According to

House of Commons Transport Committee Cycle Safety

Day to day it doesn’t feel too safe but this para helps put things in perspective. A useful one to give to friends and family who either worry about you, or who would like to ride but feel too scared.

50,000 die from over-eating and sitting around!

The actual risk of cycling is tiny. There is one cyclist death per 33 million
kilometres of cycling, while being sedentary presents a much greater risk.
Over 50,000 people die in the UK each year due to coronary heart disease
related to insufficient physical activity, compared to around 100 cyclists
killed on the road.

Don’t let people on here see that. They know that all drivers are homicidal maniacs out to get them.

The chances of being killed or badly injured while cycling are very small. At some point I will die. The chance of tbe two being connected are fairly remote. I will just continue to ride as prudently as circumstances allow.

Sounds nice, but is, of course, an utterly meaningless comparison.

While I’m obviously interested in how many older, overweight people who aren’t me are dying from CHD, I don’t see how that is relevant to my chances of getting squashed by a tipper truck.

If they want to draw on the health benefit equation, why not compare it with death rates per hour of other, equivalent physical activity, such as running, playing squash, swimming? Then we could see which is the optimal way of not dying from heart disease or stroke.

He’s right, cycling really isn’t that dangerous.

Can someone come for a ride with me and remind me of this next time some bus or lorry driver performs a short overtake on me? From experience, it won’t take more than a few hours.

Don’t let people on here see that. They know that all drivers are homicidal maniacs out to get them.

The chances of being killed or badly injured while cycling are very small. At some point I will die. The chance of tbe two being connected are fairly remote. I will just continue to ride as prudently as circumstances allow.

A couple of weeks ago MCTD you called me hysterical for pushing the ‘drivers are the biggest danger and some are deliberately attacking cyclists’ line. I stand by that and if you follow the link to page 11 you’ll find this quote:

14. The Road Danger Reduction Forum stated that the main danger to cyclists was the behaviour of drivers, whether they were behind the wheel of a lorry, car or bus. For this reason, the most effective way of increasing cyclist safety was viewed as changing driver behaviour. The not-for-profit research company, Road Safety Analysis, endorsed this view, concluding from an analysis of DfT statistics that most crashes resulted from human error.

I’m glad for you that your experience doesn’t follow this, but I think you’re in a minority at the moment on this front…

People are getting confused between two different things

1) compared to the danger of inactivity cycling is extremely safe

2) cycling is a lot more dangerous than it should be, due to the actions of some drivers

As a population it’s more important to tackle the first issue (ie health problems due to inactivity) than the second. However one way to tackle that is to encourage more people to cycle, which means you have to tackle the second one.

I accept that drivers are probably the biggest danger to cyclists. But cyclists are probably the second biggest danger to themselves.

‘drivers are the biggest danger and some are deliberately attacking cyclists’

[my emphasis]

Show me any evidence from any study to back up your apparent assertion that drivers are deliberately attacking cyclists on some sort of conscious, regular, consistent and pre-planned basis.

I think you’ll also find that while cycling the danger mostly comes from the actions of others, which is why we are so grumpy about it.

Sitting around eating pies you’re not at risk of dying because somebody nearby is also eating a pie while on the phone/tired/drunk/eating pies without due care and attention.

What are the other candidates, and how far behind is second place?

Actually I note you say “probably”, so you’re not even sure that cyclists aren’t more dangerous to themselves than drivers? Want some stats?

When looking at probabilities drivers always will be the biggest danger as we share a road with them and are in close proximity.

Somewhere on that list there would be a probability of being side swiped by a Kangaroo… Statistics can be made to show a lot of things but without context they mean nothing.

Cool, I guess no change whatsoever is required when it comes to infrastructure or drivers’ attitude then.

50,000 die from over-eating and sitting around!

I admire the heroic sacrifice these 50,000 are making to preserve public services and pension for me when I retire in 40+ years.

Whilst comparing the health benefits or dangers of ‘cycling’ to eating pies or playing squash can produce some quotable stats it doesn’t really highlight the core issue. It almost hints that the Committee finds it acceptable for a small number of cyclists to die on the roads (under the wheels of others) as preferable to more far deaths from (wholly self inflicted) sedentary lifestyles. Personally, I’d rather be in charge of my own destiny.

Better to compare the KSI stats between cycling at trail centres, on NCR / Sustrans etc segregated routes and at velodromes, with road cycling (racing, recreation and utility / commuting) to truly illustrate the far greater risk presented to cyclists sharing the roads with motor vehicles.

Show me any evidence from any study to back up your apparent assertion that drivers are deliberately attacking cyclists on some sort of conscious, regular, consistent and pre-planned basis.

Who needs a study? There have been 2 cars going around our local area purposely attacking cyclists and more often than not they have been put in hospital from being pushed off their bike at speed.

The attacks were both consious, regular and certainly pre-planned

50,000 people die a couple of years earlier than they would of done if they cycled.

100 people die decades before they would have done if they’d driven a car.

Sticking a mountainbike in the back of your car is the best bet then.

As others say, statistics are meaningless without context. For example, when a charitable body like Sustrans is seeking funding an emphasis will be put on the usage of their trails. Objectors will then use these figures to object to new trails which will be overun by thousands of cyclists. They won’t be of course, but Sustrans own statistics can be used against them to suggest they will.

I read somewhere that if you add up all the deaths in GB attributed statistically to one cause or another, about 4 1/2 times more people die than actually do.

Another consideration is people’s perception of risk. One person’s near-death-close-miss is another person’s that-was-a-bit-close is another person’s what’s-the-problem.
And I suspect that statistically people don’t give a damn about statistics when it is their loved one that is killed; a statistic of 1 is 1 too many 😥