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2011 bicycling deaths in the Netherlands: 200 [1] [2]

2011: bicycling deaths in the US: 677 [3]

The deaths in the Netherlands have an interesting distribution. Nearly 2/3 of them are people over 60.

[1] http://www.cbs.nl/nl-NL/menu/themas/gezondheid-welzijn/publi...

[2] (English) http://bicycledutch.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/road-deaths-...

[3] http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811743.pdf



According to this: http://top10hell.com/top-10-countries-with-most-bicycles-per... (no idea about veracity of that data), Netherlands claimed 16.5 million cyclists cycling 2.5 km/day on average; compared to US with 100 million bicyclists cycling an average of 0.1 km/day.

So if we assume those numbers are right that gives 200 deaths in Netherlands for 15,000 million km cycled per year (16.5 * 2.5 * 365) ; versus US where there were 677 deaths for 3,650 million km (100 * 0.1 * 365).

This makes cycling in US 25 times a dangerous as Netherlands: Netherlands has 1 death per 75 million km cycled while US has a fatality every 5.3 km.

In comparison, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in... says 1.16 fatalities for cars per 100 million vehicle miles travelled, so one death every 86 million kilometers -- safer than cycling in Netherlands by distance, much safer than cycling.

Another page with similar calculations: http://cyclinginfo.co.uk/blog/734/cycling/cycling-rates-by-c...

shows 5.8 cyclists killed per 100 million km cycled in US, versus 1.1 in Netherlands.


>US has a fatality every 5.3 km.

did you mean every 5.3 million km?




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