Originally Posted by
njkayaker
That statistic has nothing to do with the question I asked.
Anyway, there are many, many more people-miles for cars than there is for bicycles. The Forty thousand Americans die in car crashes every year doesn't prove that cars are more dangerous.
You'd have to have the figure of fatalities per miles traveled to do that.
How many of those fatalities are due to going over the speed limit (but not excessively)? What does your crystal ball say?
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It's quite possible that the number of fatalities would not change significantly if "moderate speeders" kept to the speed limit (again, I'm not talking about excessive speeding). (Of course, "excessive" is ambiguous.)
There are SO many factors involved that you couldn't accurately determine which is safer with statistics. You don't have information on what caused the crash, what the conditions were like, nor do you have information on demographics. Are you counting fatalities as just those who die in a car or on a bicycle? Are you counting fatalities on the roadway only, because some cyclist ride on trails and can quite easily fall down ditches and die. What are the demographics... are you going by city, state, nation, the world? How does vehicular manslaughter figure into your fatalities? Why don't we look at walking? If you look at the amount of fatalities divided by the number of miles traveled, I would expect to see walking be incredibly dangerous in some places...
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/trn...-percent-total
as you add vehicles (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians) to the roadway, the chances for an accident goes up. The faster people are going, regardless of what vehicle they use, the higher the risk of an accident: The faster you travel, the more distance you need to stop, the less time you have to react, and the more force you're traveling with (which, while it may not necessarily raise the amount of accidents per se, it does increase the likelihood of a fatality). Throw distractions (like cell phones, billboards, flashy signs), and emotion/frustration, and it gets even worse. Remember: STATISTICS ARE MISLEADING... there's even a book out there called:
"How to Lie With Statisitics" By Darrell Huff