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Main
Date: 23 Sep 2007 01:05:30
From:
Subject: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
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An idle spreadsheet is the devil's playground . . .
Statisticians will point out that there is no statistically
significant difference between many of the states, since the year to
year swings can be so large and the actual totals are so tiny as to be
close to random in many cases.
Obviously, states with more rider-miles per 100k population stand a
better chance of producing dead bicyclists, but raw population
scarcely matches bicycle ridership--given the same population, places
with snow should produce fewer bike deaths.
Florida is flat, warm, full of people, and the most "dangerous" state
to ride in. Florida has by far the highest fatality rate, and even
boasts one more raw fatality that second-place California, which is
warm and has _twice_ as many people, but is not nearly as flat as
Florida.
The asterisk 13 rows down marks the average for the whole population.
5 yr /100k
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 total /year
FLOR 18,089,888 110 101 122 124 132 589 0.651
LOUI 4,287,768 21 13 13 21 24 92 0.429
NEVA 2,495,529 6 10 14 10 10 50 0.401
ARIZ 6,166,318 16 16 27 35 29 123 0.399
HAWA 1,285,498 4 6 7 4 4 25 0.389
SCAR 4,321,249 12 12 22 16 16 78 0.361
DELA 853,476 4 1 3 2 4 14 0.328
CALI 36,457,549 116 106 110 115 141 588 0.323
NCAR 8,856,505 17 20 25 36 21 119 0.269
OREG 3,700,758 6 8 9 11 14 48 0.259
MICH 10,095,643 22 32 21 25 28 128 0.254
DofC 581,530 1 0 3 3 0 7 0.241
ALAS 670,053 0 4 2 1 1 8 0.239 *
MONT 944,632 1 2 2 4 2 11 0.233
NEWY 19,306,183 38 37 40 49 45 209 0.217
NEWM 1,954,599 3 3 4 5 6 21 0.215
TEXA 23,507,783 51 52 51 47 51 252 0.214
WISC 5,556,506 9 12 14 14 8 57 0.205
UTAH 2,550,063 5 2 6 3 10 26 0.204
IOWA 2,982,085 4 3 7 11 5 30 0.201
ALAB 4,599,030 5 12 6 13 10 46 0.200
INDI 6,313,520 9 7 13 13 21 63 0.200
GEOR 9,363,941 13 18 20 23 19 93 0.199
WYOM 515,004 2 1 0 2 0 5 0.194
KENT 4,206,074 9 5 7 12 5 38 0.181
COLO 4,753,377 9 3 11 8 10 41 0.173
MISP 2,910,540 5 8 4 5 3 25 0.172
ILLI 12,831,970 22 17 25 21 25 110 0.171
VIRG 7,642,884 12 10 9 21 12 64 0.167
KANS 2,764,075 5 5 3 4 6 23 0.166
NEWJ 8,724,560 16 11 16 17 12 72 0.165
IDAH 1,466,465 2 2 3 3 2 12 0.164
NDAK 635,867 1 0 2 2 0 5 0.157
OKLA 3,579,212 5 3 6 7 6 27 0.151
WASH 6,395,798 11 10 7 13 7 48 0.150
MISR 5,842,713 16 9 3 8 7 43 0.147
MINN 5,167,101 7 6 10 7 8 38 0.147
PENN 12,440,621 23 20 14 18 13 88 0.141
MAIN 1,321,574 0 1 1 3 4 9 0.136
MARY 5,615,727 5 7 12 7 7 38 0.135
ARKA 2,810,872 8 1 3 3 3 18 0.128
OHIO 11,478,006 15 8 19 13 17 72 0.125
NEWH 1,314,895 0 2 1 3 2 8 0.122
MASS 6,437,193 6 11 11 5 6 39 0.121
NEBR 1,768,331 2 2 1 3 2 10 0.113
CONN 3,504,809 4 2 5 3 5 19 0.108
TENN 6,038,803 3 4 7 10 7 31 0.103
SDAK 781,919 1 1 1 0 1 4 0.102
WVIR 1,818,470 1 1 4 2 1 9 0.099
VERM 623,908 1 1 1 0 0 3 0.096
RHOD 1,067,610 1 1 0 1 1 4 0.075
total 299,398,484 665 629 727 786 773 3,580 0.239
* = average
State pedalcyclist fatalities from:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/1_AL/2006/1_AL_2006.htm
2006 state populations from
http://geography.about.com/od/lists/a/statepop.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.
The 4-letter state abbreviations are whimsical, but easier for most
people to follow.
Including the District of Columbia is not a plea for statehood, but
rather mindless thoroughness and a lack of statistics for Puerto Rico,
Guam, and others.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
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Date: 25 Sep 2007 04:15:04
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
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On Sep 24, 2:23 pm, Ryan Cousineau <rcous...@sfu.ca > wrote:
>
> I think VMT is the measure that answers the most interesting question,
> which is what your relative risk is if you make a particular trip by car
> or by bike.
>
> I mean, when cycling fatalities come up, it's surely in the context of
> figuring out whether cycling is more dangerous than "the alternatives."
Well, ISTM there's more to it than just the danger of that particular
trip, or that particular mile. There are the dangers associated with
a particular lifestyle.
>From data I've seen, bike commuters definitely live longer than car
commuters. Part of that is probably a filtering process - people at
death's door don't have the energy to cycle - but part of it is
probably the health benefit of cycling.
And when you compare benefits for society as a whole, cycling looks
even better. There's that 20:1 ratio determined by Mayer Hillman - 20
years of life gained through cycling for every year of life lost.
