A figure of 100,000 cycling injuries treated per year is often [FSVO]
quoted. This comes form a paper by Lee and Mann, Chief Executive and
President respectively of BeHIT.
The quote is: "Hospital based figures show that more than 100 000
British children each year are injured in cycling accidents, although
many of these are relatively minor injuries that do not require
hospital admission."
The reference is: Sacks JJ, Holmgreen P, Smith SN, et al. Bicycle
associated head injuries and deaths in the United States from
1984–1988. How many are preventable? JAMA 1991;266:3016–33.
The reference does not contain any such figure, and does not in fact
address injuries in the UK at all.
This paper also contains the following: "Each year more than 50 young
people aged 15 years and under are killed in cycling related
accidents, with 70–80% of these deaths caused by traumatic brain
injury."
The figures for the year of publication, 2003, were: 19 child cyclist
fatalities, of which 10 were due to head injury. There is no record
of what proportion of these children had other mortal injuries as
well.
The reference is an anonymous report of a figure from Hansard, given
in 1996. The up-to-date figure was also available from Hansard,
online, at the time of publication of the Lee & Mann paper.
I cannot find the original figure of 50 in Hansard written answers for
1996. If anyone has a hint for me I'd be grateful.
Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken