Missouri Bicycle News

Looking at the Missouri Highway Patrol's figures for bicycle injuries, the number is quite low--for the years 2000-2002, bicycle crashes represented between 1.3% and 1.5% of all traffic injuries measured by the Highway Patrol.

However, the Highway Patrol's figures only measure collisions in which a motor vehicle actually collides with a bicycle.

This excludes a broad range of bicycle-related injuries that happen on the road, such as:

• Bicylist hits a parallel bar grate, a curb, roadway imperfections, etc., and falls
  
• Motorist intentionally or unintentionally runs bicyclist off the road, however never physically contacts bicyclist
  
• Bicyclist must take evasive action due to motorist, avoids colliding with motorist but still crashes
  
• Simple falls, bicycle-bicycle collisions, bicycle-pedestrian collisions, bicycle-dog collisions, bicycle-road debris collisions, etc.

Here is a summary of bicycle and pedestrian injuries which includes bicycle-automobile injuries but also all other types of bicycle and pedestrian injuries on the public roads:

Missouri DHSS InjuryMICA figures, 1996-2002
-------------------------------------------

                         Number   Percentage
                         -------  ----------
TOTAL INJURIES[1]     :  670,763  100.0%   
Bicycle injuries[2]   :   78,724   11.7%
Pedestrian injuries[3]:   23,144    3.5%

In short, when ALL on-road bicycle injuries are considered, bicycle injuries comprise nearly 12% of all roadway injuries.

Dr. Greg Luttrell is currently working to research in this area of bicycle injuries. Luttrell has found that about 10% of bicycle crashes are with a motor vehicle and the other 90% are "bike only". (Note that, according to the DHSS figures above the split in Missouri is more like 6% / 94%).

Luttrell also says that "the average out of pocket cost of a bike only crash (not involving a motor vehicle) was over $3,200. Taken nationwide, this results in almost $1.5 billion in annual bike crash costs (again, not including insurance payments)."

Source
General: Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services InjuryMICA

Specifically: Traffic injury statistics and Bicycle/Ped non-motor vehicle injury statistics

Notes
[1]. Total injuries was calculated by adding the TOTAL from the "Traffic injury statistics" together with the total bicycle non-motor vehicle injuries and the total pedestrian non-motor vehicle injuries from "Bicycle/Ped non-motor vehicle injury statistics". The purpose of this was to include all on-road injuries, whether involving a motor vehicle or not, but to exclude off-road injuries not involving a motor vehicle.

[2] The total from the row labeled "Bicycle: Non-Motor Vehicle" in "Bicycle/Ped non-motor vehicle injury statistics".

[3] The total from the row labeled "Pedestrian: Non-Motor Vehicle" in "Bicycle/Ped non-motor vehicle injury statistics".

[4] Personal email communication with Dr. Greg Luttrell, gluttre@siue.edu, http://www.siue.edu/~gluttre/.

permanent link to article: "Bicyclists represent 12% of all on-road injuries in Missouri"
posted by Brent Hugh at 10/30/2004 01:53:33 PM |comment on this article