Part of that gain is from the fact that cyclists almost never kill
anyone else, but motorists do.
> For fitness riders, that's probably best measured in exposure per
> heartbeat, but I doubt anything is going to beat a stationary elliptical
> trainer for safety. We just have to admit that if we're riding outside
> for exercise, it's because we'd rather die than work out in a small
> room*, or because exer-commuting saves more time than we're likely to
> lose from dying early.
>
> As for cycling as a commute option, what we really want to know is how
> dangerous it is relative to other modes of transportation, which amount
> to public transit or cars for most people**.
Another point to consider,is that many of the comparisons relative to
other modes of transportation, or alternative fitness activities, are
really not important, because they're comparing infinitesmals.
If you have a one-in-a-billion chance of dying during a particular car
trip, and a two-in-a-billion chance of dying if you do it by bike,
does it matter? Sure, it may be twice as much danger on the bike.
But it's still negligible. It's still a comparison of infinitesmals.
For most purposes, 1/infinity = 2/infinity = zero.
- Frank Krygowski
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 14:19:26
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
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On Sep 24, 11:23 am, Ryan Cousineau <rcous...@sfu.ca > wrote:
> I think VMT is the measure that answers the most interesting question,
> which is what your relative risk is if you make a particular trip by car
> or by bike.
Perhaps, but I think VMT is used for cars because it happens to be
estimable, not because it's the ideal measurement of exposure to risk.
I would think that in an ideal world, you might want something like
"accidents per intersection passed" since that's where most accidents
occur--but that's not estimable.
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 09:15:23
From: joseph.santaniello@gmail.com
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sep 24, 4:50 pm, frkry...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sep 24, 10:39 am, still me <wheeled...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:36:55 -0600, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> > >Women are even safer bicyclists than they are drivers.
>
> > Women don't get in as many accidents in cars, but they do just leave a
> > trail of wreckage strewn behind them from the havoc they cause for
> > other vehicles.
>
> How do you know that?
>
> - Frank Krygowski
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xz2r3Un9CE
Joseph
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 14:50:50
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sep 24, 10:39 am, still me <wheeled...@yahoo.com > wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:36:55 -0600, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> >Women are even safer bicyclists than they are drivers.
>
> Women don't get in as many accidents in cars, but they do just leave a
> trail of wreckage strewn behind them from the havoc they cause for
> other vehicles.
How do you know that?
- Frank Krygowski
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 15:08:36
From: still me
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:50:50 -0000, frkrygow@gmail.com wrote:
>On Sep 24, 10:39 am, still me <wheeled...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:36:55 -0600, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>> >Women are even safer bicyclists than they are drivers.
>>
>> Women don't get in as many accidents in cars, but they do just leave a
>> trail of wreckage strewn behind them from the havoc they cause for
>> other vehicles.
>
>How do you know that?
>
>- Frank Krygowski
Visual observation - women drive down the road, it looks like a chase
scene from "The French Connection" behind them!
:-)
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 04:54:41
From: Robert Chung
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sep 23, 9:37 pm, Ryan Cousineau <rcous...@sfu.ca > wrote:
> >http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/rbr/bikedeaths.png
>
> I have suspicion that this chart is more likely to represent the
> relative cycling participation rates of each state than it is to
> represent the relative risk.
Well, relative cycling participation is surely a part of it, but I
wouldn't say that it is devoid of relative risk information. BTW,
here's how the relative bike fatality rates compare to the relative
all vehicle fatality rates:
http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/rbr/bikedeaths2.png
> I'd bet small money that the main method is some moderately rigorous
> surveys of the population with bike counts thrown in.
I'd bet small money that the main methods aren't moderately rigorous.
Surveys aren't going to pick up kid use very well. In addition, it's
not clear to me that VMT is the right measure of exposure.
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 18:23:04
From: Ryan Cousineau
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
In article <1190634881.472672.25530@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com >,
Robert Chung <rechung@gmail.com > wrote:
> On Sep 23, 9:37 pm, Ryan Cousineau <rcous...@sfu.ca> wrote:
>
> > >http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/rbr/bikedeaths.png
> >
> > I have suspicion that this chart is more likely to represent the
> > relative cycling participation rates of each state than it is to
> > represent the relative risk.
>
> Well, relative cycling participation is surely a part of it, but I
> wouldn't say that it is devoid of relative risk information. BTW,
> here's how the relative bike fatality rates compare to the relative
> all vehicle fatality rates:
> http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/rbr/bikedeaths2.png
Now we're getting somewhere!
BTW, I don't car to read back to the US fatality rates because I'm lazy,
but the Netherlands has a death rate of 17.7 cyclists per million, and
40.4 people die in passenger cars per million inhabitants.
http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/bikeuse_PBA.pdf
Dying in one's bed seem to be by far the most popular method. I think I
will start sleeping on the couch.
> > I'd bet small money that the main method is some moderately rigorous
> > surveys of the population with bike counts thrown in.
>
> I'd bet small money that the main methods aren't moderately rigorous.
> Surveys aren't going to pick up kid use very well. In addition, it's
> not clear to me that VMT is the right measure of exposure.
True. If kids are a significant proportion of bike fatalities, that's
important to extract (though I suspect parents can produce at least a
defensible estimate of how much time their kids spend on bikes).
I think VMT is the measure that answers the most interesting question,
which is what your relative risk is if you make a particular trip by car
or by bike.
I mean, when cycling fatalities come up, it's surely in the context of
figuring out whether cycling is more dangerous than "the alternatives."
