Risk of dying by sport
 

Statistics are very tricky. Basically, they try to predict the future and as that great American, Yogi Berra pointed out, "Making predictions is tough - especially about the future". Your Chances Of Dying Ranked By Sport and Activity | Teton Gravity Research

I'm more worried about:

- Death by Couch
- Death by TV Remote
- Death by Boredom

The worst death I can imagine is the failure to live while you have the chance.

Statistics is more about summarizing the past. Although, from that one can extrapolate trends.

It is easy enough to count the number of deaths, or injuries requiring medical attention.

It is somewhat more difficult to estimate the number of participants in an activity, or to count minor injuries.

Also, say a person dies of lung cancer. Whether or not they smoked, it is difficult to ascertain whether the cancer was caused by smoking, or just caused by some random event.

Cycling can be very dangerous, but admit it, that can be half the fun as well. However, I don't
enjoy danger quite as much as I once did. Getting run over kinda puts a damper on it, especially
the second time. Still, I persist; it is my greatest pleasure in life, and, in spite of many grave wounds,
I will ride as long as I'm able. Keep your head on a swivel & stay focused.

It's odd that cycling and being a pedestrian (jogging) are under sports, not transportation. This is particularly weird since it appears that a great number of the deaths of cyclists involve transportational cyclists (not too many century riders are rolling around town between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM when a great many of the cycling deaths occur).

I generally ignore these sort of things anyway. It looks to me that if I don't ride drunk/ninja/salmon my odds are so good as to round off as negligible.

316,000,000 Americans. 32,000 car deaths.

About 1 in 10,000 chance of dying in a car crash in a single year. Bicycling, and most of those sports, looks down right safe in comparison.

This.

May I point out that, according to these figures, dancing is more dangerous than biking.

maybe these irresponsible kids should be required to wear helmets...

Lets' see, I have three potentially fatal (physical)'health issues'(two of them since birth; one of them is extremely common, but widely unknown). All three have no cure. I participate in two sports(bowling, bicycling). One is a very sedate sport. Could it kill me? Yes, If someone drops a 16pd. bowling ball on my head. One is a very aerobic sport. Could it kill me? Yes, Either by my own doing(not keeping control of my bike), or that of someone else not controlling their vehicle.

Do I stew over the possibility, no.

Watch '1001 Ways To Die', on the Spike cable channel.

My experience is the danger mostly lies in either a cyclist or motorist needing to be a better/safer cyclist or motorist.My one crash in 20+ years of transportation and recreational cycling was the result of mechanical failure. I don't find unnecessary risk taking as 'fun', but a careful cyclist is usually not engaging in a high risk endevour.

So simply being "In Nepal" is the second most dangerous "sport" (after Grand Prix Racing), with the chance of dying being 1 in 167.

The risk is always there. Ya never when some gal running late for work & putting on
makeup is gonna enter your space at 50 in a 30 zone. I don't take risks in traffic.
There's already plenty to go around. I still enjoy a bit of adrenaline downhill & in the
curves. Was I time I'd ski at 80 mph before a driver put steel rods in my leg. I don't
ski anymore,(who can afford it?), but I still hit a pretty good cadence for a fat 67 yr. old.
I just don't push the edge as hard.

"What doesn't kill you only forestalls the inevitable."

Statistics don't predict the future, they present actual data of past incidences and factor in probability. Probability does not count on Festivus Miracles or the Spanish Inquisition...or dumb luck.

Things with more incidences have more probability, or another example would involve the potential damage that could happen if conditions were met.

Head injuries vs. torso or lower extremity injuries...the effects of blunt force...internal or external...speed, force and what you impact...

I always wondered who actually read those morbid and misleading 'death by activity' articles.
I just assumed it was the same little old ladies that read the daily obituaries with great interest every morning.

Uhh... Ohhh.... Bowling deaths are on the rise, or at least they were in the first half of 2006.

Bowling Deaths Double in 2006 |Raised By Turtles

And, there are more bowling injuries than Rugby.
Sports Injuries | III

You should take care when participating in such a dangerous sport.

The bowling story doesn't indicate whether the deaths occurred during 10-pin, duckpin, or candlepin bowling.

Shoot, I was a SCUBA instructor for years and years... if that didn't kill me, I guess cycling is a "walk in the park."

Interesting though, how close in odds, skydiving and cycling are. I would have thought skydiving vastly more dangerous... I would think each and every "accident" was fatal. (except for the rare "near death")

Especially if you are a dwarf.

The stats don't even measure the real cause of death in some cases. In America at least... deaths can be (and are) counted multiple times. A drunk, dying of heart failure, during a automobile accident, that occurs during a snow storm.... can actually be counted as having 4 different causes of death. As well as the death being counted 4 times.

If you separate children's bicycle deaths from adults. About half of the "adult" fatal bicycle deaths also are related to alcohol. Although I should point out that not ALL the alcohol was consumed by the cyclists. Once you remove the children's stat, and the drinking stat, cycling (for sober adults) gets amazingly safe.

Unfortunately... we don't have stats that might cast some light on the dangers of cycling to the local pub.

Excellent post

Especially when you consider our chance of dying is 100%

The first report takes into account numbers of participants, hopefully, although it may be hard to know how accurate it is.

I have no doubt there are quite a few non-fatal accidents with skydiving. Broken legs, getting stuck in trees, etc. Deploying chutes is checked and double checked, and redundant chutes are normally carried.

Base jumping is somewhat more dangerous because there is a lot less time to recover from failures.

The report I found, above, just reports raw numbers of injuries. So, there are more bowlers than Rugby players, and thus more injuries with bowling. How did they exclude MTBs from their cycling stats? Anyway, raw injuries without also estimating the number of participants, or time doing the activity aren't very representative.

When I was 15yrs.-old, I was living with my dad. He has been a journalist for nearly fifty years. That year for some reason, he had to go to Jamaica to do an article. I went with him. When we were there for one week in August. We flew into Kingston, then went the resort town of Ocho Rios. Where I had the chance to go skin diving. Of course, without scuba gear, I could go very deep. I can't go very deep anyway. Because of a lifelong medical condition with my head. Where the pressure gets' to me. It didn't kill me. Then we flew back from Montego Bay.

Citation needed.