How dangerous is cycling in New Zealand?
Introduction
The New Zealand transport system is dominated by the use of private motor vehicles, despite heavy costs including congestion, air pollution, greenhouse emissions and poor health outcomes (Howden-Chapman et al., 2010). Many trips by motor vehicle could be replaced by walking and cycling – almost 20% of household trips are less than 2 km, and almost half under 6 km (O’Fallon and Sullivan, 2009, Povey, 2010). However cycling in New Zealand accounts for less than 2% of total time spent in travelling on roads (Ministry of Transport, 2015a) and the reason most frequently given for not using bicycles is the fear of injury (Legge and Landtroop, 2013).This is broadly true in other countries also, especially for women (Broache, 2012, Garrard et al., 2008) Indeed, in the authors’ experience proposals to expand cycling sometimes elicit the response that modern roads are so dangerous it is simply irresponsible to encourage use of the bicycle.
How common is injury from road crashes among those travelling by bicycle in New Zealand? And how does the risk of such injuries compare with the risk of injury due to familiar recreational and day to day activities? Fear of a bad outcome, whatever the cause, has many explanations, amongst which the statistical likelihood of an event is just one contributor. But this does not mean, in our view, that comparisons of statistical risk are irrelevant to transport planning. We suggest that close examination of the statistics may assist policy-makers and the general public to interpret and respond to risk, especially when probability of harm can be related to typical or familiar exposures.
David Nutt attempted to illustrate the wide spread of risks associated with psychotropic drugs, both legal and illegal, by comparing the probability of serious ill-effects per standard dose with the risk of injury during a typical day of horse-riding (Nutt, 2009). We have taken this approach further, comparing the risk of injury of cycling on the road with that due to other common activities, based on what we characterise as familiar or typical exposures in New Zealand.
Section snippets
Methods
We calculated the risk of injury per typical exposure to an activity as the number of injuries per year divided by the number of people at risk and frequency of exposure. In this study we focused on moderately severe injuries sufficient to cause a visit to a hospital emergency room. We also calculated risk in terms of the number of claims in 2013 to the government-funded Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), which covers injury-related treatment and rehabilitation costs for everyone
Results
The overall patterns of risks of injuries and ACC claims were more or less similar in magnitude (Table 2).
A typical exposure to cycling (which we defined as a half hour trip 3 times a week) was 1.2 to 2.2 times safer than DIY, 1.3 to 5.3 times safer than horse riding (1.5 h twice a week), 60 to 140 times safer than skiing (half a day, 4–5 times per year), and 460 to 530 times safer than rugby (one game every three weeks) (Fig. 1).
Discussion
The figures we report here are not precise measures. They include many approximations and assumptions, and for this reason should be treated as no more than a guide to risk relativities. It is often difficult to quantify exposure to risk of injury since frequency and duration of activities are usually not well documented and are highly variable. For example, in many sports the player's competitive level influences both the amount played and rates of injury (Parkkari et al., 2004). Our
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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