Paul Barnard

I wonder if EBike fatalities are going to be rolled in with pedal only bicycle stats. I think there is value in partitioning them off.

Iride01 

Me too. Especially since a lot of posts at one time in the e-bike forum were from people wanting to mod their ebike to go faster and without having to pedal. However I haven't noticed those type posts as much lately. So maybe the others have figured out it never will be as fun as a Yamaha or Suzuki trail bike in the 200cc range despite how much they mod them.

Though just the separate as in reporting ability to know if it was an e-bike vs a regular bike. And separation only as a method to filter statistics to see if perhaps one has less or more of a particular type accident or such.

Paul Barnard

On my ride Saturday I got to wondering if the put those little electric scooter fatalities in with bicycles as well.

Iride01 

I doubt many bicycle accidents get reported. Especially the ones that don't involve both an injury and a motor vehicle.

I-Like-To-Bike

Why would there be any "report" for such bicycle accidents? Who would make it to whom, and for what purpose?

Iride01 

Because there are likely a lot of bicycle accidents that involve injury and don't involve a motor vehicle.

I'd even venture that the number of fatalities on a bike that do not involve a motor vehicle are probably close to the same or maybe even more. But there is no reporting to keep a database to find out.

I doubt my accident back in 2019 that put me in the hospital with a severe concussion and fractured skull is in any database other than some very vague reference in the ER records. No one ask me anything about the accident much less do they know the circumstances, speeds involved or even where. My accident was not witnessed by anyone. I was just found a few minutes after.

I-Like-To-Bike

The question remains - who is going to report such accidents to whom and for what purpose other than to satisfy your curiosity or support some unspecified entity's unstated agenda?

Why didn't you make such a "report" to whomever you think should receive such reports?

BTW, what makes you venture that the number of fatalities on a bike that do not involve a motor vehicle are probably close to the same [? presumably the "same" as the number of fatalities on a bike] that do involve an automobile or maybe even more?

Iride01 

Well that's the point. There isn't any reporting so we really don't know.

Besides, you aren't curious to know what different types of accidents befall a cyclist? And why do you think I have an agenda? Or do you feel that everything should just be blamed on motorists and saving cyclists from themselves is not worthy?

See my previous answer! You'll get the idea.

What makes you think they aren't? Be nice to have some decent statistics. Wouldn't it. See my previous two answers in this reply and maybe you'll begin to see the problem.

Don't be making a problem by asking such ridiculous questions or faulting me for not making a report to some unknown entity that is not even set up to handle such.

I-Like-To-Bike

You seem to be making a "problem" of databases of "statistics" that don't exist or aren't readily available to satisfy your curiosity or to confirm/deny your ventures into imagined statistics.

Iride01 

You seem to be blind to the problem of accident statistics that every statistician and author of books concerning such has brought up over the last 40 years.

Read "Bicycling and The Law" by Bob Mionkske, JD

He is one that also says decent statistics are hard to come by for anything cycling related. He gets down into a breakdown of the little statistics he was able to glean from sources.

Ken Kifer was another cycling advocate that bemoaned the poor gathering of statistics on cycling mishaps and accidents. Sadly he was run down by a drunk driver long ago. He use to have a pretty decent website about cycling.

livedarklions

You're conflating three entirely different questions, so it's getting pretty hard to answer you sensibly.

First question is to what end is this data useful. Obviously, it would be good to have real data on this as ebikes right now are subject to roughly the same traffic regulations and usages as are human-powered cycles. If there are significant differences in the likely outcomes of accidents involving these somewhat dissimilar categories of vehicles, that would be evidence useful in determining whether or not more regulation of ebikes is needed. One obvious example of that is whether it is appropriate to allow children to operate ebikes in the same manner as they do bicycles. I think it is highly unlikely that there would be findings that ebikes were safer than bicycles, but I wouldn't be at all surprised that ebikes where the assist is capped at 20 mph are not significantly more dangerous or if they were actually so. BTW, I suspect insurers are studying this sort of thing for rather obvious self-interested economic reasons.

The two other questions you are conflating are who is going to gather this data and how. As I noted above, insurance companies like knowing this sort of stuff because a) it affects their rates and b) they sometimes lobby to regulate away risks they find themselves covering. Governmental agencies such as NHTSA and CSPC are other candidates. How is a much tougher question as such data as comes in "naturally" is collected under the least reliable of circumstances, either self-reporting, which is very prone to selection bias, or from scene reports where the characteristics of the bike are probably going to be of little or no interest to the emergency responders making the reports.

Daniel4

Prior to 2014, the city of Toronto used to publish an annual one or two page pdf report for all types of road collisions involving cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. It even listed, when they existed for that year, pedestrian-cyclist collisions.

Since then the only statistics now reported are car, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrian deaths or serious injuried without any detail about the type of collision with each other.

Daniel4

Looks like you got sucked into a black hole discussion with guy. Good luck trying to cut loose.

I-Like-To-Bike

I am in agreement with you about the poor quality of bicycling accident statistics. The biggest problem in my estimation is the misuse and and deliberate misrepresentation of the gathered data from so-called studies of bicycling accidents and injuries by self appointed bicycling safety advocates to reach conclusions that promote their agenda. Infamous examples can be found by review of the vehicular cycling list and/or any of the Effective/Vehicular Cycling publications dating back to the early 70's. They are rife with misrepresentation and cherry picking of the existing bicycling accident data (such as it was) to create misleading comparisons of various "crash rates" for different bicycling scenarios and bogus quantification of the reduction of risk by following the promoted safety schemes. None of this involved ebike incidents at all.

