The danger of cycling manifests primarily in injuries, not deaths.[1] But counting fatalities is the easiest, most straightforward and tempting task dangling in front of cycling's eager stat-mongers. It is also the type of number-crunching which makes bicycling look as safe as it's going to look--while it may produce a boatload of injuries, however you slice it it's far from a deadly activity. So the annual number of cyclist fatalities is a stat that is mongered most vigorously and repeatedly, often at the expense of truth and common sense.

For quite some time we stat-mongers noted that the annual tally of fallen bicyclists was steadily declining. The decline has been attributed to everything from helmets to traffic calming to a decrease in cycling by kids.[2] The downward trend in fatalities corresponded to an increase in the overall popularity of road cycling, so the rate of fatal-wreck-per-hour-cycled seemed to be falling noticeably. It was good news, even if its importance in the grand scheme was unclear. Lately, however, our eyebrows have been raised by what could be a reversal of the trend, before we could figure the damn thing out. The annual reports of the FARS database (Fatality Analysis Reporting System) have shown fairly serious and disturbing upticks in 'pedal cyclist' deaths since 2003.

As annual reports trickle in from the states at a glacial pace, the federales produce an advance estimate of total traffic fatalities for the previous year based on partial information. This advance report usually comes out in late spring, early summer -- any day now. (The final report for 2006 will not appear until this fall.) I doubt I'm the only stat-monger out there keeping at least half an eye on the FARS, curious about those advance numbers for 2006. We'd like to see something down around 2003's reassuringly low 629, of course, but anything around 700 would be encouraging. Anything in the range of 800 fatalities or more would seem to signal that the downward trend has indeed bottomed out in a decisive fashion, like a Colorado singletrack crossing a creek and starting to climb the steep valley on the other side. Once the report comes out, we can go about our business of wondering what in the heck might be going on, and if it even matters.

Robert

[1] Consider that the rate of injury requiring medical attention (ER or outpatient) is over 1000 times greater than the fatality rate, according to comparison of the USCPSC's NEISS (National Electronic Injury Surveillance System) and FARS data. The rate of serious injury requiring hospitalization is something like 40 times the fatality rate.

[2] Children under 16 accounted for about one third of cyclist deaths in 1998, but only about one fifth of cyclist deaths in 2004 (USDOT).

illustration by Sam Turner