Netherlands - highest percentage of cyclists killed on roads

Orion

Browsing Facebook and some posted a link to one of these usually nonsense best of sites. This bit caught my eye and has a link to EU stats to back it up. For all we talk about the dutch model of cycle lanes it seems they have the highest rate of road deaths for cyclists in the EU.

Orion

The link would help of course

http://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/what-every-european-country-is-worst-at

Dozen Wicked Words

Presumably they have a much higher ratio of cyclists to non cyclists than other countries. That's always the perception anyway, and therefore more likely to have an accident if there's more of them doing it?

jam_mac_jam

Would that because there are much more cyclists there?

ted1

Orion wrote: »

Browsing Facebook and some posted a link to one of these usually nonsense best of sites. This bit caught my eye and has a link to EU stats to back it up. For all we talk about the dutch model of cycle lanes it seems they have the highest rate of road deaths for cyclists in the EU.

Does the stay exclude bike lanes and only count deaths on roads, with so many bike lanes the places were they are not could be dangerous and that's why its high.
If the stat was deaths per journey regardless of road or bike lane might it be very different

Beasty

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Would that because there are much more cyclists there?

But on the off chance you get into a car accident in any EU country, the odds of killing a cyclist are highest in the Netherlands

Yep - you are generally more likely to be involved in an accident with a cyclist presumably because there is a higher proportion of cyclists in the country. Despite the headline they are not suggesting cycling is more dangerous an activity in the Netherlands than anywhere else.

Orion

Fair points. Didn't consider the ratio of cyclists to drivers. Fell for the sensational headline

CramCycle

Also if road fatalities in general are lower in general it greatly skews the figures. There are alot of countries with far higher pee capita rates.

seamus

CramCycle wrote: »

Also if road fatalities in general are lower in general it greatly skews the figures. There are alot of countries with far higher pee capita rates.

Yep, if you look at the cyclist deaths per million, it's high compared to non-cycling countries (as you would expect), but it's not near the top. It's about mid-table.

equivariant

CramCycle wrote: »

Also if road fatalities in general are lower in general it greatly skews the figures. There are alot of countries with far higher pee capita rates.

I really want to know how pee capita is measured

Iwannahurl

Not to be taken seriously I reckon.

Denmark: Fewest Zaras per capita
Life in Denmark is pretty great. But there are only two Zara stores in the entire country. God forbid you'd have to shop somewhere else. But really, if you're after reasonably priced Spanish clothes, you’re going to have to fight for them against other Danes -- in fact, you'll have to fight with about 2.8 million other Danes per store. That's a lot of Danes.

It's also an example of how to lie (or deceive yourself) with statistics.

Germany: Lowest homeownership rate
Germans aren't particularly interested in owning their own homes... probably because they already own most of Spain and Greece.

Perhaps Germany has a well-regulated rental sector of a high standard.

Sweden: Fewest hospital beds per capita
Maybe Sweden has fewer sick people than other countries. Or maybe Swedish hospitals prefer patients bring their own sleeping bags. It's like camping for sick and injured people!

Maybe Sweden has well-developed health promotion, disease prevention and primary care services.

Netherlands: Highest percentage of cyclists killed in road accidents
On the off chance you get into a car accident in any EU country, the odds of killing a cyclist are highest in the Netherlands.

I very much doubt that.

CramCycle

Iwannahurl wrote: »

I very much doubt that.

It's not even close to what the report they link to says, although while the numbers are interesting, they seem to make no investigation on factors involved, some which just jump off the page eg less deaths in winter, clap clap, guess why, it's because there is less bloody cyclists during winter.

The most interesting point for Ireland was that all road fatalities for cyclists were at junctions (I realise this is not always the case anymore with recent hit and runs in the past year).