For fitness riders, that's probably best measured in exposure per
heartbeat, but I doubt anything is going to beat a stationary elliptical
trainer for safety. We just have to admit that if we're riding outside
for exercise, it's because we'd rather die than work out in a small
room*, or because exer-commuting saves more time than we're likely to
lose from dying early.
As for cycling as a commute option, what we really want to know is how
dangerous it is relative to other modes of transportation, which amount
to public transit or cars for most people**.
The urge to map
*a perfectly rational choice.
**for people who have no commute or have a commute which is not feasible
by some of these means, the question is moot. But then again, for those
people, the question is moot.
--
Ryan Cousineau rcousine@sfu.ca http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 00:34:18
From: SMS
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
> Florida is flat, warm, full of people, and the most "dangerous" state
> to ride in. Florida has by far the highest fatality rate, and even
> boasts one more raw fatality that second-place California, which is
> warm and has _twice_ as many people, but is not nearly as flat as
> Florida.
A group of Florida senior citizens were sitting around talking about
their ailments.
"My arms are so weak I can hardly hold this cup of coffee," said one.
"Yes, I know. My cataracts are so bad, I can't even see my coffee,"
replied a second.
"I can't turn my head because of the arthritis in my neck," said a
third, to which several nodded weakly in agreement.
"My blood pressure pills make me dizzy," claimed another.
"I guess that's the price we pay for getting old," winced an old man as
he shook his head. Then there was a short moment of silence ...
"Well, it's not that bad," said one woman cheerfully. "Thank God we can
all still drive."
It's more true than funny. There are so many people there that have no
business driving. I remember my mother telling me once, "if I ever drive
like those people when I'm old, you take my license away." At 83 she's
still driving okay.
I grew up in Florida as it became the retirement area for the Northeast.
You never want to be on the road at 4-6 p.m. when the early-bird
specials are in force (senior citizen discounts were deemed to be
illegal, but early-bird specials are for anyone willing and able to eat
dinner early). Thankfully most of the drivers are going too slow to
injure other drivers and passengers, but bicyclists are fair game. When
I would watch the Seinfeld episodes that took place in South Florida I
thought I would bust a gut I was laughing so hard.
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 02:07:06
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
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On Sep 23, 8:42 pm, A Muzi <a...@yellowjersey.org > wrote:
>
>
> Agreed. To the larger question, no one gets out alive.
True!
> So why not ride your bike now while you can?
> Sitting home in fear might extend your life on average a day or 2 but to
> what gain really?
Actually, from what I read, sitting home in fear will cause an early
death. Riding your bike frequently will extend your life a year or
two. Not enough to make much difference in life expectancy, I guess.
But to me, sitting home in fear is not a life!
I haven't been able to ride much lately. I'm into a massive, massive
project that's eating up all my time, and will for many more weeks.
But today, I stole 40 very pleasant miles of riding from the project.
It was great to be alive!
- Frank Krygowski
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Date: 23 Sep 2007 15:16:19
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sep 23, 2:05 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> An idle spreadsheet is the devil's playground . . .
>
> Statisticians will point out that there is no statistically
> significant difference between many of the states, since the year to
> year swings can be so large and the actual totals are so tiny as to be
> close to random in many cases.
>
> Obviously, states with more rider-miles per 100k population stand a
> better chance of producing dead bicyclists, but raw population
> scarcely matches bicycle ridership--given the same population, places
> with snow should produce fewer bike deaths.
>
> Florida is flat, warm, full of people, and the most "dangerous" state
> to ride in. Florida has by far the highest fatality rate, and even
> boasts one more raw fatality that second-place California, which is
> warm and has _twice_ as many people, but is not nearly as flat as
> Florida.
>
> The asterisk 13 rows down marks the average for the whole population.
>
> 5 yr /100k
> 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 total /year
> FLOR 18,089,888 110 101 122 124 132 589 0.651
> LOUI 4,287,768 21 13 13 21 24 92 0.429
> NEVA 2,495,529 6 10 14 10 10 50 0.401
> ARIZ 6,166,318 16 16 27 35 29 123 0.399
> HAWA 1,285,498 4 6 7 4 4 25 0.389
> SCAR 4,321,249 12 12 22 16 16 78 0.361
> DELA 853,476 4 1 3 2 4 14 0.328
> CALI 36,457,549 116 106 110 115 141 588 0.323
> NCAR 8,856,505 17 20 25 36 21 119 0.269
> OREG 3,700,758 6 8 9 11 14 48 0.259
> MICH 10,095,643 22 32 21 25 28 128 0.254
> DofC 581,530 1 0 3 3 0 7 0.241
> ALAS 670,053 0 4 2 1 1 8 0.239 *
> MONT 944,632 1 2 2 4 2 11 0.233
> NEWY 19,306,183 38 37 40 49 45 209 0.217
> NEWM 1,954,599 3 3 4 5 6 21 0.215
> TEXA 23,507,783 51 52 51 47 51 252 0.214
> WISC 5,556,506 9 12 14 14 8 57 0.205
> UTAH 2,550,063 5 2 6 3 10 26 0.204
> IOWA 2,982,085 4 3 7 11 5 30 0.201
> ALAB 4,599,030 5 12 6 13 10 46 0.200
> INDI 6,313,520 9 7 13 13 21 63 0.200
