Bicycles more dangerous than terrorism?

"cycling has been a greater hazard than terrorism and is responsible for far more deaths."

From the author of the study.

Charlie Lloyd's point:

"What he doesn’t say is that almost all these people were killed by motor vehicles, and that motor vehicles killed about 12 times as many ‘non cyclists’. There is no arithmetical or moral compass to his remarks."

I agree with Charlie.

Have a read of the paper, Bill. It might give you a more direct line of attack, such as this:

The author's claims about the relative 'safety' of the tube compared with cycling don't count the 52 fatalities from the terrorist attacks in the figure he gives for deaths per billion trips. If he had, cycling and tubing would be more closely on par in terms of safety. He counts the terror attacks as a 'one-off' that could happen anywhere, and there is some merit in that, though it is worthy of scrutiny - you could argue that passenger transport systems are intrinsically high probability targets for terrorists.

Statistics need to be treated with caution in cases like this. Before the Concorde crash, it had the best safety record of any aircraft type. After the crash, it had one of the worst. I don't remember anyone arguing that that tragic crash was a 'one-off'.

The other point of attack might be some of the base figures he uses. He claims 18,000 people cycle into London every day - I thought it was much higher than that, even in 2005. If that's the case, his calculations about deaths per billion trips will be out again.