Cycling safer than rugby?

Cycling can seem like a fairly unsafe activity when you think of riders sharing the roads with motorized traffic and the potential for crashing on pavement at relatively fast speeds, however, a recent study suggested that cycling is safer than the game of rugby.

According to Auckland University, cycling is 35 times safer than rugby. The study showed only one injury claim, covered by the Accident Compensation Corporation in New Zealand, happened in every 6000 two-hour bike rides. Rugby, however, produced one injury claim for every 167 games.

Medical student Michael Chieng’s conclusion, noted in the report in The New Zealand Herald, stated that two hours of cycling was six times safer than horse riding, 15 times safer than one day of skiing and 35 times safer than one game of rugby, a contact sport.

“The idea that riding a bike is just too dangerous to think about, that you couldn’t have your children riding a bike but it’s okay to go playing rugby,” Professor Alistair Woodward said in the report. “It’s fine to play rugby, but people have a slightly bent sense of the relative risks. The point was to put bicycle risk in some kind of proportion.”

The Cycling Advocates’ Network noted that there is still a need for safe-cycling infrastructure despite the lower risk of injury while cycling.