mr_pedro

Ok, I get your point. You acknowledge that it is safer to ride your bike in NL vs US, but want to stress there are still quite some people dying on bikes in NL.

njkayaker

No, that's not true.

A person is going to be riding the average number of miles. That average number is different between the two countries.

On average, a person is much more likely to die while riding a bicycle in the Netherlands.

No, it's only less risky if you ride less than the average miles. But, since we are talking about averages, you won't be.

mr_pedro

With that logic you would say cycling is less risky even in a country of 400 million people with only 100 cyclist that went out on the bike for only 1 day in a year of which 50 died on the bike that year. Not sure if you don’t understand or just want to argue, but either way it is fine to leave it at that.

elcruxio

Probably the best way to compare risk between different modes of transport and between different countries is accidents or in this case deaths per time spent doing said activity. Deaths per distance is inherently inaccurate as different modes of transport have wildly varying average speeds. Time spent however is somewhat difficult to measure accurately.

deaths per population however is the absolutely wrong way of comparing transport safety. If deaths per population was in any way a proper measure, NASA would have swapped their manned space mission launches to Mexico a long time ago. Lots of space mission related deaths in the US. I'm guessing zero in Mexico. Ergo, space flying in the US is dangerous while in Mexico it's incredibly safe. When you consider it with deaths per launch, distance or time spent it's a very different proposition.

njkayaker

???

If you have to walk to school and you move from where you are a block a way to a place that is 4 miles away, any risk there is in walking increases.

If you move from the US to the Netherlands, you will be riding a lot more on average.

Comparing the risk per mile hides that increase.

njkayaker

It's one way. It's not necessarily "best" always. The risk per mile or time hides the fact that people in the Netherlands spend much more time cycling.

The risk per whatever might be lower but the exposure is much more.

It looks like you are more likely to die on a bicycle and less likely to die in a car in the Netherlands.

No.

The risk of doing something can't be equivalent to not doing something. It's a "divide by zero" sort of situation. You are saying that not having money makes you infinitely wealthy.

elcruxio

Sure. Why not. Not really relevant but whatever.

That's not again not what the discussion is about. This is major league goalpost shifting. The discussion was about risk of cycling in different countries and you seem to be saying that cycling in the Netherlands is more dangerous than in the US. Of course a direct comparison is difficult, because the US is pretty big and the Netherlands aren't. But even then the proposition that cycling was safer in the US is laughable. Have you cycled in the Netherlands? I haven't in the US, but I can see enough videos about it to know I'd never even attempt it.

It doesn't actually. But cool that you brought that up. It's already a pretty well known phenomenom that more cyclists makes cycling safer so more time spent on the bike in general means less accidents and less deaths.

Which doesn't matter if the risk is significantly lower. Not going to make an example because percentages are hard when you make percentage chains, but if you have a tiny risk and large exposure the risk is still smaller than a massive risk and tiny exposure.

In 2019 that wasn't the case, but the numbers are pretty close. That doesn't however mean that cycling in the Netherlands is dangerous. It means that traffic there is incredibly safe.
in the year 2019 US motor vehicle fatalities were three times more than the whole traffic fatality rate of the Netherlands. If you compare just motor vehicle fatalities US fatalities were eight fold to those of the Netherlands.

So, you know, traffic in the Netherlands is safer.


I don't see why not. But if I have to use a country that has actually done manned missions then NASA should start doing all their launches from China. Much safer than the US. I haven't studied statistics but even I know that deaths per population is good for only one thing. Literally deaths per population. No other factors. Just that. Deaths per population in an activity is a useless metric.

njkayaker

It's exactly what is about. No goal shifting at all.

The risk in the Netherlands isn't tiny. It's small. The equivalent indicates that 4000 people would die in the US if they rode like the people in the Netherlands do (rather than 800).

elcruxio

Well no. Because exposure matters. Consider this. If you have a person who drives for a living, ie. six to seven hours a day behind a wheel and a person who drives once a year for five miles, which is more likely to get into a traffic accident of any sort?

So in reality exposure matters. If you cycle more, you're more likely to get into an accident. If you drive more, you're more likely to get into an accident. If you live more, you're more likely to get into an accident. What mitigates traffic accident risks is external factors such as infrastructure, traffic rules and culture.

So let's get into the very bad statistics since there aren't good numbers available and neither of us is a statistician.