> GEOR 9,363,941 13 18 20 23 19 93 0.199
> WYOM 515,004 2 1 0 2 0 5 0.194
> KENT 4,206,074 9 5 7 12 5 38 0.181
> COLO 4,753,377 9 3 11 8 10 41 0.173
> MISP 2,910,540 5 8 4 5 3 25 0.172
> ILLI 12,831,970 22 17 25 21 25 110 0.171
> VIRG 7,642,884 12 10 9 21 12 64 0.167
> KANS 2,764,075 5 5 3 4 6 23 0.166
> NEWJ 8,724,560 16 11 16 17 12 72 0.165
> IDAH 1,466,465 2 2 3 3 2 12 0.164
> NDAK 635,867 1 0 2 2 0 5 0.157
> OKLA 3,579,212 5 3 6 7 6 27 0.151
> WASH 6,395,798 11 10 7 13 7 48 0.150
> MISR 5,842,713 16 9 3 8 7 43 0.147
> MINN 5,167,101 7 6 10 7 8 38 0.147
> PENN 12,440,621 23 20 14 18 13 88 0.141
> MAIN 1,321,574 0 1 1 3 4 9 0.136
> MARY 5,615,727 5 7 12 7 7 38 0.135
> ARKA 2,810,872 8 1 3 3 3 18 0.128
> OHIO 11,478,006 15 8 19 13 17 72 0.125
> NEWH 1,314,895 0 2 1 3 2 8 0.122
> MASS 6,437,193 6 11 11 5 6 39 0.121
> NEBR 1,768,331 2 2 1 3 2 10 0.113
> CONN 3,504,809 4 2 5 3 5 19 0.108
> TENN 6,038,803 3 4 7 10 7 31 0.103
> SDAK 781,919 1 1 1 0 1 4 0.102
> WVIR 1,818,470 1 1 4 2 1 9 0.099
> VERM 623,908 1 1 1 0 0 3 0.096
> RHOD 1,067,610 1 1 0 1 1 4 0.075
>
> total 299,398,484 665 629 727 786 773 3,580 0.239
>
> * = average
>
> State pedalcyclist fatalities from:
>
> http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/1_AL/2006/1...
>
> 2006 state populations from
>
> http://geography.about.com/od/lists/a/statepop.htm
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.
>
> The 4-letter state abbreviations are whimsical, but easier for most
> people to follow.
>
> Including the District of Columbia is not a plea for statehood, but
> rather mindless thoroughness and a lack of statistics for Puerto Rico,
> Guam, and others.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl Fogel
Thanks for the info, Carl. It's nice to see that my home state of
Missouri made the lower third in fatalities.
Smokey
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Date: 23 Sep 2007 20:32:49
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sep 23, 2:15 pm, r15...@aol.com wrote:
> Heck no. At best, VMT for bicycles is estimated with surveys.
> Those who claim that their estimates for bicycle VMT are derived from
> the National Household Travel Survey should explain how they did that,
> since that info was not gathered in the NHTS.
>
> Another popular method involves a dartboard, a blindfold, and a bottle
> of rum.
I should like to add that method is probably more accurate.
Robert
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Date: 23 Sep 2007 20:15:28
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sep 23, 9:39 am, rechungREMOVET...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> For cars and trucks, VMT is estimated using administrative records:
> states know how much fuel is sold from info about gas tax revenues,
> and they can estimate overall miles per gallon because they have an
> idea of the vehicle "mix" (in terms of age, gross vehicle weight, and
> type of vehicle) from registrations. I don't know of any equivalent
> standardized way to estimate VMT for bikes. Maybe the bike industry
> keeps track of the number of tires sold in various types and sizes.
Heck no. At best, VMT for bicycles is estimated with surveys.
Those who claim that their estimates for bicycle VMT are derived from
the National Household Travel Survey should explain how they did that,
since that info was not gathered in the NHTS.
Another popular method involves a dartboard, a blindfold, and a bottle
of rum.
Robert
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 03:26:27
From: Michael Press
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
In article
<1190578528.583332.115690@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com >
,
r15757@aol.com wrote:
> On Sep 23, 9:39 am, rechungREMOVET...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >
> > For cars and trucks, VMT is estimated using administrative records:
> > states know how much fuel is sold from info about gas tax revenues,
> > and they can estimate overall miles per gallon because they have an
> > idea of the vehicle "mix" (in terms of age, gross vehicle weight, and
> > type of vehicle) from registrations. I don't know of any equivalent
> > standardized way to estimate VMT for bikes. Maybe the bike industry
> > keeps track of the number of tires sold in various types and sizes.
>
> Heck no. At best, VMT for bicycles is estimated with surveys.
> Those who claim that their estimates for bicycle VMT are derived from
> the National Household Travel Survey should explain how they did that,
> since that info was not gathered in the NHTS.
>
> Another popular method involves a dartboard, a blindfold, and a bottle
> of rum.
That's rum first, then blindfold, then dartboard.
Don't forget the darts.
--
Michael Press
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Date: 23 Sep 2007 18:43:56
From: still me
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:05:30 -0600, carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
>The 4-letter state abbreviations are whimsical, but easier for most
>people to follow.
Do you have any statistics on the fatality rate on carbon fiber bikes
vs. other frame materials?
:-)
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Date: 23 Sep 2007 08:39:12
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
carlfogel wrote:
>
> FLOR 18,089,888 110 101 122 124 132 589 0.651
> LOUI 4,287,768 21 13 13 21 24 92 0.429
> NEVA 2,495,529 6 10 14 10 10 50 0.401
[snip]
Thanks, Carl.
http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/rbr/bikedeaths.png
joseph.santaniello wondered:
>
> But more to the point, how do they figure VMT for bikes? Or for other
> vehicles for that matter?
