Road accident statistics

[drdoug]

I've lost the original source for this, but road accident fatalities in the
UK have dropped dramatically over the period 2000-2013. I think I heard
that they had started to climb again recently, which is what prompted me to
go get this graph.

Good news!

Comments

[steer]

I knew the stats were down but I had no idea how much. Given those graphs I wonder why cyclists are so vocal about their safety when it looks an extremely safe mode by comparison?

[drdoug]

The stats are great, aren't they? And I'm pretty sure they'd gone down considerably before 2000 as well. In my head 5,000 people die on the roads every year but it's well under 2,000

[drdoug]

The second link I posted as an edit has (on page 4) the stats divided by miles travelled. It shows that for injuries, bicycles are (relatively) very high risk, up there near motorcyclists. For fatalities, motorcycles are (relatively) very high risk - 3x the death rate of the next nearest (pedestrians). Bicycles are about the same risk per mile travelled as pedestrians, which is slightly surprising to me.

I think that experience in more cycling-intensive countries suggests that if mode share increased significantly the injury and fatality rate would fall. (Though not the absolute numbers of injuries and fatalities, of course.)

Right on the bottom, as ever, is fatalities for bus passengers - 100x safer per mile than walking or cycling. If you're worried about road safety, get the bus. (In the UK, at least.)

[drdoug]

From elsewhere in that report, I see that motorcycle fatalities (actual number) have more or less halved from a peak in 2003, while motorbike miles travelled has only reduced by 15-20% by rough eyeballing of the chart