Originally Posted by closetbiker
But I think your dentist (a doctor no less) is missing the obvious. What about the medical benefits of riding? What about the lack of hurting others in the event of a crash? How can he miss the obvious medical benefit from riding? What kind of public health advocate is he?
First off, a dentist is not a medical doctor. Different schools, different focal points, different points of view.
Second; there are different ways to view risk. There is risk per trip. There is risk per mile. There is risk in time. The last time I got hurt (not badly, but a bruise nonetheless) on a bike was two weeks ago. The time before that was a year previous. The last time I got hurt in a car accident was 10 years ago, and many, many thousands of miles traveled since, and that hurt wasn't even a bruise. When viewing accident data per mile or per time, cycling is far riskier than driving. Depending on who's statistics you use, risk per trip might be a tossup.
The flaw with your data is sample size. A single incident can skew your data significantly. Think of it; what if it were a bad year and 4 extra cyclists got the big bicycle in the sky. Your contribution from cyclists to the total number of deaths would nearly double; but it was only the result of 4 cyclists.
There is also the point about using deaths to determine risk. Injuries are on a sliding scale. A broken bone might put an independent dental practice completely out of business for several weeks or months. Even a broken finger or skinned up palm might put work on hold for a dentist, who requires the dexterity of his fingers and hands for his work. A hemotoma, or even a bad bruse to some part of the body might jeopardize the dentist's livelyhood.
The point is, that hyperbole aside, there are legitimate reasons to not commute by bicycle. Risk is one of them. The expression "I would get killed out there" is not necessarily a worry specifically about death. It can also encompass risk as a whole; risk of injury as well as risk of death. We've got to be honest with each other. Most of us who drive and bike equal time get hurt on our bike far more than we get hurt in a car (with the exception of HH, who apparently hasn't hit the ground for 30 years, since he was 16). Long term benefits have to be coupled with the risk of short term disbenefits in making a decision. Myself, I want the long term benefits, and I can deal with the short term risks. For others, the equation might work out differently.