Originally Posted by
bikenh
You gotta love the people who go out and do nothing but ride bike trails because they think they are far safer than riding the open road.
The cyclist thinks he is nice and safe and can just get lost in the music when he is about to hit the wildlife which could end up him in the hospital instead.
The bike trails are no safer than the roads.
Your comments made me laugh.
My biggest fear is being impaled by a deer while riding gravel or singletrack in the woods. Admitting this has caused some people to chuckle, but its seriously what I fear most when riding. Deer are damn skittery and you dont know which direction they will scatter.
But even I, someone who actually views being hit by a deer as their biggest cycling fear, find your comments to be absurd.
Of course a dedicated bike path/trail is safer than riding on roads.
The odds of being hit by wildlife are so incredibly small, I would be surprised if someone could even put an honest number to it. It has to be .00001% of the time.
The range of injury on a bike path is significantly smaller than the range of injury on roads.
Bike path range of injury is anything from falling over and nothing bad happening, to getting scraped up, to colliding with another cyclist.
Road range of injury is anything from falling over and nothing bad happening, to getting scraped up, to falling and being hit by a car, to colliding with a car.
40mi of city and county road riding is more dangerous than 40mi of city and county trail riding. The odds of injury for both are incredibly small, but there is a reason why so many kids are on trails and not roads- safer location to ride.