Bikes are slower so you would expect them to cause even fewer accidents. 20% may not seem like it, but it suggests bikes riders are much worse at following the rules of the road than drivers.
In practice you actually see this with bike riders regularly ignoring red lights ect.
Cyclist here. A lot if drivers will be rude (or worse) to me on the road because of the sort of things you said. Based on most objective studies I've seen there is no real difference in the fraction of cyclists and drivers who regularly break the law. They break different laws, but I'd say drivers break the law in much more dangerous ways (e.g., speeding). Cyclists running red lights is a problem, but I can only think of a handful of times in my decade of cycling when a cyclist didn't check for oncoming traffic before going through a red light. In contrast I can think of more times off the top of my head when drivers blew through red lights without looking (most were obviously distracted), but that's to be expected as there are many more drivers than cyclists. Anyway, it seems to me that the fraction of drivers who are bad is about the same as that for cyclists, so someone's mode of transportation is not informative about whether someone's law abiding. Saying otherwise is not justified.
Minor tranffic violoations are rarely an issue it's the big ones like: I can only think of a handful of times in my decade of cycling when a cyclist didn't check for oncoming traffic before going through a red light. which tend to kill people.
Minor speeding (~15%) is not a significant hazard. Going through a red light is about as dangerous as doing ~50-100MPH over the speed limit which is very rare.
Other things like riding on lane markers between cars is blatantly ignoring the rules of the road and vastly increase the risk of death. Again about as risky as a car slowly driving on the sidewalk, which you just don't see.
Bike riders on sidewalks are again extremely dangerous and often lead to fatalities, but it's also very common.
PS: I worked with bike messengers who may be unusually bad about this stuff.
Well, my experience differs a lot, and I suspect I've seen at least an order of magnitude more cyclists than you have. I think it's a combination of selective attention and your experience with bike messengers that's potentially the problem. Bike messengers seem to be particularly impatient and more likely to violate the law to shave off a few seconds. Also could be the location. Of the cities I've spent non-negligible time in, I found cyclists in Baltimore to be considerably worse than cyclists in Austin or DC.
To address another point, even the "minor" speeding you mention is a significant hazard. 15% over the speed limit is 32% more kinetic energy. Combine that with the fact that speeding really does not save much time in most situations, I think it's a clear loser in a cost-benefit analysis. Perhaps on an empty highway it's okay. But a driver's time to destination in most cases is more limited by stop lights and traffic, and believe me, I know. As a cyclist who doesn't go faster than 25 mph it's really irritating to have a driver pass me dangerously, only to sit behind them at the next light for 2 minutes, or for me to pass them because they are waiting to turn. I have no detailed statistics for this, but it happens so frequently that I don't think speeding is likely to save much time. It mostly provides psychological relief for impatient drivers. (Your opinion, of course, may differ.)
> Other things like riding on lane markers between cars is blatantly ignoring the rules of the road and vastly increase the risk of death.
I don't "lane split" or "filter" as it's called, but it's worth noting that this is frequently legal (perhaps not in your jurisdiction) and it has its proponents, many of which tout it's apparent safety benefits. I don't think the data is clear about whether it's safe or dangerous on net. I personally don't think it offers any advantages, so it's not worth the potential risk. Also, many drivers encourage cyclists to do that to get out of their way. You should see how infuriated some drivers get when I take the lane at an intersection rather than filter through to the front. I've talked to cyclists who run red lights, and I frequently have heard that they just want to get away from angry drivers, and running the light allows them to do that. (I don't think this is the right approach.) The same applies to sidewalk riding, which is fairly clearly more dangerous, yet riding legally is often discouraged by drivers, sometimes violently.
In terms of speeding stop lights are a floor function. Make the cut and save 2 minutes fail and lose 2 minutes. You only see cases where they lose that bet, but it's just a numbers game.
As to speeding, we have actual data on this stuff. So it's easy to demonstrate the risks are very low directly from accident rates vs # of speeders. The risk of early death vs time saved actually favors doing 5MPH over the speed limit on highways.
As to personal experience I only have ~45,000 cyclists which may be high or low. But it feels like a very large number.
PS: People try any justify their behavior, but statistically bike riders regularly risk death.
> People try any justify their behavior, but statistically bike riders regularly risk death.
The story about the dangerous jaywalker and bicyclists is a big falsehood if you look at the data. As I said; cyclists have the same behaviour than others have in traffic. The truth is that cyclists live longer, even with all the risky behaviour you think cylists are prone to.
