Transportational Fatality Probabilities

[swbluto]

So here I'm going to talk about fatality probabilities while riding a bike, driving, motorcycling, etc.

I was going to make mention of them in another thread, but I realized it would have been situationally inappropriate and of course doing so would prove my aspie status, lol. Can't have that, lol. (Not that this thread doesn't do that enough, lol. It is during those kinds of situations that I typically get immediately identified as l'etranger, as there are certain emotional/cognitive/social/behavioral norms that people are expected to follow.)

Car fatality probabilities - one death out of every 20 million passenger miles.

Bicycling fatality probabilities - one death out of 10 million passenger miles.

Motorcycle fatality probabilities - one death out of 1.5 million passenger miles.

Okay, that's good to know... But what's your chance of dying from each one? Considering the fact that the average car drives 12,000 miles per year while the average cyclist bicycles less than 500, it's obvious that people are far more likely to die of car crashes than bicycle accidents. And this seems to be the case - we hear of car accident deaths pretty much all the time. And I've personally seen one myself...

To do that, we'll do a simple calculation to calculate lifetime odds.

The average driver drives for 45 years or so and drives 12,000 miles per year, so that's like 540,000 miles over one's lifespan. That implies that the average person has a lifetime probability of dying from a car accident of 2.5-3%. That's why they seem to be so common!

If you ride a motorcycle for 10 years at 10,000 miles a year, the probability of dying is about 7% and the probability of being disabled is four times that, or about 28%.

The form of transportation with the lowest chance of dying is the bus system, about 10x less risky than riding a car. Though I'm not entirely sure about Greyhound buses...

Just something to think about... The intrinsic lethal risk in a society addicted to speed and operating heavy machinery.

(Btw, accident rates seems to have a squared relationship with traffic density. That is, if you double the amount of cars on a road, the accident rate seems to go up 4 times. That implies that the lifetime probability of death in congested areas and cities might be higher than my calculations suggest.)

 

[dnmun]

you did not include the statistics on pedestrians run over on the sidewalk or run over by busses while people were crossing the street in crosswalks. plus the number of cyclists run over by busses.

if they can get the price of gas up to $12-15/gallon then the statistics should improve dramatically. we have developed environmental restrictions to prevent the air from beoing dangerous to our health at great costs but no effort has been placed on eliminating the cars which create a larger health and mortality risk imo.

i see no need to eliminate the cars altogether but they could do more to prosecute people for murdering cyclists while texting or on the mobile phone and that message would be useful for society at large. putting people in jail for dui would help a lot too.

 

[swbluto]

you did not include the statistics on pedestrians run over on the sidewalk or run over by busses while people were crossing the street in crosswalks. plus the number of cyclists run over by busses.

They don't have too many statistics on buses running over cyclists, lol.

The pedestrian hourly fatality rate is similar to the hourly rate of bicycle Fatalities so, per mile, the pedestrian fatality rate is about five times higher. Not many people walk long distances, so it's not a fairly high risk for the average person, lifetime wise. Dying from a car accident is, by far, the most likely way to die.

Still, I know what you mean. I'm like extra cautious at crosswalks noticing how the majority of pedestrian deaths happen there.

if they can get the price of gas up to $12-15/gallon then the statistics should improve dramatically.

For sure - When gas reached $4/gallon back in 2008, total miles driven declined 3% while fatalities declined 10%. If that happened right now, many people would bus it, which is the safest way to travel. However, the decline in a society marked by those kind of gas prices might end up increasing the fatality rates - the more impoverished a nation is, the more common murder is.

 

[neptronix]

This data is not telling you the truth, unfortunately.

first, commuter stats:
http://www.city-data.com/

The reality of bicycles is actually very very ugly. And quite bad for motorcyclists too.
About 1% of america commutes by bicycle on average. According to the NHTSA, 677 people died on bicycles.

http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/faqs/answer.cfm?id=40

32,367 died in cars on the same year. Now consider that across all states, the average for people commuting by car is ~80%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

If we multiplied the bicycle death statistics by 80, we'd have 53,160 deaths a year. This is not accurate though since if 80% of people rode bikes, there would surely be a lot of deaths since colliding with a car would be a rarity

OK, let's talk about injuries then.

In 2011, we have 38,000 injuries reported for bicyclists - however this statistic is likely underreported quite a bit.
In 2010, we have about 1,750,000 injuries per year for cars.

Not accurate again, but if we take those bicycle injuries and multiply them by 80, we get 3,040,000 bike injuries per year.

I bet it would be a lot safer for bicycles if there were more of 'em, like in Denmark and many Scandanavian countries.

 

[dnmun]

i bet there would be fewer murders of bicyclist by auto drivers if they went to jail for it. here they don't do anything to the people who murder bicyclists with their cars.

 

[swbluto]

i bet there would be fewer murders of bicyclist by auto drivers if they went to jail for it. here they don't do anything to the people who murder bicyclists with their cars.

Well, yeah, it's the bicyclists fault they were bicycling around in the first place. Why should drivers get punished?

 

[John in CR]

The overwhelming majority get killed by someone doing something stupid, and those motorcycle statistics are heavily skewed by the rider doing something stupid. I pay pretty good attention for idiots behind the wheel pretty well while I drive, but being so exposed it's 10X as high on my bikes. Plus I like being a smaller target with so much less space required to fit, so I really like my odds. I just can't do anything stupid myself. Regardless of the legal fault I'd consider any crash to be my own fault, and I ride accordingly. This makes me feel just as safe riding on dry streets where my traction and brakes are fully effective as I am walking around the house with all those smooth floors and sharp corners.

Stats are great, but they become more useful as you apply and adjust them to make them fit your circumstances better. eg Kids are pretty high in serious injury and fatality rates on bikes, and about half of adult cycling fatalities are after dark, so simply sticking to daytime riding puts a bike on par with a car right off the bat.

 

[Sancho's Horse]

SWBluto - if you were thinking about starting this discussion in the thread about my friend's death, I would have been totally cool with that. I respect that you didn't...the consideration...but his death was one of those unfortunate things that sometimes happen to people enjoying life on their terms. His death, however, is also unavoidably going to be associated with the risk versus rewards debate. The rewards in his life though were many, and most were of the hard won variety.

Biking on some really good trails is amazing. My friend lived about a mile from some pretty cool trails at the reservoir. I lived a mile from these trails in the other direction. There is this one section where you go down the steapest hill and make a tight turn back up, with water just at the edge of the turn. Utterly addictive, pretty difficult and a screw-up meant you and your bike took a bath. Not bad living.

So, for $125, I could have a Wal-mart bike, and an exhilarating ride. Clearly I am more vulnerable. Whether this skews stats, I have no idea. On a bike in general, though, you are more vulnerable. Cars and especially trucks, they just have the edge. How do we improve safety is a good question. Lots of good answers. Many depend on the riders decisions. Unfortunately others...bikes are not high margin, high tax items. There may be a bit of wiggle room with ebike costs, but the only real way to increase margins and have meaningful changes is through numbers. It is the real catch-22 of the whole debate/movement. For most of us, meaningful improvements in this type of safety are a thing of the future.

Why not have something wired up to emit protective foam squid squirt style...triggered as the easily traced neural and autonomic centers are lit up in "oh, s###" events. Unfortunately, it is about as likely to happen, and on the same sort of time scale as many real world safety measures it seems. Sorry, for feeling so cynical.