Slowman wrote:
"What is the metric you're trying to work toward? " what is my chance, your chance, of getting killed while riding a bike. per year, per 5 years. per decade. if you ride for 20 years, 30, 40, 50. your risk over your lifetime, depending on what you consider a lifetime of riding, is that your chances of dying while riding your bike on the road is 1 in 8. or in 80. or 800. or 8000. or 80,000.
This is from 1993. Cycling fatality rates have declined since then.
If I ride for 10 hrs a week, 52 weeks per year, for 50 years, my total hours are 26,000. According to the list below the odds of being killed are 1 in 3.85M hrs, so I have 0.7% chance of being killed on my bike in my lifetime. That's if I'm average.
I think my odds are better than average. I try to be visible and avoid riding into the sun whenever possible. And I live in a place where the drivers seem to be courteous and aware. I'm mostly on rural roads with no shoulder, but traffic is light. I also have a lot of riding experience, which surely helps.
Fatalities per million hours
Sky diving
128.71
General aviation
15.58
On-road motorcycling
8.80
Scuba diving
1.98
Living (all causes of death)
1.53
Swimming
1.07
Snowmobiling
0.88
Passenger cars
0.47
Water skiing
0.28
Bicycling
0.26
Flying (scheduled domestic airlines)
0.15
Hunting
0.08
Cosmic radiation from transcontinental flights
0.035
Home living (active)
0.027
Traveling in a school bus
0.022
Passenger car post-collision fire
0.017
Home living (including sleeping)
0.014
Residential fire
0.003
Data from Failure Analysis Associates, Inc (now Exponent Inc), Design News, 10 April 1993.