# Are the safety stats misleading ?



## kingrollo (29 Dec 2017)

So what do we know:-


In the uk about 100-120 cyclists per year are killed on uk roads
There is a formula that calculates 1 cycling death per 2 million miles travelled (I think)

Then there is the alarming figure of serious injuries while cycling - this is currently an upward trend about about 3,000 per year, which puts us pretty close to motorcyclists (But then again a broken leg etc is counted as a serious injury.) 

Living in the West Midlands there have been at least 3 deaths in 6 months - 2 of which are routes I regularly ride - and wouldn't strike me a dangerous roads.

I think it was Chris Boardman who said recently, that whilst the stats are very much in the cyclists favour (perhaps with exception of serious injuries) - However he also said 'it doesn't feel that safe' .

I sometimes wonder if stats understates the risks of regular cycling ? - Thoughts ..

(Slow work day !!!)


----------



## vickster (29 Dec 2017)

You might find this interesting

https://www.gicentre.net/blog/2013/11/24/risk-cycling-and-denominator-neglect


----------



## Tailendman (29 Dec 2017)

Just been looking at the data from Travel in London report 9, and the trend is much improved. Whilst cycling has increased 60% since 2005, the rate of fatalities has decreased by 46%. So at least it is getting safer. Not sure of the reasons why. Super highways? slower traffic or softer car front ends?


----------



## kingrollo (29 Dec 2017)

Tailendman said:


> Just been looking at the data from Travel in London report 9, and the trend is much improved. Whilst cycling has increased 60% since 2005, the rate of fatalities has decreased by 46%. So at least it is getting safer. Not sure of the reasons why. Super highways? slower traffic or softer car front ends?



Looking the comments from the article raises an interesting point. The skill of paramedics ,A&E staff, surgeons etc is improving all the time - so the chances of surviving an incident increase. The hidden stat may be that the chances of having an accident in the first place are actually increasing.


----------



## BoldonLad (29 Dec 2017)

kingrollo said:


> Looking the comments from the article raises an interesting point. The skill of paramedics ,A&E staff, surgeons etc is improving all the time - so the chances of surviving an incident increase. The hidden stat may be that the chances of having an accident in the first place are actually increasing.



And, what may have been a fatality, becomes, a serious injury


----------



## srw (29 Dec 2017)

kingrollo said:


> The hidden stat may be that the chances of having an accident in the first place are actually increasing.



It's not. And the evidence is there to prove it.

HTH.


----------



## mjr (29 Dec 2017)

The stats aren't misleading but you should always take care that they're measuring what you think they're measuring. Often, politicians set a target and things get optimised for reducing that measure instead of what may have been desired... for example, one route to zero cycling casualties is to ban cycling everywhere, but only one political party has put more cycling bans in their manifesto recently, because doing so obviously would add massive costs to the NHS.


----------



## kingrollo (29 Dec 2017)

srw said:


> It's not. And the evidence is there to prove it.
> 
> HTH.



Sorry do you mean its not hidden ? - or chances of having an accident are not increasing ?


----------



## srw (29 Dec 2017)

kingrollo said:


> Sorry do you mean its not hidden ? - or chances of having an accident are not increasing ?


The chances of having an accident are not increasing. 

Road safety now is better than it has been since the invention if the bicycle.


----------



## kingrollo (29 Dec 2017)

srw said:


> The chances of having an accident are not increasing.
> 
> Road safety now is better than it has been since the invention if the bicycle.



But the figure for serious injuries is higher than its even been


----------



## byegad (29 Dec 2017)

I trained as a Mathematician and did a module on Statistics. The first thing I learnt was that by careful choice of criteria you can make stat's prove almost anything. Adding a couple of corrections can help prove a spurious case too!

I'm particularly sceptical about cycling stat's for two reasons.

1. Many children fall of bikes and hurt themselves while doing things most adults don't attempt. So the figures tend to get skewed unless this is factored out!

2. Some years ago while rummaging in the shed for some gear I managed to pull one pedal off a hook and was promptly smacked in the forehead ny the other one, which was attached to the first by some string. Within seconds I had blood in both eyes and could see nothing. At A&E they cleaned me up and superglued the relatively minor cut on my forehead. Then the fun started.
How did you injure yourself? Hit my head with a pedal.
Were you wearing a helmet? In the shed? you're joking, anyway the cut is well below where my helmet comes to.
So it was a cycling accident then? At which point I got shirty and ended up demanding why they were wanting to record this as a cycling accident? If I'd hit my head with an aeroplane propellor would be a case for the Air Accident Investigation team, etc. etc.
The A&E sister was called who informed me, no matter what I said, it would go down as a cycling accident.

