Does the risk increase.....

[CaNsA]

While reading another thread about Bike Gear this little gem popped into my head.

As the length of a journey increases, does the risk of injury from either an "off" or a RTC increase?

If it does, what effect would the type of bike gear being worn through out the journey have on the likelihood of being injured?

[U_W v2.0]

way to many factors involved to make an educated guess.

lets face it.

different areas means people drive differently
more time on the road means you might get caught out by weather change
the time of day your on the road and for how long ect

those are off the top of my head. theres just to many variables
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[CaNsA]

That is a very good point indeed.

But lets pretend we work for the government and we wanted an in-depth general overview of things.

[Derivative]

I posted about this in another thread, but on miles travelled per year rather than in a single journey.

My gut feeling would be that it wouldn't be a linear response (twice the distance would not result in twice the likelihood of accidents) but it should increase the chance, yes.

If you ride for ten hours on the M1, you'll pass ten times as many cars and cover ten times the distance as you would have only riding for one hour. In that case I'd say there's fairly close to ten times the accident likelihood (if we assume full concentration for the ten hours - fairly unlikely I know).

However, if you ride from your house to another city - the time spent in urban areas is almost certainly more dangerous than the time spent on country lanes unless you're compensating by taking corners quickly, etc. More cars around, more pedestrians, more junctions, higher speed differentials (stationary traffic vs 30mph), etc.

This is fairly well borne out by statistics, motorways have a far lower accident rate per mile and even per hour travelled as far as I'm aware.

So riding 10 miles in a city is quite possibly more dangerous than riding 70 miles on a motorway.

On gear it'd be another case of having to take averages.

If I personally rode without wearing gear - I tend to think that would result in a lower accident rate. I'd ride far more carefully, lean into corners less, ride slower, take much more care. Not to say that I don't anyway, but I mean - I'd probably not want to push much past 40mph in a t-shirt.

But in general, those who wear no gear are less likely to be careful in the first place - by virtue of not wearing the safety gear. How often have you seen our friend the Ped Boi undertaking at roundabouts with flip flops on? Yeah, I'd not hold out hope for him.

This is all talking about 'accidents' though, not 'injuries'. Injuries are probably far too complex to quantify, what do you class as an injury? Is a grazed knee an injury? Is it an injury if the rider is fine but the bike is totalled?

I might be able to superman off my bike on purpose (at say, 20-30mph) in leathers, if the padding is good enough in all the right areas I'd just slide along like they do in MotoGP, get up and walk off, but the bike would be pretty knackered.

If I did that wearing shorts and t-shirt I'd likely take my nipples and kneecaps off

[John933]

[Kwakki Si]

look a it like this, the heavier you smoke the more likely to get cancer, the more you drink the more likely your get liver deasese etc But then some can do all them heavily for all their lives and be fit as a fiddle, so its a lottery! But the more you do it the higher risk you are, this applies to riding a bike.
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[iooi]

[Derivative]

[TheSmiler]

[Teflon-Mike]

Its a matter of 'scale'.

Overall, 'risk' ir pretty much directly proportional to 'exposure'.

You can expect from stats, one seriouse 'accident' in maybe every 15K miles. ON AVERAGE.

But risk varies.

Risk on the motorway is far lower than in buit up area.
Risk in Rush-Hour higher than at 3am.

Those are rough 'enviromental' risk levels, you then have your riding habits.

Hooning about on a sunny Sunday, Risk goes up. Riding sedately, on a sunny Wednesday evening, goes down.

Most accidents happen within a mile of the home.... most actually IN the home.... or some-times back seat of a Mum & Dad's Sierra on a Saturday night, that make you buy a home, but probably not the kind of accident we are talking about....

Most of us live in built up areas, this is a higher risk area; so at the start of our journey we probably face a higher nominal risk level.

After that? if we are going further afield, the nominal risk probably drops.

But where are we going? If I was to be riding from my house to yours... never met you, no idea where you live, probably dont know the district....

I would leave here. Risk is higher than average becouse its a built up area. That risk lowered a LITTLE becouse I know where I am, I know the 'black-spots' and I either avoid them, or know how to deal with them, and I will be riding comfidently, KNOWING where I am going.

Head out of town, one of many major arterial roads, possibly duel carriageways or motorways... well, I'm fairly familiar with a lot of these for probably thirty miles in most directions.

Risk drops twice from nominal, as these are 'less' risky roads, and I still have local knowledge of hazard locations.

As I get closer to you, though, possibly slightly distracted trying to remember directions, looking for land-marks, or following taped route card on tank, or Sat-Nav on bars.... risk starts going up again, and riding round the houses trying to find where you live risk going up two-fold with un-familiarity and new built up area.

How many OTHER influences are there? Day, Night? Good Weather, Bad? Surface Conditions?

So, on AVERAGE you have a basic risk per mile. That risk changes circumstantially, and conditionally, an you might face MORE risk riding accross town to work in rush-hour, than you would heading out 300 miles to a ride-out half way up the country.

Its like fuel consumption really.... used to have one of those silly MPG computers in one of my cars many years ago.

Would tell me my 'average' was something like 20mpg, but if I flicked it to instanteniouse, could be telling me anything from 80mpg to 1mph!

All depends where you start the 'trip' counter from.
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[Derivative]

Another reason it's much easier to talk about 'accidents' rather than 'injuries' is that injuries differ in likelihood according to where/how you are riding.

If you ride around the Bonneville Salt Flats, you might be able to do 1,000,000 miles and lowside as much as you want, you probably won't cause yourself any serious damage unless you get caught under the bike. You'd have to highside the bike and come down pretty hard to really hurt yourself. Presuming you don't ride around at 150mph.

Whereas if you ride about a city, there's a decent likelihood of hitting cars, pedestrians, lampposts, curbstones, potholes, whatever you care to name. Objects travelling at high speed (relative to you). Far more likely to cause serious injury if you do go off.