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Comment by cbhl | Hacker News Reader

But also super lethal per vehicle mile traveled. It might be different if you are on a dedicated right-of-way...

Cycling infrastructure in LA is so bad. Bike lanes that end randomly, poor lane merging patterns, and exceedingly fast cars that are all pissed off, it can be pretty dangerous.

"Super lethal"? Let's keep things in perspective.

Here's the perspective: You, or rather, the average "you" incur 1 micromort (1/1e6 chance of death while conducting a particular activity) for every:

6 miles traveled by motorcycle

10 miles traveled by bicycle

17 miles traveled by foot

230 miles by car

1000 miles by jet plane

So, it really is rather dangerous to get around by bicycle. Not that I recommend against it (I commute by motorcycle, personally).

[edit: source wiki article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort#Travel ]

First total bike miles are not rigorously tracked making this statistics extremely suspect. Which is why both 10 and 20 miles are given as separate estimates. “Travelling 10 miles (16 km)[25] (or 20 miles (32 km))[24] by bicycle (accident)”

Subway miles are also very safe at ~ 1/20 the risk of driving your car. So, a 2 mile bike ride to a subway + a 20 mile subway trip is about the same risk as a 22 mile commute. Though with very large error bars on that estimate based on personal habits and local conditions.

PS: Don’t become a bike messenger it pays well, but the risks are more significant when people are running red lights etc.

Not only that, but the references on that wikipedia page about bicycling are extremely poor: neither contains any sort of justification for the claim. I was hoping for a link to a paper, or something.

Is that taking into account the effect of the exercise you're getting while cycling? http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/06/13/bicycling-the-safe...

Thanks for the link! I'm still going to claim that 1 micromort/10 miles is nowhere near "super lethal", but we can all decide that for ourselves, I suppose.

That's just nonsense. I presume you haven't visited a bicycle friendly country.

I have, and I miss it every day I commute by bicycle. There's a span along one of my routes where you have to make a left turn across 5 lanes of traffic. The Dutch would faint, I think.

Does a comparison of miles traveled even make any sense when there are huge differences in speed of the vehicles you've listed? People are more likely to commute 60 miles by car every day but with a bike they'd only commute up to 10 miles. Just by looking at the miles it's not obvious which type of transportation is safer.

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