Ciclista irbano: batismo de fogo

The Fatality Rates Per Million Population

Looking at survivability tells us nothing about how likely a fatality is. In 1991 (published in 1994), the Consumer Products Safety Commission made the most thorough survey of cycling ever undertaken in this country. Using randomly chosen phone numbers, the survey established accurate figures for the number of phone-owning bicycle users in the US. (This survey did exclude many cyclists who do not own telephones -- the Amish, simple lifers, and many college students.) Unfortunately, to determine the amount of usage, only one bike rider per family was interviewed, and this tended to be the one nearest to the phone, who would more likely be the youngest, and the question was about how much time the person spent riding a bicycle. The results by hours of use are therefore unusable, as children spend more time playing with their bikes than riding on them, and those who bicycled a few hundred miles a year reported more time than those who bicycle thousands of miles a year. In fact, there is a steady decline from 317 hours a year for bike riders under ten to 105 hours for bike riders over fifty. Some other surveys show that people ride more as they get older (although there are fewer of them). However, the population figures from the CPSC study are sound. The figures below include all bicycle-related fatalities, not just those to the riders or those involving motor vehicles. Likewise, the motor vehicle figures include all motor vehicle-related deaths, not just those to the driver and passengers. I have included the entire US population for figuring the motor vehicle fatality rate, as very few people are not at some risk.