill 2 years ago he was hospitalised at least once

My sister in law snapped her wrist about 2 weeks ago (yes on a mpuntain bike ride)

I know that non of that is stats but it seems like more tham 1 in a 1000 to me

Actually over the last year its been more like 3 casualty visits for 300 max rider participations in rides.

The crashers make up for the non crashers – never ( touch wood) anything much more than bumps and bruises for me in decades of regular road and offroad biking

Yes of course tj. My first trip to hospital despite riding since the 80’s. I can think of floads of mates who have never been hurt but who take part regularly

As always with epidemiological studies, the denominator is difficult to estimate. Incidence may be well recorded in terms of absolute count, and even comparators across types of riding and other sports. But prospective longitudinal observational studies will be rare and unreliable. I’m happy to accept 1:1000 – that’s a visit to the hospital once every 5-6 years for a group of friends or a family riding weekly.

<\Insert anecdote>
Of course I broke my collarbone mountain biking last year after only 18 months of riding. That’s about 1:100 for us. 😳
<Insert anecdote>

TJ,

1 injury in 1000 what? 1000 rides? 1000 miles? 1000 hrs? The suggestion seems to be 1000 rides – but surely the risk increases with distance/time. So someone who rides one 40 mile route a week is more likely to get hurt than someone who rides 10 miles 3x a week?

If you take Glentress and Inners as an example though – then you were suggesting Borders General gets an average of 5-10 riders per week through its doors. I’d guess that some go to ERI too, and others may go to other local minor injuries / A&E after going home so the number could be double that. It attracts a good mixture of mincers and more serious riders of differing abilities. Although “manufactured trails” that have been risk assessed etc so risks should be lower than on wild stuff, that “safe environment” and the good surface/drainage tend to push speeds up so make the consequences a little higher. A quick look at visitor stats suggests 190,000 per annum at GT – (2002 stats) whilst a 2010 article on bike radar suggests 340,000 for GT and inners combined. i.e. about 4000-6500 per week – suggesting the injury rate is more (riskier) than 1:1000 (if your Borders General numbers were true averages rather than “summer” averages) but in the general ball park.

Is that high? Well compare it to skiing at just under 3 injuries per 1000 skier days – its in the same ball park. Ski deaths are 0.68-0.71 deaths per million skier days. Assuming Glentress/Inners had a similar risk to downhill/alpine skiing you would expect roughly one death there in the last decade. http://www.ski-injury.com/intro

On a ski holiday last year 3 of 19 ended in hospital

Wasn’t Switzerland was it?

If you take Glentress and Inners as an example though

But it’s not a representative example. A ride on the South Downs, or example, or even South Wales, isn’t going to be as technically challenging as a lot of the GT and Inners routes.

I know that non of that is stats

Yep! A sample size of 4-5 (you and your mates) is utterly useless when you’re talking about a group of tens of thousands (the number of people who ride off road in the UK).

On a ski holiday last year 3 of 19 ended in hospital

factor in peer pressure on that one i think

years ago did stuff with BMC and we used to get collated data from regional sports councils
surprisingly fishing was one of the highest risk activities – high participation/older people – high risk heart attack, sometimes too much to drink

horse riding well up too – long way down

Mr Agreeable – Member
A ride on the South Downs, or example, or even South Wales, isn’t going to be as technically challenging as a lot of the GT and Inners routes

Yes, but then there’s skill level of rider on technically challenging trails against those on “leisure” trails.
I’d imagine skilled riders have less accidents, but when they do they’re more severe against leisure riders having more accidents of a less severe nature.
That’s of course ruling out the “really unlucky” situations where a “soft” accident has a high injury consequence (such as landing on a broken bottle in a grassy field)

Truth is no-one really knows, maybe somone should set up a survey site and trawl it around the mtb forums, or even maybe-er perhaps the “mtb press” could join forces and put a simple survey form on their websites along the lines of…

What skill level rider do you consider yourself
What is your typical riding type/terrain
How often and for how long do you ususally ride off road
How many accidents have you had and how many required hospital treatment
Never going to be definitive but may be an interetsing exercise……

I agree with comments above that stats are probably skewed by the definition of mountain biking.
People who hybrids on flat graded tracks and country roads will lower the figures.
I think the figures for technical singletrack riding would be way higher than 1:1000

Choppers and ambulances are regularly seen at South Wales trail centres on weekends.
I recall a weekend last year at Cwm Carn where the chopper frequency was so high it could have been considered part of the shuttle service!
Shuttle to top of DH track -> bomb down -> shuttle to Newport hospital.