For cars and trucks, VMT is estimated using administrative records:
states know how much fuel is sold from info about gas tax revenues,
and they can estimate overall miles per gallon because they have an
idea of the vehicle "mix" (in terms of age, gross vehicle weight, and
type of vehicle) from registrations. I don't know of any equivalent
standardized way to estimate VMT for bikes. Maybe the bike industry
keeps track of the number of tires sold in various types and sizes.
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Date: 24 Sep 2007 04:37:35
From: Ryan Cousineau
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
In article <1190561952.059518.196600@r29g2000hsg.googlegroups.com >,
rechungREMOVETHIS@gmail.com wrote:
> carlfogel wrote:
> >
> > FLOR 18,089,888 110 101 122 124 132 589 0.651
> > LOUI 4,287,768 21 13 13 21 24 92 0.429
> > NEVA 2,495,529 6 10 14 10 10 50 0.401
>
> [snip]
>
> Thanks, Carl.
> http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/rbr/bikedeaths.png
I have suspicion that this chart is more likely to represent the
relative cycling participation rates of each state than it is to
represent the relative risk.
> joseph.santaniello wondered:
> >
> > But more to the point, how do they figure VMT for bikes? Or for other
> > vehicles for that matter?
>
> For cars and trucks, VMT is estimated using administrative records:
> states know how much fuel is sold from info about gas tax revenues,
> and they can estimate overall miles per gallon because they have an
> idea of the vehicle "mix" (in terms of age, gross vehicle weight, and
> type of vehicle) from registrations. I don't know of any equivalent
> standardized way to estimate VMT for bikes. Maybe the bike industry
> keeps track of the number of tires sold in various types and sizes.
I'd bet small money that the main method is some moderately rigorous
surveys of the population with bike counts thrown in.
In fact, If I had to solve the problem of how much riding was done in
the US, I'd start by finding the biggest, broadest personal-exercise
survey possible, and see what the effective total was for the country's
self-reported minutes of cycling per year*, and then I'd work on
whatever rider-count surveys were out there that described the
quantities and speeds of observed riders in the wild.
The tricky part would be getting a defensible breakdown of the speeds of
riders in typical venues (MUPs, sidewalks, city roads, country roads,
trails) and the relative volumes of traffic in each venue.
In other words, I think a pretty good measure of hours of exposure
wouldn't be too hard, but trying to figure out the average speed of
American cyclists might take some effort.
I might start here:
http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/insight/fact_sheets/index.cfm
*I assume most of these surveys ask the participants how many minutes of
each type of physical activity they do per week. If you have a
statistically significant number of responses (and ideally, some
study-proven idea of the direction and quantity of the self-reporting
errors), you can easily figure out roughly how many hours are spent on
bicycles in America each year.
--
Ryan Cousineau rcousine@sfu.ca http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos
|
| |
Date: 23 Sep 2007 02:01:22
From: joseph.santaniello@gmail.com
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sep 23, 9:05 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> An idle spreadsheet is the devil's playground . . .
>
> Statisticians will point out that there is no statistically
> significant difference between many of the states, since the year to
> year swings can be so large and the actual totals are so tiny as to be
> close to random in many cases.
>
> Obviously, states with more rider-miles per 100k population stand a
> better chance of producing dead bicyclists, but raw population
> scarcely matches bicycle ridership--given the same population, places
> with snow should produce fewer bike deaths.
>
> Florida is flat, warm, full of people, and the most "dangerous" state
> to ride in. Florida has by far the highest fatality rate, and even
> boasts one more raw fatality that second-place California, which is
> warm and has _twice_ as many people, but is not nearly as flat as
> Florida.
>
> The asterisk 13 rows down marks the average for the whole population.
>
> 5 yr /100k
> 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 total /year
> FLOR 18,089,888 110 101 122 124 132 589 0.651
> LOUI 4,287,768 21 13 13 21 24 92 0.429
> NEVA 2,495,529 6 10 14 10 10 50 0.401
> ARIZ 6,166,318 16 16 27 35 29 123 0.399
> HAWA 1,285,498 4 6 7 4 4 25 0.389
> SCAR 4,321,249 12 12 22 16 16 78 0.361
> DELA 853,476 4 1 3 2 4 14 0.328
> CALI 36,457,549 116 106 110 115 141 588 0.323
> NCAR 8,856,505 17 20 25 36 21 119 0.269
> OREG 3,700,758 6 8 9 11 14 48 0.259
> MICH 10,095,643 22 32 21 25 28 128 0.254
