Why Cycling is less risky than not Cycling

Cycle accidents have been in the news this week. Bradley Wiggins had a lucky escape and so did Shane Sutton. The question for me that follows these high profile accidents has to be is cycling dangerous? Turns out the answer is ermm, no not really, and the benefits of the exercise far outweigh the risks of riding the bike. So that's not what we hear is it?

This is an interesting table   if you like me, like data of course, it shows relative risks of death of a few sports and pastimes. Now its a bit out of date (1986) but I'll bet it hasn't changed that much.

	Climbing	137
	Motor sports	81
	Fishing	41
	Horse riding	29
	Swimming	7.0
	Athletics	5.7
	Football	4.9
	Tennis	4.2
	Cycling	1.0
Safer	Golf	0.83
	Rambling	0.06

I'm a climber. I climb about as often as I cycle and I have done both regularly for over 25 years. To be honest I feel safer when I climb than on a bike. Turns out I'm on average 137 times less safe climbing as I am on a bike. I do a few things to minimise the risks when climbing, I generally wear a helmet and I don't free solo many big routes any more, nor do I go on many glaciers but still. I bet I still run way more risks climbing than when cycling.

Here is another table that tries to quantify the risks of death against the benefits of the exercise. This is a bit more of a difficult one. If you are fit already and exercise regularly riding a bike is not going to make you live longer. You will of course do your bit to ease congestion and you may have fun and save on petrol. However if you are sedentary so you  take little or no exercise and you start riding a bike now we are in most definitely in business. The second table shows that the benefits of cycling massively outweigh the risks by somewhere between 13:1 and 35:1 it depends on the data set and I have ignored the report that claims a benefit of 415:1 as that seems plainly daft.

Now to get these benefits it's not enough to own a bike you have to ride it. If you can do half an hour three times a week or ideally five or more you are getting the benefits that the studies above claim. So a 15 minute commute of say a couple of miles would be perfect. You don't by the way need to ride like Wiggins we are talking gentle exercise here. Incidentally being overweight isn't really the problem as long as you exercise regularly. See this marvellous video for a good summary of the studies on the positive effects of exercise.

So the people who have most to gain from riding bikes are people who could ride them to work regularly, who are currently not doing much exercise. There are lots of people like this in the UK maybe as much as two thirds of the adult population and many in Harrogate. Harrogate lends itself to bikes, it is small and many people's commutes are relatively short. The good thing is once people become bike riders they tend to keep doing it. So how to get them to start? Well one of the reasons that comes up again and again is fear of the road network. Now as we have seen, oddly its safer than you think but how to remove the fear?

Well a start is to get more people doing it. Its bad enough doing something you think is dangerous it's much worse if you are on your own. Creating a cycle culture where it not seen as weird is a start, we are on to a winner here in Harrogate there are a fair few of cyclists already and not just leisure riders, you do see people using bikes to commute. So hopefully pointing out that you are better cycling than sitting down might be a start.

Employers and I mean large ones should do more. I think the Hospital in Harrogate should do more They could offer incentives, free breakfasts have worked in a few places and better safe cycle parking. It would help their terrible parking problem and impact positively on their sickness rates too. We have repeatedly asked them about this, the silence is deafening.

Next  better infrastructure this is the "build it and they will come" argument and that is where we will continue to lobby local government. Actively promoting the routes that exist would be a good start. Adult cycle training could be prescribed in the same way that GP's now prescribe trips to the gym and why not throw in a bike from one of the excellent recycling schemes that are springing up? Oh and try and finish the integrated network in Harrogate that is currently patchy and piecemeal. If people felt catered for and their mates were doing it people would feel more inclined to save themselves a bit of petrol money.

So if you have a bike but don't ride it because you think it dangerous and you don't get two and a half hours of exercise a week you would be safer on a bike.