Originally Posted by
Photosmith
My parents were always very anti-bicycle when I was growing up and my dad would quote stats on how a quarter of all traffic fatalities were due to car versus ped/bike collisions and whatever.
?!?!?!
Yeah I think your dad may want to recheck his stats. There are approximately 40,000 deaths involving motorized vehicles each year and a mere 900 involving bicycles. Even if every single one of the bicycle deaths also involved a car, that would only be 2.25%. I think the statistic you father may have been thinking of is that around 25% of all bicycle fatalities occur on road. The other 75% occur off road.
I agree with noisebeam, eventually those high volume arterials won't look so bad, but it's a good idea to work up to that sort of thing. It takes time to build confidence and handling skills.