Must Read: Is cycling a safe sport?
The statistics are not 100 percent accurate, while riders and medical personnel have different opinions
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Doctors, riders offer different opinions — New York Times
How safe is the sport of cycling? The New York Times posed this question in a recent story — and the answers vary.
When cyclists crash and land on their shoulder, a broken collarbone is often the end result. But that’s not the worst thing that could happen, according to 43-year-old Rob Coppolillo, who raced at the amateur level for 10 years.
“You are back riding indoors on your trainer in a week and riding outside in a month,” Coppolillo said. “For the vast majority of us, it’s a pretty safe sport.”
But for others, like emergency room nurses and doctors who see some of the worst cycling injuries, the sport doesn’t seem as safe.
“Lots of my colleagues do not want to ride after seeing these injuries,” said University of California trauma surgeon Dr. Rochelle Dicker, who treats victims of bike crashes that require surgery and intensive care.
The statistics of bike crashes, according to the Times, are not 100 percent accurate because not everyone who falls while riding their bike goes to the hospital or the doctor. In 2010, however, there were 800 bicycle fatalities in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control. That number represented one-fortieth of all road deaths.