Stuffstuff1

Just to be clear. Its her that's beating me.

tjspiel

Hundreds of thousands commute by bike in Ohio? Really?

And death is the only possible bad outcome from choosing to commute by bike?

Again, this doesn't address individual situations. I happen to think my route is very safe but I've ridden some in that past that were significantly more risky. The OP's wife is probably more familiar with the route he is taking than any of us are. And she's also more familiar with him. Does he like to live on the edge a little?

My honest opinion is this. I'd give myself a better than 60% chance that I'll never be seriously hurt on my commute assuming I ride basically the same route for the rest of my career. I do work late at night sometimes and cyclists have been mugged and beat up on one of ways I often take home. Statistically it's very unlikely on a given night that that would happen to me but over a 20 year period?

If I were driving to work instead I'd give myself a better than 80% chance that I'd never be seriously injured because the speed limit never exceeds 35. My chances of getting mugged also go down dramatically.

I imagine that a lot of auto accidents that result in death occur when high speeds are involved, at night, and one of the drivers is impaired. In other words, not in cities during commute times where you are going to find a lot of bike commuters.

So to some up, in my circumstances the additional risks I take by choosing to bike are worth it to me for the benefits I get. It's sort of like downhill skiing. There are risks but it's also a lot of fun. And those numbers that were posted are basically meaningless without a lot of other information.

SlimRider

Damn! Well that's a switch! Is she a very formidable and intimidating woman?

PatrickGSR94

Some people like it that way

MK313

To be fair, I did say I'd guess there are 10's of thousands of bike commuters, maybe hundreds of thousands. Last time I chekced, there were a little over 11 million people in the state. Assuming that half are of working age & have jobs, that's 5.5 million bike commuters. 1% riding bikes would be 55,000, 2% would be 110,000% if my math is right. It seems plausible to me.


No one said that death is the only outcome, but this (the numbers posted) appears to be a hard fact (assuming it is correct). You can definitely draw some conclusions from the number (if you choose to do such a thing. I'm pretty unworried about getting seriously injured/hurt while bike commuting, so I dont' research this stuff). One of those conclusions is that you are pretty unlikley to die while riding a bike in any given year. I have no idea how the rate compares to driving a car to work, but the risk is so miniscule that I wouldn't worry about it at all (being killed). Since the wife was very worried that the OP would die, this is an interesting & non-irrelevant piece of data.



i'm not sure why you keep saying that. The numbers are pretty revealing. They don't address the relative safety of biking versus driving, but they do show that VERY few people die each year from riding their bikes to work. I think it's extremely relevant when talking to someone who is worried that you will die while riding your bike to work. If hundreds of thousands of people in the US (maybe even millions-300+ Million Americans, same math as above)
ride their bikes to work & 600 die in a given year, it seems pretty unlikely that one will die during any given year, or even during a lifetime of commuting.

tjspiel

A link to some bike commuting stats: https://public.sheet.zoho.com/public...s-all-places-1

Only one major city in Ohio (Dayton) has a bike commuting population over 1%. Akron is .1%

Most bike commuters are in major cities. The percentage in suburban and rural areas is much smaller.

630 cyclists died in 2009 (down by 12% from 2008), but 51,000 were injured.

No one I knew personally has died from commuting by bike. I know a few that have been seriously injured including one who's now sporting 4 titanium screws in his pelvis. Stats that only include fatalities don't address all the safety concerns posed by riding.

And the reason I keep saying that the stats posted don't mean anything is that they're an aggregate. The conditions under which I commute and where I commute has a significant impact on how safe it is.

tjspiel

Just some additional stats. In 2010 there were approximately 731,000 bike commuters.

In 2009, 51,000 cyclists were injured (severely enough to be reported).

That's about 7.5% of the total number of commuters. It's not an insignificant amount but it can be terribly misleading. For example, I have no idea what percentage of those cyclists were injured in recreational vs utilitarian trips. I'm guessing a fair amount of injuries occur in races.

That's why you need to be careful when looking at stats like this. It's very easy to twist them to support a variety of viewpoints.

fietsbob

[joke]
If she has an Affair while you are at work , it will take her mind off
worrying about you.
[/joke]

bkjames00

"Honey, I'm off to work.... Pablo your 'personal trainer' will be in shortly!"

socialtri

Hi bkjames00, I think that you've already had lots of replies but I am a (female) cyclist both for sport and for commuting and I also have done some worrying myself in the past when family members have been out riding simply because it's out of my control. Of course there are risks, but there are also risks from driving a car, walking down the street. Give her some time and I think she will get used to it. The benefits of cycling to your physical and mental health are important and here's another article which shows that long term the benefits do outweigh the risks https://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea...igh-the-risks/

bkjames00

Thanks!

MK313

thanks for the link. It does look like bike commuters in Ohio are somewhere in the low 10's of thousands range overal.

Well then I guess we'll just agree to disagree on this one. To my mind, there is a huge difference between 'not meaning anything' and not showing the complete picture. I am able to extract some very useful data from the fact that 600 some bike commuters died during a year in the US. Even though the data is an aggregate (as it would have to be with numbers that small-the stat that zero riders taking your exact commute died during 2009 would carry even less relevance than the data supplied), it does give you some context for how small the problem of bike commuting deaths really is.

Accidents are another point & you have supplied some good data on those, but I wasn't talking about injuries at all. You are right that the injury data you provided can be manipulated to support a variety of viewpoints, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how saying that 613 (or 630 or whatver it was) bike commuters died in 2009 can be maniuplated very much, the numbers are just too small to do much with.

supernovae

I'm pretty sure a large segment of the accidents if you broke out by demographics scale HIGHLY in favor of adult commuting vs child commuting, IE, kids riding to school on their bike are prone to many many many more accidents then an adult who has experience with motorvehicles, traffic and a few years under their belt of understanding how crazy people are on the roads.

and like you said, racing accidents, mountain biking, off roading.. blah blah.. maybe instead of bickering about this stuff we should start a real research group

one_beatnik

socialtri has probably given you the best answer yet. Give her time. It's obvious you two love each other and are both concerned about the other's opinions and feelings. She'll come around as you continue to "survive." She'll start noticing your calves and butt! She'll start noticing the improvement in your mood and outlook on life in general. You do need to be sensitive to her and to the hidden messages she's giving. If the commuting is taking away from time with the kids that could be an issue. That argument from the 70's about 'quality' time vs actual time is bull. It IS time spent, not just the quality. That was the biggest issue my wife had with my cycling is how much it took away from doing things with the kids. My bad for the most part. Lack of total communication on hers since she really didn't tell me this until the kids were out of the house and on their own.