If we account for exposure then if the people in the US rode bikes like the Dutch do, then the number of fatalities would not be 4 000. It would instead be around 16 000. Strangely enough the US and the Dutch ride around the same amount of trips per yer, ie. around 4 billion. Depending on what number you use the Dutch number might actually be closer to five, but we'll go with equivalent numbers. Now since the amount of trips is around the same we can directly compare the amount fatalities. In the Netherlands it's around 200 per year. In the US it's around 850 per year. So in the Netherlands you get around 200 fatalities per 4 billion trips. In the US you get around 850 fatalities per 4 billion trips.
But in the US there's 19 times more people. So if the US did in fact ride as much as the Dutch you'd need to multiply that fatality number with 19, getting a fatality rate of around 16 000.

Of course none of that is really that simple. If the US rode as much as the Dutch do, there would likely be significantly less fatalities purely because of the phenomenom critical mass, ie. US drivers would be more cognizant of cyclists on the road and thus give them more regard and space.
What I could not factor in was kilometers ridden or time spent in the saddle because I could not find those numbers from the US and even with in the case of Netherlands getting the time in the saddle number is pretty difficult.

Onward!

The Netherlands is probably one of the safest traffic regions in the world. Their traffic fatalities are tiny in general. Both driving risks and cycling risks are in fact tiny in the Netherlands. I can use the world tiny, because the Netherlands is the safest country to cycle in. I don't know what you think of how safe it is to drive a car in the US, but it's around four times safer in the Netherlands. Actually I think that's the wrong phrasing but you get a quarter of motor vehicle fatalities in the Netherlands when compared to the US when controlling for kilometers driven.
So with that potentially wrong phrasing I can conclude that it is four times safer to drive in the Netherlands (which means driving in the US isn't cataclysmic) and nineteen times safer to ride a bicycle in the netherlands when compared to the US.

I hope no actual statistician reads this...

2wheelfelicity

In the event of a crash, a helmet will protect your head. This doesn't mean it will save you every time, either from death or serious injury, only that it will rarely if ever make it worse. From another perspective, there is statistically proven safety in numbers and helmets can represent a barrier either for people who can't afford one or do not want to wear one. Helmets should always be a choice and drivers should be subjected to significantly greater road safety awareness considering the damage they can do. Of course, bikes cause accidents too, but not nearly as often, and typically no where near the severity.

wphamilton

What is the average trip distance in The Netherlands and the US? You can't correctly quantify exposure without it, when you're citing the number of trips.

mr_pedro

The average trip distance in NL is about 3km.
Another difference is that I suspect the US to have a larger fraction of recreational rides done in parks.

Maybe we can look at it from a different perspective, what we know reasonably well is the number of fatalities and population size. So if we would scale up the Dutch fatalities to the US size we would get 4 times as much fatalities as we currently do in the US.

So what we now need to ask is if the Americans ride more or less than 25% of what the Dutch ride?
You only need to look at the streets in US and NL cities to tell that the US does not even come close to having 25% of the Dutch cycling density.
If you have any doubts, just consider that 25% of the Dutch use their bikes for commuting. Even ignoring public transport that means 1 bicycle in morning traffic for every 3 cars.

curbtender

And if you factor on the amount of drinks consumed before heading home from the local tavern...

wphamilton

We'd be multiplying too many uncertainties in that chain, for it to be reasonable to me. The confidence interval shrinks to almost nothing (meaning we wouldn't know that the answer was right or even close to right).

I asked partly because I don't have any absolutely solid data on the average length of bike trips in the USA and Netherlands, and partly because what I do have implies 3-4 times longer on average in the USA. Which would be 3-4 times the exposure.

The closest I have that we can be reasonably confident with is the average commute time, about 20 minutes in the USA and quite a bit less in Netherlands. But even that is skewed because it's an average, and comprised of a lot of short commutes balanced by a small number of very long ones. Looking at all the short commutes would give us a better picture, and they may or may not still be considerably more than in the Netherlands AFAIK. And we can't generalize commutes to all trips, so my data is less meaningful also.

In short I don't think it's been demonstrated that based on exposure to traffic or other dangers, cycling in the Netherlands is less risky or more risky than cycling in the USA.

njkayaker

Someone who drives for a living, can't really choose to avoid the increased exposure. Someone living in the Netherlands can't completely choose to avoid the increased exposure either.

If you compare accidents per mile, the professional will likely have a much lower number than the person who drives once a year.

Which is what I said a while ago.

??? The 4000 is scaled from the death rate in the Netherlands. It accounts for the exposure!