> DofC 581,530 1 0 3 3 0 7 0.241
> ALAS 670,053 0 4 2 1 1 8 0.239 *
> MONT 944,632 1 2 2 4 2 11 0.233
> NEWY 19,306,183 38 37 40 49 45 209 0.217
> NEWM 1,954,599 3 3 4 5 6 21 0.215
> TEXA 23,507,783 51 52 51 47 51 252 0.214
> WISC 5,556,506 9 12 14 14 8 57 0.205
> UTAH 2,550,063 5 2 6 3 10 26 0.204
> IOWA 2,982,085 4 3 7 11 5 30 0.201
> ALAB 4,599,030 5 12 6 13 10 46 0.200
> INDI 6,313,520 9 7 13 13 21 63 0.200
> GEOR 9,363,941 13 18 20 23 19 93 0.199
> WYOM 515,004 2 1 0 2 0 5 0.194
> KENT 4,206,074 9 5 7 12 5 38 0.181
> COLO 4,753,377 9 3 11 8 10 41 0.173
> MISP 2,910,540 5 8 4 5 3 25 0.172
> ILLI 12,831,970 22 17 25 21 25 110 0.171
> VIRG 7,642,884 12 10 9 21 12 64 0.167
> KANS 2,764,075 5 5 3 4 6 23 0.166
> NEWJ 8,724,560 16 11 16 17 12 72 0.165
> IDAH 1,466,465 2 2 3 3 2 12 0.164
> NDAK 635,867 1 0 2 2 0 5 0.157
> OKLA 3,579,212 5 3 6 7 6 27 0.151
> WASH 6,395,798 11 10 7 13 7 48 0.150
> MISR 5,842,713 16 9 3 8 7 43 0.147
> MINN 5,167,101 7 6 10 7 8 38 0.147
> PENN 12,440,621 23 20 14 18 13 88 0.141
> MAIN 1,321,574 0 1 1 3 4 9 0.136
> MARY 5,615,727 5 7 12 7 7 38 0.135
> ARKA 2,810,872 8 1 3 3 3 18 0.128
> OHIO 11,478,006 15 8 19 13 17 72 0.125
> NEWH 1,314,895 0 2 1 3 2 8 0.122
> MASS 6,437,193 6 11 11 5 6 39 0.121
> NEBR 1,768,331 2 2 1 3 2 10 0.113
> CONN 3,504,809 4 2 5 3 5 19 0.108
> TENN 6,038,803 3 4 7 10 7 31 0.103
> SDAK 781,919 1 1 1 0 1 4 0.102
> WVIR 1,818,470 1 1 4 2 1 9 0.099
> VERM 623,908 1 1 1 0 0 3 0.096
> RHOD 1,067,610 1 1 0 1 1 4 0.075
>
> total 299,398,484 665 629 727 786 773 3,580 0.239
>
> * = average
>
> State pedalcyclist fatalities from:
>
> http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/1_AL/2006/1...
>
> 2006 state populations from
>
> http://geography.about.com/od/lists/a/statepop.htm
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.
>
> The 4-letter state abbreviations are whimsical, but easier for most
> people to follow.
>
> Including the District of Columbia is not a plea for statehood, but
> rather mindless thoroughness and a lack of statistics for Puerto Rico,
> Guam, and others.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl Fogel
Very interesting. Particularly the part about the state abbreviations
(+ Iowa and Utah!) being a conscious decision. I thought it was a cut-
n-paste anomaly.
But more to the point, how do they figure VMT for bikes? Or for other
vehicles for that matter? I wonder what the figures look like broken
down by distance ridden per rider. In other words, do riders who ride
1000 miles per year have accidents 10 times as often as riders who
ride 100 per year?
Joseph
|
| | |
Date: 23 Sep 2007 14:36:55
From:
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 02:01:22 -0700, "joseph.santaniello@gmail.com"
<joseph.santaniello@gmail.com > wrote:
>On Sep 23, 9:05 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>> An idle spreadsheet is the devil's playground . . .
>>
>> Statisticians will point out that there is no statistically
>> significant difference between many of the states, since the year to
>> year swings can be so large and the actual totals are so tiny as to be
>> close to random in many cases.
>>
>> Obviously, states with more rider-miles per 100k population stand a
>> better chance of producing dead bicyclists, but raw population
>> scarcely matches bicycle ridership--given the same population, places
>> with snow should produce fewer bike deaths.
>>
>> Florida is flat, warm, full of people, and the most "dangerous" state
>> to ride in. Florida has by far the highest fatality rate, and even
>> boasts one more raw fatality that second-place California, which is
>> warm and has _twice_ as many people, but is not nearly as flat as
>> Florida.
>>
>> The asterisk 13 rows down marks the average for the whole population.
>>
>> 5 yr /100k
>> 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 total /year
>> FLOR 18,089,888 110 101 122 124 132 589 0.651
>> LOUI 4,287,768 21 13 13 21 24 92 0.429
>> NEVA 2,495,529 6 10 14 10 10 50 0.401
>> ARIZ 6,166,318 16 16 27 35 29 123 0.399
>> HAWA 1,285,498 4 6 7 4 4 25 0.389
>> SCAR 4,321,249 12 12 22 16 16 78 0.361
>> DELA 853,476 4 1 3 2 4 14 0.328
>> CALI 36,457,549 116 106 110 115 141 588 0.323
>> NCAR 8,856,505 17 20 25 36 21 119 0.269
>> OREG 3,700,758 6 8 9 11 14 48 0.259
>> MICH 10,095,643 22 32 21 25 28 128 0.254
>> DofC 581,530 1 0 3 3 0 7 0.241
>> ALAS 670,053 0 4 2 1 1 8 0.239 *
>> MONT 944,632 1 2 2 4 2 11 0.233
>> NEWY 19,306,183 38 37 40 49 45 209 0.217
>> NEWM 1,954,599 3 3 4 5 6 21 0.215
>> TEXA 23,507,783 51 52 51 47 51 252 0.214
>> WISC 5,556,506 9 12 14 14 8 57 0.205
>> UTAH 2,550,063 5 2 6 3 10 26 0.204
>> IOWA 2,982,085 4 3 7 11 5 30 0.201
>> ALAB 4,599,030 5 12 6 13 10 46 0.200
>> INDI 6,313,520 9 7 13 13 21 63 0.200
>> GEOR 9,363,941 13 18 20 23 19 93 0.199
>> WYOM 515,004 2 1 0 2 0 5 0.194
>> KENT 4,206,074 9 5 7 12 5 38 0.181
>> COLO 4,753,377 9 3 11 8 10 41 0.173
