"Deaths of cyclists due to road crashes" dated July 2006 was prepared by Australian Transport Safety Bureau

When you ride +100km each Sunday, numerous cars and motor bikes pass you and some occasionally pass too close.

The above report patently evidences that some cars come too close and kill lots of cyclists - ave 36 cyclists killed each year from 2000, which is much lower than the ave during the 1990s of 60 ave killed each year.  This fall is puzzling because road cyclists have at least doubled from 1995 to July 2006, yet fatalities have materially fallen, notwithstanding that helmets have been mandatory throughout this period.

The above report also highlights that "cyclists riding from the footway into an intersection or onto a road and hit by a motor vehicle" is the second most common reason for cycle fatalities.  How many of these would have been cyclists riding on a cycle path which crossed a road, and forgot that the automobile has right of way?  And perhaps the driver wasn't cognizant that a cycle path was imminent.

In summary, the July 2006 ATSB report ""Deaths of cyclists due to road crashes"" identified –

(a)          >95% of cyclists deaths are on-road and only 4% off-road, whereas >70% of bicycle sales are off-road bikes;

(b)          most frequent assigned major factor in road fatalities between 1996-2004 was ‘failure of cyclists and other road users to observe each other’;

(c)          most common type of fatality occurred "when a motorist, travelling in the same direction, was passing a cyclist";

(d)          In the 1990s, between 40 and 80 cyclists were killed in Australia each year;

(e)          In the 2000s, the range has dropped to between 26 and 46 per annum, which is encouraging because road cycling is much more popular in the 2000s than in the 1990s.

A 2004 ATSB “Cycle safety” report identified that between 2000-2001  11% of all serious road injuries were cyclists which seems astonishingly high.