Today's xkcd ranks cars as less dangerous than bikes and scooters
Today's xkcd ranks cars as less dangerous than bikes and scooters
No, they ranking the usage of a car as less dangerous. Which is correct.
I'd be curious if that holds in bike friendly places, and would be curious to see statistics from somewhere like the Netherlands.
Not really no cars cause a MASSIVE amount of deaths less likely to be the driver potentially but its still far more fatal to other people which imo is actually worse
If we look at it statically, biking is healthier because it reduces health problems.
Bike is healthier until you get pancaked by an SUV or pickup which are increasingly all that people drive on roads nowadays. The roads aren't safe for bikes. If you live somewhere without dedicated bike infrastructure (no, painted bike lanes on the street don't count), biking is basically playing Russian roulette.
I upvoted you, because what you are saying is true, but so is the original post. "Dangerous" and "Healthier" are very different. Biking is definitely more dangerous in North America, though I'm not sure about bike friendly places, and would be curious to see statistics from somewhere like the Netherlands. Danger does not consider the benefits of an activity, only the downsides. Health, on the other hand is usually short hand for longevity or lack of health conditions, and on average, even with the danger, people who get around by bike live longer.*
*I can provide sources if someone wants them, I just need to find them again
What? They are right. But that doesn't mean it's a pro car argument. Cars are definitely safer as bicycles can't utter wrecks you like they do to bicycles
From what I recall it really depends on how you classify danger. Bikes are more dangerous for non-lethal injuries. But any car trip that you drive over 45 mph is slightly more lethal than biking per comparable trip. So it depends on what danger you're willing to risk.
Wut?
So what, does the comment I replied to make sense to people? It has many upvotes but to me seems complete nonsense.
Really, you're going to quote a comedy website/image? It also even depends on what they mean with "dangerous". If they mean dangerous for the passengers (which is a viable assumption since how many deaths are caused by hot air balloons excluding the persons traveling with the hot air balloon?) this could even be a true graph. So hold you "offended" feeling and just laugh at the joke at hand.
Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if electric scooters are legitimately more dangerous in urban environments with sane infrastructure. Those things can go absolutely anywhere, and can reach ridiculous speeds while cars are far more restricted in urban spaces (yet again, the ones with good design).
I agree that you are correct. It's a joke. And it's about safety of the USER.
However, xkcd is a "brainy" and "technical" web comic. The author assuredly has a rigorous definition for anything like the axes in this comic.
I mean, it's more dangerous for someone on a bike or Scooter on car-centric infrastructure than it is for someone in a car.
Only if you consider only the safety of the vehicle's pilot. Another perhaps more rational way to look at it is to look at how it affects the safety of all people. And then it's clear that the car is still more dangerous than the bike, even on infrastructure specifically designed for car safety above all else.
I feel safer being in a car than in front of it. No lies being told there
I mean, when a car hits s bike the car is more dangerous overall but the driver sure won't be injured by it. I know the accident statistic for electric scooters it absolutely lethal because cars keep killing them.
There is also the question if you count number of incidents or overall harm. Bicyclists scrape their knees and bruise their arms all the time, especially if you also use it in winter and fall.
Bicyclists scrape their knees and bruise their arms all the time, especially if you also use it in winter and fall
I've commuted by bike for decades and I have no idea what you're talking about. How? What causes arm bruises or scraped knees?
It depends on where you live I guess. I live in Sweden and bike everywhere so I hit ice and go down at least once or twice every winter. It's usually black ice in early winter where things look fine and nothing is sanded or salted yet and you hit a curve that is just glass.
Some neighborhoods don't plow the local roads so that the cars just pack the snow and Polish it into an icerink. If you then add powdered snow so that it looks fine you can suddenly go down and slide several meters. In those situations you are a bit fucked because there isn't enough traction to get up again and you have to turtle a bit until you find your footing.
Summer and spring is mostly fine tough with the exception of 2 collisions from other bikes and once when one of the pedals mechanically failed. This is over more than a decade tough so it sounds like it's more than it is but it's still more incidents than my brother have had while driving which is zero.
This is why I chose motorcycles.
Riding a Grizzly bear is right up there with hot air ballooning? Wow! How about riding a grizzly while eating a raw meat sandwich and having a large cut on your leg?
This is why we need to segregate cars off the road away from bikes, and then keep shrinking the car lanes by just a few cm each year, until some cars just can't fit, and gaslight the car users that cars must just be getting bigger, until eventually even London black cabs and old mini coopers couldn't fit through, while bicycle lanes keep getting more and more lanes, and the fence between the two starts having barbed wire and more and more CCTV all facing the car users, as the cameras whirr in on faces of the users aggressively, disrupting the silence of sitting in traffic, eventually we install displays inward to the car lanes that show ads, but conspicuously only of bikes, skates and longboards...
So, the opposite of what's been happening with embiggening cars and unchanging roads in many places. Often designed so that cars could park on either side and still use the road two-way, they're now effectively one-way due to wider cars, but dickheads think they can fit, and bad things happen. I like it, turnaround is fair play. Good luck making it happen.