The problem of misuse and distortion of inadequately gathered bicycling "crash" data cannot be corrected by half-assed gathering, reporting or "study" of data that is missing the information necessary for competent hazard analysis such as relative severity of injuries incurred, and the exposure rates to the various hazards under study. I don't know who you expect to gather and report unbiased accident data with necessary detail to properly to create a database useful for analyzing bicycling hazards, especially for accidents that do not involve injury and/or do not involve motor vehicles. I don't know why insurance companies would expect bicyclists or police or medical personnel to investigate, gather and report to them such detail of every bicycle accident they hear about .

I-Like-To-Bike

Bicycling accident statistics that are nothing more than total numbers of "collisions" and make no distinction about injury severity or exposure rates are next to worthless, even less so if they should include collisions that do not involve injury at all.

I-Like-To-Bike

You are the individual talking about data about ebike crashes in this discussion

Iride01 

But at least he was on topic and didn't take exception to the opinions of others and then move the conversation to something else because your imagined extrapolations of what you imagined was some conspiracy I was purporting.

Paul Barnard

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7019a1.htm

livedarklions

No, I wasn't even in the conversation but made a good faith attempt to answer your questions. Silly me for thinking you asked them in good faith and that you were actually looking for answers.

There's plenty of people who would have a financial and/or legal interest in good data on this subject, but good data will be difficult at best to obtain. You just approached this discussion with your usual unwarranted hostility, just assuming you can shoehorn everyone else into some version of an argument you had with someone else15 years ago.

I-Like-To-Bike

What conclusions can you or anyone else draw about bicycling safety or actions to take to reduce bicyling injuries from such data since the study doesn't apparently include any information or data about how or where the cylists were riding when injured or what the circumstances of the accidents were, or if there even was any collision involved.
The recommendations "implications"from the report are:Those implications are all well and good standard responses but do not seem to be drawn from the reported data since it is unknown how many of the accidents even involved motorized vehicles or what percentage of accidents occurred on what kind of roads, racing events, streets, off road or mountain trails, MUP, bicycling infrastructure, highways, etc., or what percentage of bicycling miles are ridden on any of those various types of surfaces, nor at what speeds. Nor is there any data presented that indicates what kind of "targeted intervention" has ever been shown to be effective at reducing bicycling TBI. The same implications could have been made without gathering any of this data since the data does not lead to the conclusions. In fact it is possible the implications could have been written before the first data report was ever received.

An equally valid implication (without bothering to gather injury totals) could be drawn that whatever speed the cyclists were riding at the time of the injury, many would have been less likely to have incurred a TBI, or reduce the severity of it if they had been only riding slower since E=MV²; therefore the implication is that cyclists should ride slower in order to reduce potential damage to body parts from collisions.

I-Like-To-Bike

Right, you weren't in the conversation but decided to gratuitously present your version of allegedly "good faith" commentary.

As previously pointed out there have been plenty of people who are quite satisfied misinterpreting bad data, fabricated data, or no data at all in order to draw self serving conclusions and make recommendations about reducing bicycling risk that advance their own version of bicycling advocacy, be it helmet promotion, bicycling infrastructure projects, or "education" or "targeted intervention."

livedarklions

So? Make that point once and don't assume that's what people are doing when they ask a basic question about data. You engage in this " plenty of people " crap all the time as an excuse for just launching into hostility no matter what the topic and in spite of what people are actually saying on the thread.

Yes, the safety data suck. Everyone on this thread has acknowledged that. Does that mean you don't try to understand the risks and try to do things to manage them?

And speaking of making up data, you're the guy who built an entire argument based on the claim that ambulances don't slow at intersections.

As far as interventions go, there's already a system of classifying ebikes by speed capabilities in place, which seems to have been done primarily by intuition that 20 mph is some sort of magic dividing line (28 mph for some other purposes). You don't think it would be a good idea to try to figure out if that made sense? Maybe try to come up with some constructive discussion of how that could be done rather than your usual hostile crap.

Iride01 

You've gone off the deep end. It seems that you feel that having more data collected and possibly better ways to gather data a bad thing that somehow makes it easier for persons and entities to obscure the real issues.

And then you also seem to think that because we made some assertions that we are the problem. I don't see where any of us said anything wrong other than just continue a ridiculous conversation with you. Seems you just have some unstated agenda of what you imagine us to believe.

livedarklions

Again, so?

That's being offered as an example of an agency gathering data, not for the soundness of its conclusions. Obviously, these changes in the TBI rate stats don't tell us much without knowing what proportion of the population is riding. You're scolding people for wishing for better data, and I don't think even you know why you're doing so.
The CDC recommendations are fairly explicitly throwing up their hands variety --"might" isn't anywhere further than without the numbers, but actually informative numbers, if they ever are to exist, will have to include these.

livedarklions

That's the problem in a nutshell. You are being held responsible for arguments made by other people that you haven't come close to repeating, let alone defending. The Iowan is treating everyone as if they're the ghost of John Forester so he can continue railing on long-over arguments.