So I'd really want to see their criteria, calculations and raw data before I got upset by any Statistics on road accident. A quick example. If I trip in the street and bang my head on a nearby parked car is it a vehicle collision????


----------



## Slick (29 Dec 2017)

Damn lies and statistics can be moulded to suit anyone's agenda. We all have our own personal view of risk and how we deal with it, and that's probably about right. My level of risk with my type of riding in my environment is highly unlikely to match perfectly with anyone else's. I do get a bit dismayed when guys at work seem to assume that if I continue to cycle at certain times in certain places it's only a matter of time before I'm involved in an incident, like it's inevitable. Other side of the coin is on one stretch whereby I can feel my level of concern growing as cars seem to get faster and closer. I take what I believe to be sensible precautions although that's probably a whole other thread for some, and take the stats with a pinch if salt.


----------



## Will Spin (29 Dec 2017)

One thing to bear in mind is that whatever risk is apparent through the interpretation of statistics, part of that risk is in fact controllable. What I mean is that the behaviour of individual cyclists can increase or decrease their chances of having an accident.


----------



## srw (29 Dec 2017)

User said:


> Increased recording, particularly in hospitals.


And increased numbers of riders.


----------



## MichaelW2 (29 Dec 2017)

I think the accident stats for cyclists are skewed.
Using casualties per million miles, I'm pretty sure that space travel is the safest form of transportation, followed by submarine. If the casualties were measured as per million hours, the numbers woukd be more comparable.
Cycling crashes include lots of child, stunt and sport riding. Do car crashes that happen on the racetrack count towards car stats? Do freeclimbing injuries count towards pedestrisn injuries?


----------



## boydj (29 Dec 2017)

[QUOTE 5095472, member: 9609"]yes I think the stats are greatly misleading, I'm sure the gov want us all to think cycling is super safe, they need people to cycle for a whole host of good reasons including health and enviroment - so the very last thing they want people to know is it is very dangerous or they would need to spend serious money and start enforcing road laws which would upset too many people.

I did I little survey a while ago,
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/cycling-injury-survey.222247/
and yes I accept it could have been worded better and maybe those injured were more likely to respond, but then again those injured who just simple give up cycling probably give up on CC and never seen the question to answer,

*31% of us had received some sort of injury in the last 12 months.*
cycling on our roads is a very dangerous thing to do.[/QUOTE]

There's no way you can extrapolate that from a self-selecting survey of cycling enthusiasts, and it's clearly at odds with all the official stats.


----------



## mjr (29 Dec 2017)

The headline casualty numbers we see tend to be the police reports.

There's another dataset, the hospital episode statistics, which includes lots of cases (such as the aforementioned shed head hit) which aren't in the police reports but maybe shouldn't be included in any consideration. It does also include some that should, such as collisions that both parties fail to report to the police because they feel they may be at fault and risk prosecution, or there are allegations that some constabularies won't accept reports of bike- bike collisions unless someone dies.

So the true figure is probably between the police and hospital numbers somewhere. We know the figures are probably wrong but that doesn't mean they're useless. It's still a useful estimate and better than nothing.


----------



## Tailendman (30 Dec 2017)

Just to add some hard facts the Travel in London report 10 showed serious and slight injury data as well. 
The figures for serious and fatal showed an increase of 8% over the last 10 years ( 454 versus 421). The slight injuries showed a 46% increase (3,970 vs 2719).
and to remind you 61% increase in cycling based on cycle stages (average daily cycle stages and trips is the number of cyclists crossing a set of three strategic traffic counting cordons). 
I don't think anywhere else has such robust figures.


----------



## byegad (30 Dec 2017)

User said:


> Increased recording, particularly in hospitals.


See my previous post!


----------



## Drago (30 Dec 2017)

Stats are never misleading. It's the manner of selection, comparison and presentation that misleads. The term "statistically significant" is also misleading, in that it does not actually mean what the two words would otherwise mean in the English language.


----------



## PK99 (30 Dec 2017)

Drago said:


> Stats are never misleading. It's the manner of selection, comparison and presentation that misleads. The term "statistically significant" is also misleading, in that it does not actually mean what the two words would otherwise mean in the English language.