If you asked magazine readers (probably keener riders than average to start with) to fill out a survey, you’d have a self-selected set of responses, which might not be very representative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

Also worth bearing in mind the general level of hospital admissions across all the population. I’ve been needed hospital treatment twice as a result of biking accidents in about 9 years of serious riding, but no other hospital admissions for other causes.

I recall a weekend last year at Cwm Carn where the chopper frequency was so high it could have been considered part of the shuttle service!

I’ve only ever seen the ambulance there once. But that doesn’t make for such an interesting anecdote.

http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/8902018.Cyclist_died_three_days_after_injury_between_Hackpen_and_Overton/

As nice as it is to see an attempt to base a debate on fact rather than a combination of wiki&dogma, I fail to see the real value here. It is somewhat amusing to see statistics being quoted here to two decimal places as if this gives them a sense of extra scientific legitimacy. But what do they say about statistics…..!?!?! Like some (!) economic stats, this is merely noise.

Isn’t the issue really rather simple? Like most outdoor recreations (trying to use non-emotive words like sports there!), mountain biking is “potentially” dangerous. The nature and extent of the danger depends on a whole host of factors, many/most of which have already been described. So once that is recognised, individuals can make their own assessments of the risk and prepare accordingly. The more they do this the less likely that the potential risks and dangers are realised. A basic tenet of mountaineering leadership or perhaps I should say, simply common sense?

The alternative idea is well illustrated in the first of the three photos above. The first nice “family” ride looks nice and safe….helmets, relatively controlled environment etc, but they are ignoring plenty of potential dangers with ill fitting/ poor choice of helmets/footwear and the folly of riding one handed while controlling (sic) a dog.

THM, I think the point was TJ wanted some ammo for his latest row, which appears to external to the forum, but you are right, this all just conjecture, and has very little meaning for any understanding of the rate of injury in our sport.

we were told by a mechanic in the hub at glentress a few years back the last death they had was caused by an unplugged handlebar going through the riders skull. No idea if it is true or not!

bigjim – don’t know about GT, but that definitely happened at the BMX track in Derby a few years ago (through the chest though, not the skull).

Most mountain rescue sites give stats if you wanted a relative comparison of accidents compared with other sports (sorry TJ, ‘activities’ or whatever you want to call them 😉 ), my local one does:

http://www.edalemrt.co.uk/team_statistics.html

I crashed last night!

Nothing major – a bit of a rolly polly thing attached to the bike! Today I have some brusing and a dead leg! 😥

I ride 2-3 times a week, and have done for about 5 years now. I don’t fall off that often (4-6 times a year at a guess!)

I have only ever needed hospital treatment once! (broken collarbone..)

Hope this helps the stats!!

toys19 – Member

THM, I think the point was TJ wanted some ammo for his latest row, which appears to external to the forum, but you are right, this all just conjecture, and has very little meaning for any understanding of the rate of injury in our sport.

Cynical old hector.

I was genuinely interested in it and thus had a trawl around looking for stats and came up with very little that was meaningful. However its not all just conjecture – there is some research there to discuss that is peer reviewed

I thought it an interesting discussion.

Poly – the 1000 is rides I think.

Hugor – one of the 1 – 1000 figures came from an analysis of xc and endurance races where one would think the risk is higher that leisure riding of most types. another set of stats showing low serious injury rates was from vancouvers north shore

Its not a great set of stats and I shall go looking for more tonight as I have got my athens password back so can get into the more detailed stuff

I have a wealthy client who was taken out by his bank manager when he was out at his Swiss Chalet for a game of golf. The manager was called mid-round to be informed that one of their other wealthy clients who’d opted for a MTB day instead of golf had ridden off the trail following far more experienced riders and had died from the injuries (he fell a long way i believe).

That’s the only death i’ve heard of as an actual result of crashing rather than heart attacks etc.

Regarding clipless pedals being safer, could it be not the pedals themselves, but the style of riding that’s making a difference.
Once you’re in a position where a crash is inevitable, I don’t suppose it makes all that much difference whether you remain attached to the bike or not.
However, clipless pedals are generally worn by experienced XC riders, who are probably less likely to injure themselves crashing than novices or downhillers.