The thing that is risky is spending ones life in a car, on so many levels. You refrase things so it seems like cyclists are to blame for being killed by cars when we know that is actually not the case. Just because the party line today is that jaywalkers and cyclists are worse than others doesn't mean there is any actualy evidence for it.
Their are a lot of very biased statistics reported around bike related deaths.
Even with a lot of bike infrastructure, and a biking culture
Denmark sees 17% of traffic related deaths by cyclists which is vastly more than their share of miles traveled.
Their are augments around health benefits. But, these fail to show up in the data as Denmark has ranks #17 in Europe significantly behind even United Kingdom with it's well known obesity problem. https://www.reinisfischer.com/life-expectancy-european-union...
PS: You need or look at all related risks combined not just select a few. One risk rarely considered, is heavy exercise in traffic is very bad for the lungs.
> One risk rarely considered, is heavy exercise in traffic is very bad for the lungs.
While I agree air pollution is worth considering, "very bad" sounds like hyperbole to me. Definitely not anywhere near smoking. The solutions also are rather simple: change your route to avoid heavy traffic and/or wear an air filter. I've done both before and recommend the latter more, as it seems more effective, does not make breathing harder, and has other safety benefits as well. Also consider the length of one's commute.
It's also worth noting that air pollution can easily be worse when driving. In fact, while I can not find the link now, I recall one non-scientific article with some experiments run by academics suggested that net exposure to air pollution was higher when driving in some cases.
You are right that traffic pollution is very bad for the lungs, it's actually the cause of 30%-60% of all deaths related to lung diseases, but this is true for everyone not just cyclists. It's the same number of deaths as for sucides but with an inverse demographics graph of course, at least in Sweden. Those numbers are staggering and the solution to that is not to stop bicyclists navigating normal commute traffic.
I would like to say that I do look at the combined risks: There are atleast two longitudinal studies on Dutch and Danish bicyclists that show that using bicycling as an active mode of transport means longer life, basically it's an integration test were you get X% increase in a population by just commuting daily.
Here is some commedy that is obvisouly just Norwegians and Swedes being jealous, but it gives you some view on how we think of Danes, and what might affect their lives a bit more than bicycling, as with your link they are very interesting but irrelevant since they do not affect the same population groups.
Exercise increases the amount of lung exposure to particulate matter per unit time. Biking is also a slower mode of transit which increases risks, further cars have built in air filters which further reduce risks.
So it's really not equivalent. On the upside, bike paths need not be next to traffic and in those cases may reduce exposure.
I do not disagree with the dangers of air pollution it's just that if you look at large populations of bicyclists there are no significant elevation of risk compared to other populations in this regard.
The solution is not to scare people with baseless arguments.
I hope you don't take this the wrong way. My goal is to convince drivers that cyclists are not as bad as they think they are and that they should drive safer.
> You only see cases where they lose that bet, but it's just a numbers game.
I don't follow. Seeing both is pretty easy; they drive away. What I question is that the 2 minutes that one saves at most (likely closer to 15 seconds or so on average) is worth the extra risk to other road users. The asymmetry is the problem. You say cyclists regularly risk death, and sure, they do, though the risk is probably lower than you suspect, and drivers risk death too. A large fraction of cyclist deaths occur late at night with a drunk cyclist; remove those factors and your risk is a lot lower. For someone like me who goes out of my way to ride safely, my main (perhaps only) risk on the road is bad drivers, who are by large tolerated or encouraged by western society.
> As to speeding, we have actual data on this stuff. So it's easy to demonstrate the risks are very low directly from accident rates vs # of speeders.
The NTSB says speeding contributes to about 10,000 fatalities per year in the US:
Doesn't sound low to me. Maybe it seems low when you compare against how frequently people speed, but that's a red herring as far as I'm concerned. It's unlikely you'll die while smoking any particular cigarette, but clearly the net effects of smoking at significant. I focus on the net effects. I don't think the time the speeders save justifies the life lost, even neglecting those disabled, etc. As I said, I think speeding provides mostly psychological benefit.
> As to personal data I only have ~45,000 cyclists which may be high or low. But it feels like a very large number.
You have seen about 45,000 individual cyclists on the road? I find that hard to believe. That's comparable to the total number of transportation cyclists in Austin. For comparison, I suspect I've seen at least several thousand individual cyclists on the road. If I see only two new cyclists on the road per day I'll see about 7000 after 10 years. Seems reasonable to me.
> A large fraction of cyclist deaths occur late at night with a drunk cyclist
In single accident deaths at night with only a cyclist this is actually the most common case (70%-90%). In deadly accidents between car and bicycle it's not very common for the cyclist to be drunk about the same as always.
In practice you actually see this with bike riders regularly ignoring red lights ect.