Pat

Chip, I have to agree with you there from my own experience when I commuted. Your experience also tallys with Forester's findings. Forester found that the group of cyclists with the lowest injury rates were commuters who paradoxically rode on the busiest roads at the times of peak traffic. In facts, the injury rates among commuters was so low that Forester was unable to really get an accurate measurment of it because the number of commuters he found was relatively small.

I looked up the statistics on cycling fatalities a few years back. About 800 cyclists are killed per year. But 50% of those are killed at night and I just bet you the vast majority of night time cyclists who were killed were not using lights. Unfortunately, the statistics kept do not take into account the kind of cyclist involved. I suspect that most of the fatalities are people on bicycles who do weird things like ride against traffic and jay walk on bicycles.

Cycling per hour has half of the fatality risk of driving an automobile. I know that sounds incredibly low. But think about it. What kills motorists? Well DUI is the big one. I rather doubt that very many people ride bikes when DUI. Another big killer of motorists is falling asleep at the wheel. Cyclists generally do not ride when dangerously fatigued. Speeding also gets motorists. It is hard for cyclists to get up to dangerous speeds even where the speed limit is 25 mph. Finally, distractions get motorists, things like talking on cell phones, eating, drinking, fooling around with the radio, reading the paper and putting on make up and whatever other fool things motorists do when they should be watching the road. Cyclists who don't pay attention to what they are doing crash and that is a fast reminder to pay attention. I suppose cyclists who ignore this one enough get enough road rash and pain to get out of the sport altogether. The thing is that it seems reasonable that cycling is a mode of transportation that is far less conducive of dangerous behaviors then driving a motorized vehicle. Also if you have a close call on a bicycle, you really, really notice it. It scares the #$%! out of you. Motorists can shrug off close calls all too easily.

It seems to me that it is quite likely that the majority of miles ridden per week by cyclists are ridden during Saturday and Sunday mornings by club cyclists out on their group rides. Now if all cyclists have the same accident rate, one would expect a huge peak of cycling fatalities for weekend mornings. When I examined that fatalities (they have them by day of the week and time of the day), weekend mornings were actually lower than week mornings which reveals that club cyclists have vanishingly low fatality rates on their rides. In short, as Chip says, cycling is not dangerous unless you are a dangerous cyclist.