I’d expect the clipless thing is due to the potential of flat pedals with long metal pins to cause lacerations. I’ve given myself at least one shinburger that was bad enough to require stitches; I just toughed it out though. :rawk:

The first nice “family” ride looks nice and safe….helmets, relatively controlled environment etc, but they are ignoring plenty of potential dangers with ill fitting/ poor choice of helmets/footwear and the folly of riding one handed while controlling (sic) a dog.

There’s also some evidence that novice or leisure riders are more litigious than experienced ones, as well as being less self-reliant. The true cost of injuries isn’t just measured in A&E admissions: fighting a court case is potentially much more expensive than patching someone up after a spill.

a friend of mine was killed about 17 years ago going over the bars descending Darwen tower.

I wonder if some accidents are caused by less experienced riders loosing contact with the pedals and that this is reduced by clipping in

I ride flats and very rarley feel my feet moove let alone come off but you know what I mean

But it’s not a representative example. A ride on the South Downs, or example, or even South Wales, isn’t going to be as technically challenging as a lot of the GT and Inners routes.

But then GT is nowhere near as challenging/hazardous as Fort William, the wild stuff in Torridon or Laggan etc. The aim wasn’t to have a debate about what constitutes mountain biking (I had already highlighted that any stats would be misleading as different routes have different risk levels), but rather to take a popular example where there would appear to be a large volume of users and sufficient incidents some rough estimates might be possible and compare it to ‘resort’ skiing which is in many ways a similar activity to the GT experience.

It is somewhat amusing to see statistics being quoted here to two decimal places as if this gives them a sense of extra scientific legitimacy.

Don’t think there was any intention to give the data extra legitiamacy. I quoted the source. The point was there is a significant body of data on skiing risk. I quoted those figures from the source I cited. I was simply trying to provide a benchmark for comparison – I don’t have time to analyse the data and assess how significant the errors are; but hey some actual quantitative data from a reasonably credible source might be useful. If TJ is writing a journal article I’m sure he’ll be able to provide adequate scrutiny on the data he cites though… …but as STW is not a peer reviewed journal I think some reference data must be better than “well my mates and I fall off once a year” type stuff!

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

What a load of cobblers.
There was 1 death on WBP in 2002. severe head trauma on Crabapple hits.
No one in (modern/tourist) Whister has EVER died from a bear conflict!

The incidence of death and serious injury in Whistler with Skiing is far higher that mountain biking. I believe 3 this year from skiing, at least 2 from a combination of alcohol, sub zero temperatures and sleeping in the snow). And 2 high profile skiers from Canada have died in world competitions this winter.

Although the admissions from the bike park to the med center in summer is proportionaly higher with broken bones, road rash etc etc

If you want to see stats, you need to work with a bike park facility with their own medical response unit to see what the incident rates and severities are.
Trouble is that they probably wont ever release that info..

I can tell you though, that if you remove 1st morning and A-line, your chance of injury on WBP is HEAVILY reduced!

As a side note. I saw a Mens Health (USA) article about head trauma and Cycling is teh #1 sport for emergency clinic head trauma admissions. The NHL is currently trying to crack down on high/head hits in Ice Hockey after some 3 death/suicides of pro hockey players whose deaths have been attributed to concussion. Hockey is only #14 in that list.

A growing body of research on both hockey players and boxers indicates clearly that blows to the head cause irreversible damage, a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

So, we’ll probably see some high profile skateboarding/dirt jumping deaths in teh years to come from all those kiddies repeatedly knocking themselves out!

Breaking news. A 40yr old man died yesterday riding on Cypress mountain in West Van.

Always sad to hear

News

No one in (modern/tourist) Whister has EVER died from a bear conflict!

DAMMIT. That was a cool stat and you had to expose/ruin it. 😡

The incidence of death and serious injury in Whistler with Skiing is far higher that mountain biking.

Be careful with stats on that one – there are probably more skiers than bikers by at least one order of magnitude.

Be careful with stats on that one – there are probably more skiers than bikers by at least one order of magnitude.

Very good point.

There a whole forum on this subject on MTBR.

http://forums.mtbr.com/rider-down-injuries-recovery/

I’ve not searched it but there’s possibly some pointers there….