>> MISP 2,910,540 5 8 4 5 3 25 0.172
>> ILLI 12,831,970 22 17 25 21 25 110 0.171
>> VIRG 7,642,884 12 10 9 21 12 64 0.167
>> KANS 2,764,075 5 5 3 4 6 23 0.166
>> NEWJ 8,724,560 16 11 16 17 12 72 0.165
>> IDAH 1,466,465 2 2 3 3 2 12 0.164
>> NDAK 635,867 1 0 2 2 0 5 0.157
>> OKLA 3,579,212 5 3 6 7 6 27 0.151
>> WASH 6,395,798 11 10 7 13 7 48 0.150
>> MISR 5,842,713 16 9 3 8 7 43 0.147
>> MINN 5,167,101 7 6 10 7 8 38 0.147
>> PENN 12,440,621 23 20 14 18 13 88 0.141
>> MAIN 1,321,574 0 1 1 3 4 9 0.136
>> MARY 5,615,727 5 7 12 7 7 38 0.135
>> ARKA 2,810,872 8 1 3 3 3 18 0.128
>> OHIO 11,478,006 15 8 19 13 17 72 0.125
>> NEWH 1,314,895 0 2 1 3 2 8 0.122
>> MASS 6,437,193 6 11 11 5 6 39 0.121
>> NEBR 1,768,331 2 2 1 3 2 10 0.113
>> CONN 3,504,809 4 2 5 3 5 19 0.108
>> TENN 6,038,803 3 4 7 10 7 31 0.103
>> SDAK 781,919 1 1 1 0 1 4 0.102
>> WVIR 1,818,470 1 1 4 2 1 9 0.099
>> VERM 623,908 1 1 1 0 0 3 0.096
>> RHOD 1,067,610 1 1 0 1 1 4 0.075
>>
>> total 299,398,484 665 629 727 786 773 3,580 0.239
>>
>> * = average
>>
>> State pedalcyclist fatalities from:
>>
>> http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/1_AL/2006/1...
>>
>> 2006 state populations from
>>
>> http://geography.about.com/od/lists/a/statepop.htm
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.
>>
>> The 4-letter state abbreviations are whimsical, but easier for most
>> people to follow.
>>
>> Including the District of Columbia is not a plea for statehood, but
>> rather mindless thoroughness and a lack of statistics for Puerto Rico,
>> Guam, and others.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Carl Fogel
>
>Very interesting. Particularly the part about the state abbreviations
>(+ Iowa and Utah!) being a conscious decision. I thought it was a cut-
>n-paste anomaly.
>
>But more to the point, how do they figure VMT for bikes? Or for other
>vehicles for that matter? I wonder what the figures look like broken
>down by distance ridden per rider. In other words, do riders who ride
>1000 miles per year have accidents 10 times as often as riders who
>ride 100 per year?
>
>Joseph
Dear Joseph,
The Vehicle Miles Traveled is for cars, probably calculated using the
methods that Robert Chung explained.
In the U.S., Bicycle Miles Traveled would probably as mushy as
Pedestrian Miles Traveled.
Accidents per mile per type of rider are open to wild speculation.
The more you ride, the more you're exposed to an extremely tiny risk.
Ken Kifer, for example, rode a lot and was killed by a drunk driver.
But _how_ you ride is probably more important than how _far_ you ride.
Drunk bicyclists appear on about a third of the autopsy tables. (I
have yet to see an RBT post about how poor old so-and-so was killed
when he got plastered and wobbled out into the intersection against
the light.)
Women are even safer bicyclists than they are drivers. (Women are
almost as rare as drunk riders on RBT. They drive and ride far more
sensibly and safely than us. I used to flunk student essays about
awful women drivers with a note for the young men to re-write their
essays after comparing insurance rates with a few women in the class.)
Speed is probably a bad thing. (The faster you go on a bicycle, the
more you must resemble a motorcycle, which fares poorly. Many RBT and
RBR riders forget that they're trying to double the speed of typical
bicyclists.)
Playing in traffic is undoubtedly a bad thing. (Watch a messenger race
video of reckless riding in traffic and remember that it's just an
exaggeration of an all-too-common attitude. Bicyclists and
motorcyclists frequently do things in traffic that would outrage them
if a car did the same thing. We want to be treated with absolute
respect at all times, but some of us reserve the right to roll through
stop signs, jump traffic lights, sneak down one-way streets the wrong
way, leap on and off curbs, cut corners wildly, squeeze between lines
of vehicles in traffic, swerve past cars much closer than we'd let
them swerve around us, and go so much slower than the flow of traffic
that we'd be pulled over and ticketed if we were cars. Of course, no
one on RBT has ever does any of this.)
But the chief point is that bicycle deaths are amazingly rare.
Here's Pueblo County's pedal-powered death toll for the past few
years, population over 100,000:
year pedalcyclist
fatalities
2002 0
2003 0
2004 0
2005 0
2006 0
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/8_CO/2006/Counties/Colorado_Pueblo%20County_2006.HTM
In a related thread, Frank Krygowski points out that some of the rare
deaths being mapped in the San Francisco area involve bicyclists who
died of heart attacks while riding.
Frank's comment describes the last poor devil who died on a bike in
Pueblo that I remember. He was a very tall fellow (7 feet, I think)
who rode a custom-frame bike to work at the hospital (bike commuters
are rare here) and for pleasure down on bike path where I ride.
