Cycling on Milwaukee Avenue at Grand Avenue and Halsted Street, one of the most crash-likely intersections on Milwaukee Avenue.

Someone asked me on Twitter: “What’s more dangerous, biking with no helmet or driving with no seatbelt?” It’s an odd comparison, but I decided to try to crack the question.

Here’s my answer:

If your definition of “dangerous” is “the likelihood that you’ll receive an injury while traveling in/on the vehicle”, assuming that the likelihood of being in a crash is the same*, then you are more likely to sustain an injury while cycling while wearing a helmet than while driving or being a passenger in a car while wearing a seatbelt.

Here’s the data, for crashes in Chicago in 2007-2010:

Table 1: Yes, recorded to be wearing a helmet while bicycling

Injury Type Frequency (each number is a person) Percent of total
No injury 3 7.32%
Possible injury 6 14.63
Non-incapacitating injury 26 63.41
Incapacitating injury 6 14.36
Fatality* 0 0
Total 41 100%

A value of 0 fatalities in four years for people wearing a helmet absolutely DOES NOT mean that a helmet prevented a fatality. The “contrary” data for “Recorded to not be wearing a helmet or having safety equipment” shows that there was 1 fatality in four years – the data do not suggest that the fatality would be prevented if the person was wearing a helmet. The sample size is so small that this data is meaningless.

Table 2: Yes, recorded to be wearing a seatbelt as driver or passenger

Injury Type Frequency (each number is a person) Percent of total
No injury 423,096 89.42%
Possible injury 21,667 4.58
Non-incapacitating injury 23,956 5.06
Incapacitating injury 4,338 0.92
Fatality 93 0.02
Total 473,150 100%

*I don’t think we can determine the likelihood of being in a crash when riding a bicycle because we don’t know the “device miles traveled” of Chicago cyclists. It’s probably possible to approximate the number of vehicle miles traveled by drivers in Chicago, though; I’m not sure about passengers.

Download the data for this article, which includes these additional tables:

  • Bicycling: All injuries
  • Bicycling: No safety equipment or helmet wearing
  • Bicycling: Unknown usage of safety equipment
  • Auto: All injuries
  • Auto: No safety equipment or helmet wearing
  • Auto: Unknown usage of safety equipment