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Re: safety in cars, speed limits, and motorcycles



In article <3n6fag$2uo@civ.civ.net> joel@civ.net (Joel Upchurch) writes:

>> With motorcycles, though there is less chance of getting in an accident
>> (there are less accidents/cycle vs accidents/car), accidents are much
>> much more severe.

>I don't think this is quite correct. When you compare the accident rates
>on a vehicle mile basis, motorcycle have several times as many accidents
>as automobiles. Here are some stats I computed a few years ago.

>Cycle		83	84	85	86	87	Average
>Veh Miles 10^6	8760	8784	9086	9397	9855	
>Fatalities	4045	4378	4342	4209	3781	
>Per 10^8 Miles	46.18	49.84	47.79	44.79	38.37	45.39
>Total Accidents	530,000	570,000	480,000	440,000	380,000	
>acc/fatal	131.03	130.20	110.55	104.54	100.50	115
>miles/acc	16,528	15,411	18,929	21,357	25,934	19632

>Mot Veh Ac 10^6 18.3	18.8	19.3	17.7	20.8	
>Veh Miles 10^6	1.65E+6	1.72E+6	1.77E+6	1.84E+6	1.92E+06	
>miles/acc	90,328	91,489	91,917	103,842	92,500	94015
>Fatal Acc	37,976	39,631	39,168	41,062	41,434	
>acc/fatal	481.88	474.38	492.75	431.06	502.00	476
>Per 10^8 Miles	2.30	2.30	2.21	2.23	2.15	2.24
							   20.27

>Now this table is a bit obscure, but you can see that automobiles
>were driven about 94k miles per accident and motorcycles about 19.	
>The fatality rate per mile driven was 20 times higher for 
>motorcycles (45per 10^8 miles versus 2.24 for cars).

>This doesn't necessarily contradict what Mr. Simon was saying, since
>motorcycles tend to driven a lot less miles per years on the average.
   
What did Walt Whitman say? :) Lies/damn lies/statistics

Teddy Wang
CSC Consulting


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