Missouri Bicycle News

The Missouri State Highway Patrol Statistical Analysis Center has published a summary of bicycle accident statistics for Missouri:

• 2000 analysis [PDF] (Bicycle section only)
  
• 2001 analysis [PDF] (Bicycle section only)
  
• 2002 analysis [PDF] (Bicycle section only)
  
• 2003 analysis [PDF] (complete report)
  
• 2004 analysis [PDF] (complete report)
  
• 2005 analysis [PDF] (complete report)

All these reports and others are found at the Missouri Highway Patrol's web site.

Some caution must be taken in interpreting these raw statistics--the number of crashes is given for various facilities and various situations, but because we do not have a good measure of the amount of cycling in Missouri in various situations, the raw numbers give no indication of the rate of accidents in various situations. And the accident rate is the most important and useful thing to know about a particular facility.

Nevertheless, some very interesting results emerge. For instance, in 2002, 1.5% of traffic crashes resulting in a fatality involved a bicyclist; 1.3% of crashes resulting in injury involved a cyclist. The fatality rate, which is quite small (9, 6, and 16 fatalities, respectively, for the three years reported), fluctuates quite a bit from year to year. But the injury rate was between 1.3% and 1.5% for all three years. This gives at least some rough idea of the proportion of bicycle travel in the state (which, unfortunately, has not been carefully measured by any other method).

Incidentally, only 0.3% of highway safety money spent by Missouri is spent on bicycle and pedestrian safety combined.

Though state number highways accounted for only 8.3% of the bicycle injury accidents, they accounted for 31.2% of fatal accidents. Similarly, state single-lettered routes accounted for only 3.1% of injuries but 18.8% of fatalities.

Altogether, state numbered and single-lettered highways accounted for 50% of bicycle fatalities.

City streets accounted for almost 70% of bicycle injuries but just under 40% of fatalities. County roads accounted for about a tenth of both injuries and fatalities.

Related:

News: Bicyclists represent 12% of all on-road injuries in Missouri

Newsletter: Missouri Bicycle Injury Statistics by County, 2002

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posted by Brent Hugh at 3/24/2004 08:58:25 PM |comment on this article