"Lies, damned lies and statistics"

is a complete misnomer

"Liars, damned liars and those who misuse statistics"

is a little closer to the truth.


----------



## kingrollo (30 Dec 2017)

Tailendman said:


> Just to add some hard facts the Travel in London report 10 showed serious and slight injury data as well.
> The figures for serious and fatal showed an increase of 8% over the last 10 years ( 454 versus 421). The slight injuries showed a 46% increase (3,970 vs 2719).
> and to remind you 61% increase in cycling based on cycle stages (average daily cycle stages and trips is the number of cyclists crossing a set of three strategic traffic counting cordons).
> I don't think anywhere else has such robust figures.



From that would you conclude that cycling in London is getting more dangerous or less dangerous.


----------



## kingrollo (30 Dec 2017)

Some great points folks.
On balance it would seem that cycling on uk roads isn't as safe as the stats that we are presented with ?


----------



## Fab Foodie (30 Dec 2017)

kingrollo said:


> From that would you conclude that cycling in London is getting more dangerous or less dangerous.


Less.


----------



## Slick (30 Dec 2017)

kingrollo said:


> Some great points folks.
> On balance it would seem that cycling on uk roads isn't as safe as the stats that we are presented with ?


I usually find that stats are just stats until you or a loved one become one.


----------



## Fab Foodie (31 Dec 2017)

kingrollo said:


> Some great points folks.
> On balance it would seem that cycling on uk roads isn't as safe as the stats that we are presented with ?


I’m not sure how you get to that conclusion?


----------



## Slick (31 Dec 2017)

Fab Foodie said:


> I’m not sure how you get to that conclusion?


Same as everyone else, read the stats and make them say whatever you like.


----------



## MontyVeda (31 Dec 2017)

Fab Foodie said:


> I’m not sure how you get to that conclusion?


i think he'd come to it before starting the thread.


----------



## Slick (31 Dec 2017)

MontyVeda said:


> i think he'd come to it before starting the thread.


----------



## MontyVeda (31 Dec 2017)

[QUOTE 5098040, member: 9609"]so do you believe the stats that show there is only one injury of any severity whilst cycling for every 200,000 miles ridden?

I have no idea if cycling is safer or more dangerous that it was years ago, I suspect more cyclists protect themselves better now with brighter clothing, lights, and helmets etc, but that may or may not of been outweighed by busier roads and a more hostile attitude from drivers? My beef is with the stats that just don't seem to add up to the real world. Just follow CC, 1000 regular posters? and not a week goes by without one of us coming a cropper. that would suggest a 1:20 chance of some sort of cycling related injury this coming year (1:40,000 miles?)

I suspect the big anomaly in cycling stats is the amount of miles that are claimed to be ridden. Unlike cars/waggons etc where mileage can be fairly accurately calculated, cycling miles can't. Loads of people who ride a bit in the summer then probably claim to ride most weeks.[/QUOTE]
i think you're putting far too much faith in a 'survey' conducted on a forum that the vast majority of cyclists aren't aware exists.


----------



## kingrollo (31 Dec 2017)

Fab Foodie said:


> I’m not sure how you get to that conclusion?



It was only a tentative conclusion - hence the '?'


----------



## kingrollo (31 Dec 2017)

[QUOTE 5098040, member: 9609"]so do you believe the stats that show there is only one injury of any severity whilst cycling for every 200,000 miles ridden?

I have no idea if cycling is safer or more dangerous that it was years ago, I suspect more cyclists protect themselves better now with brighter clothing, lights, and helmets etc, but that may or may not of been outweighed by busier roads and a more hostile attitude from drivers? My beef is with the stats that just don't seem to add up to the real world. Just follow CC, 1000 regular posters? and not a week goes by without one of us coming a cropper. that would suggest a 1:20 chance of some sort of cycling related injury this coming year (1:40,000 miles?)

I suspect the big anomaly in cycling stats is the amount of miles that are claimed to be ridden. Unlike cars/waggons etc where mileage can be fairly accurately calculated, cycling miles can't. Loads of people who ride a bit in the summer then probably claim to ride most weeks.[/QUOTE]

I had my own incident with a car in November. Thankfully I wasn't hurt. I suffer with anxiety and depression anyway. Pretty much as above I read the stats, but then that doesn't ring true in the real world. 3 cyclists have been killed since September in and around where I live and work. 2 of those casualties are roads I use regularly. 
Youre point about miles travelled is good one - not something I have thought of - I wonder if now we have strava could we get more accurate stats from that in future ?


