Missouri Bicycle Injury Statistics by County, 2002

The Missouri Highway Patrol 2002 Traffic Safety Compendium has a good deal of interesting data about bicycle crashes and injuries.

On page 144 it breaks down the number of bicycle injury crashes by political subdivision. Combining this with U.S. Census estimates of 2002 population in those counties allows calculation of bicycle injuries per million population in those counties.

This also allows a rough estimate of which counties see more or less bicycling, since injuries will roughly correlate with the amount of miles bicycled.

2002 Bicycle Injuries Per Million 
Population in Selected Counties
=================================

Subdivision # % population # of injuries
per one million pop.
-------------- --- ---- ---------- --------------------
ST. LOUIS CITY 110 14.6 336,000 327
BOONE 35 4.6 139,000 252
BUCHANAN 24 3.2 85,000 282
PETTIS 10 1.3 39,000 256
BUTLER 10 1.3 41,000 243
JASPER 22 2.9 107,000 205
[St. Louis city & county combined] 198
ST. LOUIS 157 20.8 1,015,000 155
JACKSON 101 13.4 659,000 153
GREENE 37 4.9 245,000 151
ST. CHARLES 33 4.4 303,000 109
Cass 8 1.1 87,000 92
Franklin 5 0.7 96,000 52
JEFFERSON 9 1.2 203,000 44
Platte 3 0.4 78,000 38
Clay 4 0.5 191,000 21
# is total number of injury and fatality crashes involving a motor vehicle and a bicycle

% is the percentage of bicycle crashes in that county, out of the total number for the entire state of Missouri for the year 2002

The report has a lot of other interesting information.

For instance, SUVs seem to be under-represented in both fatal and injury accidents, but pickup trucks seem to be over-represented. (Though it is a bit hard to say for certain, since off the top of my head I don't know the proportion of autos/SUVs/pickups on the road).

Wrong-way riding is definitely over-represented in fatal crashes (the proportion of fatalities to injuries is much higher than in other types of crashes).

The most commonly cited reason for fatal crashes is bicyclist "improper lane usage/change". Of course, that may be the old "he swerved out in front of me" thing but it also makes me wonder if police aren't writing this up whenever they think that the bicyclist isn't hugging the curb as bicyclists "should" . . .

State numbered highways are definitely over-represented in fatalities (a far higher proportion of fatalities to injuries compared to other roads).

There was one injury on an interstate freeway and 16 injuries on U.S. highways, though no fatalities on either.

See p. 137, 140, 143 for all of the above stats.

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