In fact, what it insinuates more is that in the Netherlands (once you go and find the actual road fatality rates in total, I couldn't see them in the report), you are less likely than alot of european countries that to be in a fatal road accident at all compared to many other european countries. Here are other facts they left out:

Netherlands is 5th lowest on the list for road fatalities per 100000 inhabitants (we are 3rd)

Netherlands is 7th lowest on the list for road fatalities per 100000 vehicles (we are 6th)

Netherlands is 6th lowest on the list for road fatalities per billion km travelled (we are 2nd)

In terms of overall road fatalities, Netherlands is 13th (with 650 in 2012 (200 were cyclists)) and Ireland is 5th lowest with 162 in 2012 (5 were cyclists (RSA)))

I can't remember the exact figures for modal share but I think we were about 4 to 7% at the time for cities, and the Netherlands was between 30 and 50% for cities.

The only thing I can take from the last point is that your general mode of transport (motorised versus cyclist) makes no difference to the likeliness of you being in a fatal road accident in the Netherlands, it makes you slightly safer here (but we don't cover as many miles and it is so close to the modal share number that it would be hard to draw conclusions).

Maybe someone has better numbers.

Alek

(we are 3rd)

Do you have a link to this research handy?

Beasty

Iwannahurl wrote: »

I very much doubt that.

You need to read the full quote and not just the bit you highlighted

So for example, all other things being equal, if a larger proportion road travel in the NL is done by cycling, you would expect a larger proportion of all road accidents to involve cyclists. Again, all other things being equal, if a larger proportion of all road accidents involving motor vehicles also involve cyclists a larger proportion of deaths in road accidents involving motor vehicles will be cyclists. In no way is that implying cycling is more dangerous in the NL, it's simply a play on words to get the headline they want

CramCycle

Alek wrote: »

Do you have a link to this research handy?

Taken from Wikipedia road fatalities list and filtered for European countries.

CramCycle

Beasty wrote: »

So for example, all other things being equal, if a larger proportion road travel in the NL is done by cycling, you would expect a larger proportion of all road accidents to involve cyclists. Again, all other things being equal, if a larger proportion of all road accidents involving motor vehicles also involve cyclists a larger proportion of deaths in road accidents involving motor vehicles will be cyclists. In no way is that implying cycling is more dangerous in the NL, it's simply a play on words to get the headline they want

Interestingly, as I mentioned above, looking at the modal share (admittedly of cities) the correlation between vehicle modal share and road fatalities was alot closer than I had ever expected. Could just be a coincidence, interesting to see it across a few years but I really didn't expect it.

tomasrojo

The Road Danger Reduction Forum had a post that touched on KSI metrics recently:

What is”Cyclist safety”? The measurement issue.

This is not an abstract academic issue. It is absolutely critical as a basis for any discussion about cyclist safety.

As far as traditional “road safety” is concerned, “Cyclist safety” is about the total number of reported cyclist casualties (generally “Killed and Seriously Injured”) per head of the population or in a given location – in this case London. It is NOT about what the cyclists’ organisations asked for – and what TfL for many years at the CSWG agreed on – namely an indicator based on exposure. This is sometimes referred to as a “rate-based” indicator, in that casualties are expressed in terms of the exposure of cyclists, for example cyclist casualties per journey made, distance travelled, or time taken cycling.

http://rdrf.org.uk/2014/11/07/transport-for-londons-cycle-safety-action-plan-still-getting-it-wrong/

Of course, by a per-million-people metric, a country that is very dangerous for cyclists can look quite "safe" for cyclists, as there won't be very many cyclists to get hit. (Same point a few other people have made.)

harringtonp

Just looking at the scope of that article (everything) wouldn't pay the slightest bit of attention to it.

If you were to hypothetically measure the number of fatal bike accidents per year for a country as a percentage of total cycling hours per year done in that country I'm pretty sure the Netherlands would be one of the lowest in the world.

kuro_man

I'd say Ireland doesn't feature high on skiing fatalities either - that doesn't make it a safe place to ski