----------



## srw (31 Dec 2017)

[QUOTE 5098040, member: 9609"]so do you believe the stats that show there is only one injury of any severity whilst cycling for every 200,000 miles ridden?[/QUOTE]
The stat is one _reported_ injury per 200,000 miles. That will exclude most of the minor things we all get from time to time - ankles bashed against pedals, bruise from coming off on ice or gravel, cut finger while fettling - which are of no real relevance to any risk assessment.


----------



## Fab Foodie (31 Dec 2017)

kingrollo said:


> It was only a tentative conclusion - hence the '?'


But based on which data? That posted here suggests the opposite, a small rise in injury for a large rise in cycling.


----------



## kingrollo (31 Dec 2017)

Fab Foodie said:


> But based on which data? That posted here suggests the opposite, a small rise in injury for a large rise in cycling.



Based on the many reasons posted that the stats are out of step with real world.


----------



## MontyVeda (31 Dec 2017)

kingrollo said:


> Based on the many reasons posted that the stats are out of step with real world.


I'm racking my brains trying to think of a recent cyclist death locally... and in over 40 years, I've never had a cycling incident worthy of reporting to the police or a trip to A&E... so my 'real world' is different to your 'real world'.


----------



## kingrollo (31 Dec 2017)

MontyVeda said:


> I'm racking my brains trying to think of a recent cyclist death locally... and in over 40 years, I've never had a cycling incident worthy of reporting to the police or a trip to A&E... so my 'real world' is different to your 'real world'.



Of course it is. As I posted earlier I was hit by a car in November - and there have been 3 cycling deaths where I live and work since September. I am not expecting you to replicate that.


----------



## mjr (1 Jan 2018)

kingrollo said:


> Of course it is. As I posted earlier I was hit by a car in November - and there have been 3 cycling deaths where I live and work since September. I am not expecting you to replicate that.


With only something like 110 cycling deaths a year nationally, it's unusual to have 3 nearby. Is it an area that's especially busy like London or shoot for cycling like the West Midlands?


----------



## kingrollo (1 Jan 2018)

mjr said:


> With only something like 110 cycling deaths a year nationally, it's unusual to have 3 nearby. Is it an area that's especially busy like London or shoot for cycling like the West Midlands?



Yeah, you got it - West Midlands !


----------



## machew (1 Jan 2018)

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/01/30/numbers_dont_always_tell_the_whole_story.html


----------



## Siclo (4 Jan 2018)

I've a question with the injuries per x number of miles thing. The number of injuries comes from hospital records, where does the mileage come from?


----------



## mjr (4 Jan 2018)

Siclo said:


> I've a question with the injuries per x number of miles thing. The number of injuries comes from hospital records, where does the mileage come from?


I think the number of casualties usually comes from police records, not hospitals (I think I've written about that above) and I think the mileage most often comes from the National Travel Survey - but basically dig into any time someone mentions cycling casualty rates per mile and they should be able to tell you where they're getting the mileage from.

There are often problems with using the NTS for cycling estimates, both due to the small sample size and classifying journeys where you used something else for a greater distance as "train" or "car" or whatever and ignoring the cycling in some measures BUT those problems are pretty consistent over time, so you can compare the casualties per mile over time and between areas unless told of a method change which means you shouldn't.


----------



## mjr (4 Jan 2018)

For example, the latest https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/travel-in-london-reports (number 10) says on page 57 that their cycling mileage is taken from the London Travel Demand Survey. If only more local government collected such detailed data. Norfolk has been decommissioning their counters recently, so we're going from poor data to less of it!


----------



## Siclo (4 Jan 2018)

Thanks @mjr


----------



## jefmcg (18 Jan 2018)

User said:


> The injury stats come from NHS records. It’s part of the standard reporting primary and secondary care are required to make. The data is very patchy.


That has to be true. The average copper is not known as a diagnostician, so won't be able to record a serious injury.


----------



## mjr (18 Jan 2018)

jefmcg said:


> That has to be true. The average copper is not known as a diagnostician, so won't be able to record a serious injury.


They use a very simplistic method which is described in some document on gov.uk but IIRC boils down to serious meaning being taken to hospital or a few other visible injuries and all else being minor or killed.

Reg is correct that there are injury stats from hospitals, but I think they're not as widely used, partly because they're patchier. I've yet to see my local public health department use them at all.


