The downside of Belgium's cycling mania.

[papaver]

19 cyclists killed this summer.

Cycling is extremely popular in Belgium. In every possible way. As a sport, as a hobby, as a way to commute. But because it's so popular it's getting dangerous too.

Normally in July and August there are rarely accidents, but now...

Because the laws protect cyclists so well they take too many risks. With the obvious results.

[smilingcat]

19 is 19 too many.

But they are those who are plainly stupid, me included, who have taken unnecessary chances and risks.

I don't know how many people ride in Belgium and I think one needs to look at the number in context of so many thousand km per person for the 19 death. It is bit morbid to look at it this way. It is a worthwhile metric though. compare this number from years ago, and today and compare this number to automobile fatalities. If the fatality rate is dropping then this is good. If it is going up, well then it is a major problem.

[papaver]

Normally around this time it's about 3-4 per month (july, august), other months it's about 7/month.

Now we're at 19 in six weeks!

Out of a population of approx. 10.000.000, 6 million are cyclists.

[smilingcat]

Wow that's a prety big spike in fatalities.

Something like that happened here in the states back in the 90's?? we were geting more people to wear helmets but the number of injuries per mile went up. You do expect the # of injuries to go up with more people riding but what no one expected was the rate of injury also went up. sorry I don't have a reference source but this sort of stuck in my mind at the time...

Still nominal of 2-3 to 19/1.5 (because of 6 week period) or 13 fatalities in a month is shocking.

[dianne_1234]

Wow that's a prety big spike in fatalities.

Something like that happened here in the states back in the 90's?? we were geting more people to wear helmets but the number of injuries per mile went up. You do expect the # of injuries to go up with more people riding but what no one expected was the rate of injury also went up. sorry I don't have a reference source but this sort of stuck in my mind at the time...

Still nominal of 2-3 to 19/1.5 (because of 6 week period) or 13 fatalities in a month is shocking.

No idea if this might be what you remember smilingcat:
"...and the fact that serious head injuries actually rose from 59 in 1992 to 71 in 1993 when helmet use was growing fastest among both juvenile and adult cyclists... "

Found it here:
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1149.html

[papaver]

Well, apparently this year it's a combination of many things:
- We have an extremely good summer so a lot of people get on their bikes.
- Due to the crisis there are more commuter cyclists.
- Quite a few accidents happened with huge agricultural vehicles that are not suited for our narrow roads.
- 15% didn't go on holiday this summer so a lot more traffic than normal.
- A lot more Belgians have cycling now as their workout.