Biking Safety

Hamish

Hamish

Hamish

Soldato
Joined
14 Apr 2003
Posts
4,950
Location
Deepest Yorkshire
I'm wanting to get a road bike soon but so far my main stumbling block is the missus. She's convinced that I'm signing my life away and that if i get on a bike i'm a gonner.
Does anyone know of any links that show that biking responsibly, with proper training is comparable in safety to a car? I'll only be using it for commuting into London so if there are statistics that show that urban, slow speed riding is safe it would be awesome!

Currently I'm riding a dirt bike in the desert which she doesn't have a problem with as 'it's only sand' and there's no cars to hit into! Yeah right, my mate broke both his arms last month landing in a hole in the sand!
 
I would suspect that urban riding in London is not going to yield any 'nice' statistics to be honest. There was a really nice interactive road accident map that someone posted last year but I can't find it.

This one is pretty comprehensive though probably not the best supporting evidence for your argument. That said it seems somewhat safer than cycling.
 
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Im sorry fella if youre looking for rose tinted statistics then its not easy done.

I did my license 3 years ago, have a full road and race license and machine scrutineer for racing in Northern Ireland.

I am fairly happy in my ability to ride a bike and commuted daily on my zx6r until a woman pulled out and stopped leaving me no where to go.

Fact is crashes happen a lot and in cars too however I wouldnt tell anyone not to ride- ever.
Its a brilliant and possibly the best way to city commute. Its cheap, its quick, its mostly safe but things can happen. The more people that do ride will make it safer for everyone else as awareness increases.

Fact is if its something you want to do and she wont let you then youll need to confront her on it and state your intentions. Would she stop you getting in the car every day with road death statistics?
 
It's not going to be easy dude, as said above.

You can go on all the courses in the world, but it won't make car drivers pay attention to others on the road..

At the end of the day, she obviously loves you and doesn't want to see you get hurt. That's the main thing right? Now if you want to ride a bike so much, then go for it regardless of the what she says :p.
 
Maybe take her along to a IAM meeting and have a talk with some of the observers? At least you're demonstrating that you intend to be as safe as you can be.
 
Just don't let her visit this forum....she may see metbandit's video! :D

To be fair, I had a similar discussion with my other half when we first got married. I wanted a bike, she said no, I would kill myself...then she said something about being left to bring up two small children on her own etc etc. So I dropped out "they won't always be children" then she said "well you can get one then! "...... Two years ago when my youngest turned 16, I took my test, passed and got a bike!

If something's worth waiting for.....
 
Thanks for the info! I'm hoping to turn her around by giving her the mental image of me as an suited guy on a scooter rather than a weekend warrior on a sportbike!
 
Dogbreath said:
I would suspect that urban riding in London is not going to yield any 'nice' statistics to be honest. There was a really nice interactive road accident map that someone posted last year but I can't find it.

This one is pretty comprehensive though probably not the best supporting evidence for your argument. That said it seems somewhat safer than cycling.
Click to expand...

Pretty much that.

You aren't going to find the statistics you're looking for because they don't exist. From memory, you are 27 times more likely to be KSI on a bike than a car.

Agree on the cycling thing, far more dangerous than the motorbike on a work commute.

Is the missus into horse riding? Statistically speaking that's more dangerous than riding a motorbike.
 
Even with nothing to hit you can still come a cropper on oil or diesel and spend 4 nights in hospital (see my accident thread) or worse ...

Biking is risky, but it's also the most fun thing you can do with your clothes on. I commuted for 7 years in London on motorbikes relatively accident free until the diesel incident. I don't bike any more (for responsible reasons (kid, wife, house)),
 
Didn't stop a friend of mine breaking her neck falling off her horse.

Thing about horses is they have a mind of their own whereas a motorcycle is down to us.
 
I don't doubt it but it does seem that if you have an accident when riding a horse the injuries tend to be more servere than for the majority of bike accidents.

In the Top Trumps of injuries sustained whilst riding a horse or bike, my friend has me beat. Broken neck vs broken ankle. A victory she is welcome to (she was fine after it healed. She didn't even realise she'd broken it when she'd fallen off but was very very lucky she didn't cripple herself in the day or so after before she went to hospital).

I'm not sure I'd want to ride a horse.
 
It's all about 'chance', we can have the best leathers/lid that money can buy and still end up screwed but does that negate using leathers to start with?? No because every little bit of protection helps our chance of reducing any injury.

Also motorcycles are not all down to us, a mechanical failure can soon mess our day up and correct maintenance is done to reduce the chance of that happening. It can still happen though..
 
If we worried about the chance of something bad happening to us we'd all wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and not leave the house. There's chance in everything.
 
ElliorR said:
If we worried about the chance of something bad happening to us we'd all wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and not leave the house. There's chance in everything.
Click to expand...
So we'll all go out in shorts, sandles, tshirts and in a lid we got from a car boot sale then ;) You're not getting it; it's risk assessment and and we all do it, when we choose to do something high risk it's natural to take messures to reduce the chance of a mishap.. Hence people who jump from planes have two shoots, look before crossing roads and in years gone by carried a sword when traveling at night.
 
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