----------



## gaijintendo (19 Jan 2018)

User said:


> I think the confusion comes from the fact that the main database, STATS19, is administered by the police. However, the data in there comes from a variety of sources,
> 
> The police data in STATS19 provides data on things like the types of vehicles involved, what roads they were on and the consequent casualties.
> 
> The details around the types of injuries treated and clinical outcomes come from the NHS data which is fed into STATS19.



Just a health warning for any NHS reporting... 

That data might be gathered by audit (people reporting particular events, Which is generally of good quality but can be under reported), or it can be gleaned from operational data.

Operational data doesn't exist to give accurate statistics, but merely move people from ward to ward, get them their meds, and operations. Those too are subject to errors, but more endemic than an audit. If you are searching on a term, it might not be labelled correctly or systematically one hospital might use a different terminology. It could contain coded items, free text... any number of inaccuracies. 

Given the drive for insights, banks of humans review data to bend it to reality. With a growing backlog, and little clarity, things often don't even get a bit closer.

Then the assumption is, the data is handled, extracted, cropped by appropriate cohort with all the correct kind of joins then reassembled in a national dataset... with extreme professionalism and accuracy at each step?

So, you know...NHS data... It's as good a guess as anyone could make.


----------



## mjr (26 Jan 2018)

User said:


> I think the confusion comes from the fact that the main database, STATS19, is administered by the police. However, the data in there comes from a variety of sources, [...] The details around the types of injuries treated and clinical outcomes come from the NHS data which is fed into STATS19.


I asked the county analyst responsible "is the data only from the police, or does hospital data get into it?" and got this reply: "CRASH data, as was the case with STATS19, comes exclusively from the Police. Hospitals have their own system for recording admissions known as HES (Hospital Episode Statistics) which is not linked to CRASH. Efforts have been made in the past to connect the two data sets, but this has proven to be almost impossible due to NHS data protection policies."

Maybe it happens in some parts of the country, but not in Norfolk and almost certainly not in Suffolk (which shares a roads policing unit).


----------



## Mr Bunbury (26 Jan 2018)

kingrollo said:


> So what do we know:-
> 
> 
> In the uk about 100-120 cyclists per year are killed on uk roads
> ...



It's alarming ... and completely wrong. The government statistics given below show 26 deaths per billion cyclist kilometres. That works out as one cyclist death per *24 million miles*. You're out by a factor of twelve. 

Passenger casualty rates for different modes of travel - GOV.UK


----------



## kingrollo (28 Jan 2018)

Mr Bunbury said:


> It's alarming ... and completely wrong. The government statistics given below show 26 deaths per billion cyclist kilometres. That works out as one cyclist death per *24 million miles*. You're out by a factor of twelve.
> 
> Passenger casualty rates for different modes of travel - GOV.UK



It wasn't deaths that I referred to as alarming - its the increase in serious injuries, which multiple reports show are rising


----------



## jarlrmai (30 Jan 2018)

mjr said:


> I asked the county analyst responsible "is the data only from the police, or does hospital data get into it?" and got this reply: "CRASH data, as was the case with STATS19, comes exclusively from the Police. Hospitals have their own system for recording admissions known as HES (Hospital Episode Statistics) which is not linked to CRASH. Efforts have been made in the past to connect the two data sets, but this has proven to be almost impossible due to NHS data protection policies."
> 
> Maybe it happens in some parts of the country, but not in Norfolk and almost certainly not in Suffolk (which shares a roads policing unit).



There's anecdote on these forums about a guy who bashed his head on a pedal while fixing his bike in the shed, the nurse asked if he was wearing a helmet, so that might have been recorded as a cycling accident.


----------



## srw (5 Feb 2018)

kingrollo said:


> It wasn't deaths that I referred to as alarming - its the increase in serious injuries, which multiple reports show are rising


Apart from the one you're replying to...






Sorry to be a pedant, but that doesn't show serious injuries rising. It shows serious injuries as pretty static from 2006 - 2010 and again pretty static from 2011 - 2015.

There are any number of things that could cause this, but top of my list would be a one-off change in methodology of collecting or collating the stats in 2011.

