OHSU researchers will study bicycle commuter injury
Posted by: MichelleSep 19 2007, 12:24 pm
There's not enough known about the total health and longetivity effects of bicycle commuting.
We have this report which estimates that the overall fatality rate for bicycling (of all ages and abilities, in all places) is about 12 times (per kilometer travelled) what it is for driving.
And we have this paper, which argues that an otherwise sedentary person's life expectancy is lengthened by about 11 days per year of bicycle commuting, after accounting for the health benefits of the exercise and the fatality rate mentioned above.
We have the as-yet-unknown long term health costs (both loss of life and financial) associated with the growing obesity epidemic, which could be countered in part by getting adults and kids to commute by bike.
But we really don't have any observational studies on what health effects bicycle commuters experience. So far most researchers work with data that includes all bicyclists in all places, not daily commuters and not bicyclists in a bike-friendly city like Portland.
Enter OHSU! Researchers John Mayberry, Red Hoffman, William Lambert and Ellen Peck have launched a one-year study on what kinds of injuries bicycle commuters experience, how those injuries impact the study subjects, and what caused those injuries. They will also be compiling information on sources of risk for bicyclists, by asking about the causes of crashes and "near misses."
This study has potential to give us a very clear picture of how bicycle commuting can be made safer and more accessible for more people. If you commute through the Portland area, please participate!
Participants will be rewarded with all kinds of goodies (from Ben and Jerry's, Flexcar, the City of Portland, and the Bike Gallery).
Do you know of more studies on bicycle injuries, fatalities, health or economic benefits? I'm trying to build up my files - please send them along!
1. John Pucher will be presenting the 'Lessons from Europe' study you link to in Portland on 10/19 as part of the new IBPI (Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation) at PSU. So, if you have any questions for him you can ask him there.
2. I've long been wondering about that statistic that fatality rates are 12 times higher for cyclists than drivers. If that is for the U.S. as a whole, I strongly doubt it holds for Portland. Even just using Portland's own data we know that as the number of cyclists has quadrupled over the last decade the crash rate has dropped "from 17 crashes per million trips to 10 crashes per million trips" (source, graph here).
Given that, I would very much like to know how the first statistic plays out for Portland. If our crash rate has dropped to about 50%, can we assume that we are only 6 times more likely to be involved in a fatality compared to drivers? That's still six times too many, but still, an improvement over twelve. Michelle, don't you have some bright grad student who wants to do a project for you? Could you have them crunch the numbers the same way that Pucher and Dijkstra do and tell us how much safer we are in Portland? It would be an invaluable statistic for the BTA, the City, and bike advocates everywhere, and it might have some media interest too.
Sep 19 2007 at 1:45 pmThe key to the 12x statistic is that it is per distance traveled, not per number of trips. Since cars generally travel much greater distances than bikes, the number of fatalities per kilometer will be much lower for cars.
Nov 09 2007 at 1:23 pm