I guess to my way of thinking is that the rate of crashes is not really relevant, and this is why I say it. Consider these two examples:
- If I'm riding my bicycle alone along the side of the road and a car crashes into me, then the rate of crashes per cyclists is 100%.
- If I'm riding with a group of 1000 cyclists and that same car crashes into me, then the rate of crashes is now 0.1%.
I'm still getting creamed, and the same number of cars are still ineptly crashing into cyclists, but the statistics would falsely lead one to believe that since there are more cyclists on the road then it is now safer to be there.
If that statistic is for a 1 km stretch of road, then the 100% vs the 0.1% is very misleading as the car could have veered off the road anywhere else on that 1 km stretch of road and suddenly the stats are reversed - 0% crash rate for riding alone and 0.1% for riding in a group of 1000, for example.
I would hope that the intent of the article is to illustrate that increased number of cyclists increases awareness among both cyclists and motorists, and thus reduces the total number of crashes on any particular stretch of road.
Just my
