I agree Carl. I was going to say as much. For me, this article fails by giving a hand wave to the data.

Ralph,

I agree in general, but you should be aware that there has been at least one fatality using bike share bikes in both Chicago and New York.

None of this excellent argument changes the fact that “biking is no more dangerous” is obviously not true. It is not a coincidence that so many people have wandered down to the comments to refute those words. They’re unpersuasive. In my opinion, better to rephrase.

The log scale and associated “no more dangerous” note is detracting from a widely distributed and otherwise effective info-graphic. It feels like like a deliberate deception. There are good arguments to be made here, but this one detail is so distracting I can’t even recall what else is presented. Either the graph should be presented with a linear scale and the comment updated, or some other statistic which actually supports the safety comment should be used.

Have to disagree a bit Robert. Here in NYC when you look at serious bike injury and deaths, there are actually very few children that comprise those numbers. And they certainly do bike, especially in the outerboroughs. Growing up I rode my bike all over the suburbs, as did friends of mine, and again, crashes and injuries weren’t on the radar – though I did lose a high school classmate in a car crash on an icy road in a Camaro being driven by a 17 year old boy. So there is something more going on with the relative safety of bikeshare than the exclusion of children, a presumably reckless population [though I think that is a bit unfair]. It is the bike design and the types of trips these bikes are intended for that I think is easily the biggest factor, as those affect behavior. And not just the behavior of the rider, but of drivers too, who see the municipal bikes clearly, remember the news stories about them, and for whatever reason are generally less aggressive around those bikes – something I have personally witnessed on NYC streets where I ride both my own bike and Citibikes.

So true Ralph. The biggest factor in the safety of bike share systems is the lack of children using it. People forget that practically all the bike crash stats in the universe include the crashes and injuries of little kids, who are far more crash- and injury-prone than their adult counterparts. Yet kids aren’t allowed to use bike share. The other big factors of course are the stability and heft of the machines, which make going fast very difficult, and the step-through frames, which make hard crashes a bit more unlikely.