How many bikes on the road each day (boring statistics)

[Johanna]

A colleague told me today that a friend of his was involved in a traffic incident last week which resulted in the tragic death of a motorcyclist. (The driver apparently slammed on his brakes to avoid an accident ahead and the bike went in to the back of his car.) The colleague is obviously a bit shaken as well and implied that I shouldn't ride my bike because it's dangerous.

This got me thinking about statistics and relative dangers of the various things I do. Being a bit morbid I thought I might calculate my % chance of death per hour of each activity I do that is clearly dangerous. For example I also kitesurf. Kitesurfing can result in drowning or getting hoisted into the air by the kite and into hard objects such as buildings, rocks or cars.

But I'm foiled on the first step, which is finding out how many bikes are on the road each day. Any ideas? I found some statistics compiled by DVLA but they didn't include bikes. Also I'd need to estimate the average length of a bike trip, but I could guess a half hour to an hour.

I can find the number of registered bikes in the UK, but that's not much use since it's hard to guess how much use they get.

I'm guessing that my chance of death by kitesurfing is going to be a lot higher than my chance of death by bike.

Edit:
MCN (2017) reports 2.8 billion motorcycle miles per year for 2016 and 365 deaths. If I ride 10,000 miles in one year my chance of death is therefore 0.0001% per year assuming I'm an average rider. That's one in a million.
I had an operation a few years ago and was told my chance of survival was also one in a million. So hospital was as dangerous as motorcycling that year.

[owl]

Borg used to quote something about horse riding being statistically more dangerous than riding a motorcycle.

This was published a while back too

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/447673/motorcyclist-casualties-2013-data.pdf
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Observation is the greatest source of wisdom.

[Johanna]

There were 1.5 million kitesurfers in 2006. It's hard to find statistics about number of hours on the water, etc, but I'll assume I'm average. There are approx 120 kitesurfing deaths per year. So my chance of death by kitesurfing is 1 in 12,500 every year. Compared to one in a million on my bike, riding almost every day.

Obviously we need to be safety conscious, but I'm pretty happy with those statistics. I'll keep riding my bike!

[Freddyfruitba...]

[The Shaggy D.A.]

[Johanna]

[chickenstrip]

Classic case of overthink. Live your life.

Or get involved with one of the countless Brexit threads in "Politics and current affairs". They love their statistics in there
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THERE'S MILLIONS OF CHICKENSTRIPS OUT THERE!

[Ste]

One in a million chance of survival?

So which prescription drugs would you like to get high on whilst we leave you to die quietly?

[Johanna]

[Ste]

[Johanna]

[Johanna]

[chickenstrip]

[DrSnoosnoo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/03_march/23/riding.shtml

Horse riding is 20 times more dangerous than riding motorbikes.

You can expect a serious accident once every 7000 hrs. Horse riding is once every 350.
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[rpsmith79]

[M.C]

[chickenstrip]

[colink98]

[Teflon-Mike]

I believe that one of the most dangerous pursuits by injury per participant per hour, is actually diving. Horse riding too, has an appalling set of stats per-participant, per-hour, but it does tend to depend how the stats are cut up, and what they consider an 'accident' and how severe they rate any particular injury, from a bruise up to an outright kill.

Based on hospital admissions, one of THE 'most dangerous' things you can do in this country, is DIY around the house! From folk falling of ladders cleaning the windows, to cutting their arms off playing with circular saws re-tiling the bathroom... the number of injuries that result in hospital admission and death is atrocious... and they say things are as 'safe as houses'!!!!!

As Chicken strip says... don't over-think-it!

As a form of transport, bikes IS dangerous, no doubt about it. For various reasons you are around 3x more likely to have an accident on a bike, than in a car, and you are then around 5x more likely to need carting to hospital or morgue for it.... BUT driving a car, is a remarkably 'safe' way to get around....

Air-travel is probably the safest in the stats, certainly per mile... just that when they have an accident it tends to kill a lot of folk in one go!

Trains? Busses? Pedestrians? Cyclists? Risks are all there... as they say, you can walk away from a 100mph off on a motorbike... then trip off the kerb and break your neck!

But, it's interesting, the number of muggings at bus-stops, or rapes in railway stations, as not 'directly' involving a vehicle dont make it into thier statistics....