He was found dead next to his bike in the cottonwoods along the river.
The reporter was going to add that he wasn't wearing a helmet until
the autopsy showed that the cause of death was not a bicycle crash,
but an aortic aneurysm that gave way, probably the result of the
genetics that led to his unusual height.
We tend to search for patterns and explanations, even where none
exist. An often-quoted study of U.S. bomber crew injuries seemed to
show that ball-turret gunners were safer, which made sense--they were
curled up, presenting a smaller target area, enclosed in a metal ball,
and protected on either side by the thick breeches of their machine
guns.
Alas, the chief protection of the ball turret gunner turned out to be
the fact that in the B-24 planes in the study, the ball turret had
been removed:
"The lowest incidence of casualties appears to occur in the ball
turret gunner’s position. This was partially due to the fact that only
one of the two types of aircraft (B-17) carried a man in that combat
position."
Similarly, waist gunners seemed to be horribly vulnerable, standing
upright in front of open gun ports, so it made sense that they had the
worst casualty rates . . .
Except that there were usually _two_ waist gunners, providing twice
the exposure as the one-man crew positions:
"The high casualty rate for waist gunners was partially due to the
fact that heavy bombers frequently carried two waist gunners. This
practice was discontinued to a large extent, but accurate information
as to the frequency with which aircrews included two waist gunners
during the survey was not known."
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/woundblstcs/chapter9.1.htm
Apart from illustrating how tricky it can be to count things
correctly, those two examples point out how hard it is to count things
at all. The U.S. Army Air Force was desperately interested in what was
happening, but couldn't even say whether the planes in the small study
had one or two waist gunners or even had a ball turret.
And that was for deaths happening at rates enormously higher than any
traffic accident statistics.
If anything, bicycle deaths resemble bayonet casualties. The British
and French emphasized bayonet training throughout the First World War,
but the Germans didn't even bother to keep track of bayonet casualties
because they amounted to less than 1% of the total. See Mosier, "Myth
of the Great War" for details.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
|
| | | |
Date: 24 Sep 2007 14:39:16
From: still me
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:36:55 -0600, carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
>Women are even safer bicyclists than they are drivers.
Women don't get in as many accidents in cars, but they do just leave a
trail of wreckage strewn behind them from the havoc they cause for
other vehicles.
|
| | | | |
Date: 24 Sep 2007 08:26:20
From: SMS
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
still me wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:36:55 -0600, carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
>
>> Women are even safer bicyclists than they are drivers.
>
> Women don't get in as many accidents in cars, but they do just leave a
> trail of wreckage strewn behind them from the havoc they cause for
> other vehicles.
Unfortunately, accident statistics are about who's involved in
accidents, not who causes them. I doubt if it's true about women, but in
the case of elderly drivers, I've seen it first hand. Vehicles
desperately trying to avoid a collision with an impaired driver crashing
into each other, while the person who caused the accident has no idea
that anything ever happened.
|
| | | |
Date: 23 Sep 2007 18:26:30
From: Doug Taylor
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:36:55 -0600, carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
>Frank's comment describes the last poor devil who died on a bike in
You know the saying, and anybody who has experienced the death of a
parent or loved one via such diseases as cancer or Alzheimer's will
attest: he was not a poor devil but a lucky bastard dying doing
something he loved. I'll a heart attack on a bike, on skis, on
skates, or maybe even doing what Nelson Rockefeller was over lingering
suffering. I doubt there would be much disagreement on this, even in
the contentious milieu of rbt.
Being taken out by an errant auto or truck is another matter, of
course. Cyclist broadsides into autos driven by stop-sign-running
drivers (who "didn't see" the cyclist) haven't resulted in any deaths
that I know of in my area, but there have been 3 or 4 incidents in the
past few years in our cycling club alone which have resulted in
shattered hip/collar bone/elbow/ankle, not to mention trashed bikes
(and not only carbon fiber ones).
|
| | | | |
Date: 23 Sep 2007 19:42:15
From: A Muzi
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
> carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
>> Frank's comment describes the last poor devil who died on a bike in
Doug Taylor wrote:
> You know the saying, and anybody who has experienced the death of a
> parent or loved one via such diseases as cancer or Alzheimer's will
> attest: he was not a poor devil but a lucky bastard dying doing
> something he loved. I'll a heart attack on a bike, on skis, on
> skates, or maybe even doing what Nelson Rockefeller was over lingering
> suffering. I doubt there would be much disagreement on this, even in
> the contentious milieu of rbt.
>
> Being taken out by an errant auto or truck is another matter, of
> course. Cyclist broadsides into autos driven by stop-sign-running
> drivers (who "didn't see" the cyclist) haven't resulted in any deaths
> that I know of in my area, but there have been 3 or 4 incidents in the
> past few years in our cycling club alone which have resulted in
> shattered hip/collar bone/elbow/ankle, not to mention trashed bikes
> (and not only carbon fiber ones).
Agreed. To the larger question, no one gets out alive.
So why not ride your bike now while you can?
Sitting home in fear might extend your life on average a day or 2 but to
what gain really?
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971
|
| | | | | |
Date: 23 Sep 2007 20:16:46
From: Tim McNamara
Subject: Re: 2002 to 2006 pedalcyclist fatalities by state / 100k
|
In article <13fe1t3ph1mrj38@corp.supernews.com >,
A Muzi <am@yellowjersey.org > wrote:
> To the larger question, no one gets out alive.
>
> So why not ride your bike now while you can?
Amen!
|
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