Silicon Valley Cyclist

As promised, here’s the list of the “most dangerous” countries for cycling. It’s not an easy thing to draw conclusions from because the data is only comparing bike accidents versus other types of transportation accidents – car, motorcycle, pedestrian.

I don’t think you can draw any conclusions beyond this: the more people who rides bikes, the more accidents we’ll see. That’s why the Netherlands has such a high percentage compared to other accidents.

Does that mean it’s more dangerous to ride a bike in Holland than it is in the U.S.? I don’t think so.

What does seem dangerous though is riding in Japan, which has a large number of fatalities for its population. (Data from the 2008-2009 International Road Traffic and Accident Database)

Country	Fatalities	% of all road user fatalities
Netherlands	138	21.4
Japan	933	16.2
Denmark	54	13.3
Hungary	109	10.9
Germany	456	10.2
Czech Rep.	84	9.3
Belgium	86	9.1
Poland	371	8.1
UK	117	4.1
USA	716	1.9

On a side note, my mother almost nailed a cyclist while driving in Denver. She was turning right when a rider came flying by into the intersection off a sidewalk.

I had just gotten through telling my mother how dangerous it is to ride on a sidewalk. The cyclist took the sidewalk to avoid the train underpass.

You are much safer sharing the road than riding on the sidewalk!

This entry was posted on August 23, 2010 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Commute Adviser. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.