You are contradicting yourself if "in reality, exposure matters".

mr_pedro

I actually know what a confidence interval is and you said the opposite of what you mean, i.e. small confidence intervals imply a very high degree of certainty.

But since we don’t have much US data on cycling exposure, indeed we can’t put exact figures on deaths per mile. The 25% figure I mentioned needs to be more like 20% because there are 850 cycling deaths in the US vs 4000 if you scale up NL deaths. So would you agree with the statement that cycling is more dangerous in the US if people in the US ride less than 20% of the distance they do in NL?

wphamilton

Bad choice of words on my part, because I'm not talking about statistics. Just the multiplying of variables each having a measure of uncertainty.

The statement you ask about is more correct, but not yet one I could agree with. There is yet another factor involved with "exposure": speed. The faster you travel, the fewer interactions you'd have with same-direction travel.

mr_pedro

Sure, that is the difference between measuring exposure by time or by distance travelled. Both are reasonable measures. Using time would only skew results towards more dangerous in US as speeds in NL are low, about 10 mph.

elcruxio

They can if they choose another profession. Also could be someone who just commutes to work using a car.

Goalpost shift and is that actually even true?

Did you? Your definition of exposure seems a bit strange.

It doesn't, because it doesn't actually account for exposure. Actually accounting for exposure is difficult as the information from the US is patchy at best. But if you account for exposure, ie. if people in the US cycled as much as the Dutch do, then the death rate would be closer to 16 000 than 4 000. This is because cycling in the Netherlands is vastly safer than in the US.


Yes well that was kinda the point of that silly absurd example. I hoped it would be nonsensical enough that you'd catch the point behind it.

Is there a studied number of the average speeds of the dutch cyclist? I know they ride bikes which seem slow but holy cow can the young folks punish those bikes to some absurd speeds. When I was last there I couldn't keep up with my touring bike. And I'm not that slow even fully loaded.

mr_pedro

Yes regularly you will find two strips across the bike path about 3 ft apart. This is used to measure speed and count the bicycles passing.

For example in this article the speeds between provinces are compared with numbers to the decimal place:
https://www.nhnieuws.nl/nieuws/17365...-van-nederland

There reason the average speed is so low is because these are people in regular clothes using the bike for daily transportation needs. Also a much larger part than in the US, consists of children aged 10-16 and elderly above 65.

wphamilton

"Speeds are low" is another example of assumptions based on too little, and too general. We don't actually know what the "speeds" are in the US. We also don't know how those speeds are distributed according to various types of trips.

Neither exposure by distance nor time spent in travel are reasonable measures of exposure to risk, especially not when those measures are averages. If you want to know their actual exposure to traffic dangers, there is no adequate proxy other than observing it directly in a representative sample. We cannot draw conclusions about where it is more dangerous based on our ideas of the distances and times spent on our bikes.

mr_pedro

Per capita NL has 4~5 times more cycling deaths than the US. And even without exact exposure data for the US it is clear to see that the Americans cycle far less than 4 or 5 times what the Dutch do. What you are arguing is that we can't tell anything because we don't know it exactly.

curbtender

Gresp15C

From what I've read, the Dutch time their traffic lights based on a speed of 20 kph, plus it doesn't make much sense to ride faster on a crowded bike path or lane. The Dutch ride in bike traffic and we ride in car traffic.

I'd wager that in the US, the speed that matters is the speed of cars.

mr_pedro

When I was living in Baltimore there was a pedestrian crossing with traffic lights downtown, the streets were one way for cars and after 30 seconds of green light for pedestrians the turning cars on the parallel street would also get green and turn onto the street that pedestrians were crossing.

Now although pedestrians were crossing at a green light on the crossing, once the cars started to move, only people with a death wish would dare to walk up. And the baffling thing is that whenever there were traffic cops standing there they would shout at you for having the audacity to start crossing with green once the cars had their green light.

One thing that the Dutch try to do when designing roads is to build it for the speeds you are supposed to drive there. So a 15 mph limit means very narrow streets, sometimes with cobblestones and roadblocks where one car has to wait for the oncoming car to pass.

Another interesting concept that surprisingly makes things safer is how in some residential areas, there is only one road, with no markings and no sidewalk. This not a road for heavy traffic, just for people that live in that block. That one road is to be used by all traffic, and not just that, it is also meant to be used by playing children. Pedestrians are allowed to walk in the middle of the road and the speed limit for cars is defined as “walking-speed”.