In your mates anecdote... I am a little sanguine to give it an awful lot of credance....

First off, if some-one did an e-stop and had bike plow into the back of them... then odds has to be that bike was traveling too close to begin with.

Next up; if the car had to do an e-stop, odds is that it was in slower moving traffic on a slower speed limit road, and the impact velocity was not all that high. If rider wearing proper apparel, odds of them getting deaded is NOT that high.

A trained, qualified, properly kitted rider would have to be pretty 'unlucky' to get killed in that way.... not unprecedented, but NOT very likely....

In total, there are around 300 motorcycle fatalities each year... but if you dig into the reports... about half of registered bikes in the UK are over 125cc. No one knows how many untaxed unregistered bikes there may be, but unlikely to be over 1 in 10, yet, they account for that or more in the accident stats, whilst more still can be attributed to 'other' criminal acts, the bike bing road-reg'd and taxed, but nicked by a twockker, who again, spike the stats.

If you take them out the mix... if you are on a big bike; have been trained and got a licence, wear a helmet and have 'some' basic common sense, then there's probably less than 150 fatal accidents of such demographic each year... and of even them... MOST of the fatal accidents involve excessive speed, suggesting the riders were NOT applying 'so-much' common sense....

The 'risks' are there, but many of them are in your hands whether to take them or not...

And as to the over-thinking... you were made to think by a 'mate' offering anecdote of death and carnage.... which is very emotive, and has the tendency to skew our perception of risks.

And motorcycle safety IS very emotive and the gulf between real risk and percieved inordinately skewed to start with.

Like I said, per participant hour, diving is actually one of the most dangerous pursuits you can undertake....

YET every year, folk go away on holiday to the Mediterranean or Caribbean, and they see a dive-shack, ideas of pretty tropical fish and coral come to mind, and they chuck thier tourist dollars at the kiosk, and 'dive' in.... pretty much without EVER thinking about the risks.

Similarly they never really think about how dangerous it is to stand on a chair to paint the ceiling.. safe as houses 'innit'?

Bikes? Oooh! Danjruss! Come off bike, you get turned into hamburger! Get a car! Be safe! Buy a Volvo! And EVERY one has some anecdote to recount of some-one they know that saw a horrific bike accident or knows some-one whose aunties boyfriend's best mate once got killed or crippled on a bike......

I've been riding bikes forty years. I know LOTS of folk that ride bikes. I know a lot of folk that have come off or crashed bikes. I knew ONE person, many many years ago who had only one arm because of crashing a moped..... I don't know 'personally' any one friend or even acquaintance who has been killed or crippled in a bike accident.....

I actual know more folk who have been maimed in industrial accidents at work.....

Go figure... YES bikes are dangerous, if you need that spelling out, then you are probably dumb enough it wont make any difference... if not... it STILL wont make any difference.... and you will give up ALL your 'dangerous' pursuits like motorcycling or kite surfing, or diving or horse riding.... and gety killed when the missus insist you put up another effin shelf!!!!

LIFE is dangerouse.... how safe do you want to be?

You know more people every year die in beds.... dangerous things them beds.. we aught to ban them!
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[owl]

mmmm tef'a'licious
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Observation is the greatest source of wisdom.

[iooi]

[ThatDippyTwat]

[M.C]

[Riejufixing]

[ljw]

Hello. I'm new here. Been lurking reading up on stuff on BCF and other places as I get my shit together for DAS. Anyway this specific topic is something I was thinking about for a while and looking into.

Sadly I think those numbers your got work out at around 0.1% chance of death in 10,000 miles, i.e. one in a thousand. Pretty much tallies with this which I was using: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/447673/motorcyclist-casualties-2013-data.pdf

The relevant thing I wanted to compare against was the overall risk of life in general. Looking myself up in the actuarial life tables, I already have, as it happens, a 1/1000 chance of death this year (as a mid 30s male). So, adding 10k miles fully doubles the risk of death this year, but on the other hand, I wasn't really worrying much about dying this year, so even doubling the risk is not a great worry.

Obviously something is going to kill you eventually. Using the life tables I worked out that if I ride 6,000 miles per year for the rest of my life (unlikely!) I get around a 3/100 chance that it is a motorcycle accident that eventually gets me. Seems okay, given that something has to in the end.