Last week, a young women was killed cycling in Dupont. This kicked off an interesting discussion amongst DC-based, biking bloggers, most of it meant to reassure ourselves that there's a reason we've decided to shrug off our vehicular armor and assume agility and alertness will protect us from the multi-ton war machines that claim ownership over the road. As it is, I think it's pretty clear that public policy should do more to protect bikers, but since I've always thought evolution is right to weed out folks who go running with the bulls, it's hard for me to say that those of us who go weaving amongst the cars are making a wise decision. For more on this, see
Matt,
Megan,
Will, and
Tommy.But circle (cycle?) back to the base question: How dangerous is biking, really? It certainly
feels dangerous. Over at Grist, Alan Durning
explored this very question. His answer, basically, was that biking is pretty dangerous, but not biking is even more dangerous, and it would be simple to make biking safer. The breakdown is that bikers are at increased risk for accidents, but that risk is outweighed by their decreased risk for health problems (namely cardiovascular disease). Meanwhile, the dangers of biking have a cultural component. American drivers aren't very used to bikers. They're not on the lookout for them. When they do see them, they tend to be offended by their presence, and dumbfounded that they'd try and take up a lane and slow down the road's rightful users: Cars. In Europe, attitudes are different, and so too are outcomes:
Pucher and Dijkstra wrote in the American Journal of Public Health (PDF), in 2003, "per trip cycled, American bicyclists are twice as likely to get killed as German cyclists and over three times as likely to get killed as Dutch cyclists." Per kilometer of travel, the gap is larger: Dutch cyclists are more than ten times safer than their American counterparts. European safety records are improving faster, too. In Germany, for example, collision deaths per bicycle trip have fallen by more than 80 percent since 1975, according to Pucher and Dijkstra.
Durning's whole piece is interesting, so
give it a read. And until then, the basic takeaway is that the more bikers there are, the safer biking will be. So, for my sake, buy a bike!
Image used under a Creative Commons license from wvs. 
