Originally Posted by
mihlbach
Auto accidents are a leading cause of death and injury in children, because virtually every child rides in a car every day. People don't generally ride bikes with kids in tow down car-jammed shoulderless 4 lane roads filled with cell phone yapping shoppers turning on and off the road every few hundred feet...if everyone did that, lots of kids would be getting killed/injured on bikes too. I don't need to a lot of "objective evidence" to tell me that the car is much safer. We bike when and where its safe to bike, which is almost everywhere, but there are situations where bikes don't really belong given the present traffic situation.
Interesting comments.
I am always a little suspicious of "objective" evidence. I would have thought it would be much safer for me to buy a large SUV than, say, a Volkswagen Jetta. To my surprise, I read a study that points out that the Jetta is a very safe vehicle, much safer than any large SUV. One point I had failed to consider in my subjective analysis is that the Jetta is a very maneuverable vehicle and is apparently better at avoiding accidents.
There is a more important issue lurking behind all this however. Your kids might be safer buckled into a large SUV (assuming we don't any into any Bradley tanks on the freeway.) However other kids may be killed -- pedestrians, cyclists, people in smaller cars, and so on.
We often seemed to consider the safety of our families without considering the safety of other families. I suspect this is what lead to the original move to SUVs. (ie, the illusion that if I get a car bigger than the others, I will be safe... who cares what it will do to other, smaller vehicles and children in them.)