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10-04-09, 07:04 AM
I was thinking about how it would be quite straightforward for LAB to run a decently controlled safety study to find out how safe cycling really is. The idea is to have LAB members record the number of miles ridden, and the number of crashes and resultant injuries/fatalities. First, send out an invitation to its members asking them to participate, say beginning January 1 as the start date of the study. When the December following the January (Dec 2010 if they start Jan 2010) ends, send a follow-up to the participants to gather the following.
1. What sort of roads they mainly rode on (lanes, speeds, presence/absence of bike infrastructure, etc.),
2. The distance ridden, and whether it was an estimate or something actually measured with a cyclocomputer,
3. The percentage of riding done in the daytime, versus at night,
4. The safety equipment used - lights at night/daytime, vests, flags, and so forth,
and probably other questions I did not think of
Such a study would of course be subject to several skewing effects, the main one would be the self-selection of participants, and possible selective reporting. The fact that participants would be LAB members would mean that the crash rates would be those of skilled riders. However, the study would actually yield hard data on the crash rates as a function of distance, which is notoriously difficult to study.
Something similar could be replicated at the state level, or even club level (however the number of participants at a local club would probably be too small to draw any firm conclusions).
1. What sort of roads they mainly rode on (lanes, speeds, presence/absence of bike infrastructure, etc.),
2. The distance ridden, and whether it was an estimate or something actually measured with a cyclocomputer,
3. The percentage of riding done in the daytime, versus at night,
4. The safety equipment used - lights at night/daytime, vests, flags, and so forth,
and probably other questions I did not think of
Such a study would of course be subject to several skewing effects, the main one would be the self-selection of participants, and possible selective reporting. The fact that participants would be LAB members would mean that the crash rates would be those of skilled riders. However, the study would actually yield hard data on the crash rates as a function of distance, which is notoriously difficult to study.
Something similar could be replicated at the state level, or even club level (however the number of participants at a local club would probably be too small to draw any firm conclusions).