That's it, it's all over!

Another tabloid cycling "statistic", this one pointing out that males between the ages of 30-39 are more likely to be killed than other cyclists. Having just joined that group, I suppose I should just hang up the bike now, right? I mean, it's not as if the experience of riding over 150,000km without breaking so much as a fingernail is going to be of any use to me is it? Especially if the statistics indicate otherwise.

Yes, I'm being a touch flippant, but both regular readers of this page will, of course, be aware that I generally have little respect for the tabloid press. It's worth remembering their previous "if you wear a helmet you'll get hit by cars" effort. That said, it did keep people entertained on cycling-themed Internet message boards for a few days. In fact, I think the thread was still going on the bike-qld email list two days ago.

In this case Kimbofo was the one to smell the rat. Here in Australia (where the "study" was apparently conducted) around 80% of cyclists are male, and I'd suggest a goodly number of those are in the 30-39 age group. Law of averages probably suggests it should be this group who are therefore involved in the greatest number of crashes.

Actually, further down the page, once one reads past the "beware" headline, someone actually says something useful, pointing out that there is a total and complete lack of data indicating what actually causes the crashes. Now if we could just get someone to actually investigate this aspect, or (God Forbid) actually ask some experienced real-world cyclists for their opinions in this matter, we might get some progress.