Two other things to bear in mind. First, "serious injuries" in the technical sense aren't actually necessarily "serious" in the colloquial sense. When Mrs W was knocked off her bike and admitted to hospital because she'd been kept waiting in A&E for 4 hours - the hospital didn't want to bugger up their A&E targets - that counted as a "serious injury" even though she walked out of hospital the same day and was pain-free within a couple of weeks. Second, the denominator of the rate - the distance cycled - is incredibly difficult to measure, and the ONS have said that it's possibly unreliable - under-reporting quite a lot. 

Oh, and of course 650 per billion kilometres is tiny. Absolutely minute. It's one per 1.5 million kilometres. Steve Abraham is trying to ride 120,000 km in one year, at a pace of something over 300km _per day_. If he did that every year it would still take him 12.5 years to ride 1.5 million km.


----------



## kingrollo (6 Feb 2018)

srw said:


> Apart from the one you're replying to...
> View attachment 394643
> 
> 
> ...



Yes I think life changing injuries would be a better measure.


----------



## byegad (6 Feb 2018)

jarlrmai said:


> There's anecdote on these forums about a guy who bashed his head on a pedal while fixing his bike in the shed, the nurse asked if he was wearing a helmet, so that might have been recorded as a cycling accident.



It was I and yes they recorded it as a cycling accident. Much to my annoyance!


----------



## MontyVeda (6 Feb 2018)

byegad said:


> It was I and yes they recorded it as a cycling accident. Much to my annoyance!


I'd be annoyed too... but the mileage from the anecdote... priceless 

[edited for grammar]


----------



## byegad (6 Feb 2018)

MontyVeda said:


> I'd annoyed too... but the mileage from the anecdote... priceless



I never hold a grudge too long, twenty years after I'm safely dead will be enough!


----------



## mjr (22 May 2018)

Continuing from elsewhere as instructed by a mod:


Profpointy said:


> I don't understand the logic of "per time" for a journey, else you could make the journey "safer" simply by driving faster to reduce the time exposed. This makes no sense whatsoever.


Clearly, there's some sort of implied assumption that people won't put themselves in danger with their speed, but for a reasonably prudent traveller, it might well be safer to take the route where you can travel faster if that means being exposed to dangerous motorists (who outnumber even you driving, no matter how safe your own driving) for less time... but there's probably also some threshold speed for each mode of transport, above which safety decreases faster than the time you'd save.

However, I think most cyclists are travelling almost as fast as they feel is safe already, so speeding them up much without route improvements would cross that threshold and decrease safety - but it still feels like it's relevant for comparing a reasonably prudent cyclist with a reasonably prudent motorist to compare a 20 minute cycle with a 20 minute drive, or to compare "per trip stage" figures.

Of all the comparisons we could make, per mile may be the second worst (after absolute numbers) for cycling and walking. In urban areas, the distance travelled may be similar, but per mile statistics are probably skewed by a fairly small number of extremely long distance journeys.


----------



## User10119 (22 May 2018)

Similarly, copied from elsewhere....
[QUOTE 5252288, member: 45"]If you're cycling for an hour on the roads you're exposed to the risk from cars for twice the amount of time as if you were cycling for 30 minutes, *all other things being equal*. How safely you were cycling only has an effect if it was different in the two scenarios. We're not talking about the same distance in both.[/QUOTE]
(my *bold*)
@Profpointy - is someone driving on the motorway for an hour at an average 70mph as dangerous/in as much danger as someone driving for 30 minutes at an average 140mph, for each of those minutes? They've covered the same distance, but not in the same way.

If someone were to set off from my house to drive to my mam's they'd be there in about 20 minutes. If I set off to cycle the same route (note, I've only ever attempted said route once on a bike and I gave up and headed for the lanes about 3/4s of the way there because enough people had finished their Christmas lunch for the traffic conditions to be getting pretty unfriendly by that point) it would take me, I'd estimate, about an hour and a half*. I have friends who could easily do the same journey on their bikes in half the time. Would they be exposed to the same risk as me over that distance?

I guess neither metric is perfect. But someone setting off to do 70 miles in a car would probably expect the journey to take somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half, depending on the nature of the route and how strictly they observe speed limits, whereas most people (leaving out the well'ard audax types that can keep up imperial evens all day) setting off to a 70 mile bike ride would be looking on it as a nice day ride. Or a Mission Impossible, currently, for those such as me who have lost all their fitness and gained too much lard  In that time they would, just to think of the most obvious difference, be likely to have far more interactions with other road users.


*although in my fitter days I did once do the slightly longer, much nicer, route in about an hour and 15 minutes - ah, happy halcyon days


----------

