[flickr]photo:7532335050[/flickr]
This is another data-intensive post. For the tl;dr version, read only the introduction and conclusion sections. Photo by Mike Travis.
Jeremy Gaines asked on the Chicaogist reblog of our Monday article (about Chicago cyclists crashing less often than those in the suburbs):
[Since we only have data about how often people bike for work purposes and crash data accounts for people who are biking for any purpose,] wouldn’t the large majority of total miles traveled be racked up those who commute regularly on bikes?
That’s a good question and I don’t know if there’s enough existing data to answer it. It came after the Chicagoist article and discussion board made it seem like bike commuters had a greater than 10% likelihood of being in a crash, and a 1% likelihood of dying or receiving an incapacitating injury (with chances greater in the suburbs). I replied that one could not make these assumptions based on the data available.
Gaines is a student at Northwestern University in Evanston. He doesn’t bike because he lives so close to everything he needs; when I inquired about his motivation to leave the comment, he replied: “I suppose a headline about bike safety caught my eye, even if it doesn’t apply to me. Plus biking, being green and efficient urban space usage, means that I support it, even if I don’t do it.”
The reason this question is important is because in my original article, I calculated the number of crashes per bicyclist (the crash rate) based on two different data sets, and the likelihood of being in a crash is most likely not 10%:
- The crash data set doesn’t care about the crashed bicyclist’s trip purpose
- The ridership data set cares only about trips to work
Let’s see if there’s more data we can work with to gauge bicyclist safety in the city.
Continue reading Follow up: Do 10% of bike commuters really crash each year?