Danger on two wheels (?)

I read this factoid today (one of those things that had some source to it, but I didn’t pay attention to what the source was) that ranked different sports based on which are the most dangerous.  It reported that the second most dangerous sport, measured by overall number of injuries, is… (are you ready for this?) bicycling.  Go figure.  And then I thought, “Well, ok, that’s because of all those mountain bikers out there crashing into trees and taking those crazy jumps and stuff.”  But no.  Mountain biking was called out as a separate sport, and it was only the 8^th most dangerous or something like that.  Number one?  Basketball.  Football, which I would’ve thought would be at the top was number three.  (Badminton was number 14.  Hmmmm…)

But all this was based on the total number of injuries recorded.  So all that means is that a lot of people play basketball and ride bikes—more than play football.  I can understand that.  Then the study ranked them based on injuries as a percentage of the people who actually play that sport.  Here, football, as I would’ve expected, came out number one.  That is, more people who play football end up getting injured than in any other sport—and this was by a wide margin.  Bicycling still ranked number three though, behind skateboarding which came in second. 

One of the conspicuous holes in this study was a comparison of the severity of the injuries.  Now don’t get me wrong—I know cycling can have some pretty serious injuries, even more serious than Brenda’s broken hand last year, and I consider a broken hand to be a pretty serious sports injury.  But I also believe that many of cycling’s injuries are in the form of the skinned knees of kids just learning how to ride.  I’m not trying to discount this study, but I was just really surprised to see cycling so high on the list, and I don’t want people to think that we’re a bunch of crazy people out there doing crazy, dangerous stuff.  Among the people we ride with, and I believe among most road cyclists, safety is a very big issue.  I think it has to be, since we’re so outnumbered and outweighed, and outpowered by even the smallest cars that we share the road with.  In some ways, it is a bit of a David-and-Goliath situation out there.  But I wonder what the study would show if it normalized the number of injuries over time—that is, how many injuries are there per hour of activity?  I don’t know, but my bet would be that one that score cycling would come in pretty low. 

  

Whatever the case though, there are at least two things for sure about road cycling:  1) It is possible to get in a serious accident if you don’t pay close attention to the situations around you, and 2) it is possible to have years of fun and enjoyment if you do pay close attention to the situations around you.  Here’s to safe cycling!