Judging by the comments here so far, almost noone has actually understood what this erport is trying to tell you. Suggest people try reading it again, more carefully this time!
CaNsA: the report clearly says this is about road deaths associated with "all vehicles not just motorbikes", so nothing to do with there being more male riders. Also since the figures are pecentages that would compensate for differences in the numbers of males vs females.
Sparkyboz: "So a 5-9 yr old is more likley to die in an rta than than any one from 40yrs up?" - No that's not what it is saying. It's showing what percentage of deaths in a given age group are related to RTAs. The older you get the more likely you are to die and the more things there are that are prone to kill you! When you're young major killer diseases like cancer and heart disease are rare - RTAs are one of the few things that do kill young people - hence the percentage of deaths related to RTAs in that age group is high.
Moral of the story seems to be - take up risky stuff like biking when you're old - you're about to die of something anyway, might as well be biking!
Ripsawll raised the interesting question - why there's a difference between males and females at such a young, pre-driving/riding age. Likely to be that risky behavoir in boys applies from a very young age, as pedestrians and cyclists. The other possibility is that something else is killing young females that does not apply to males, making percentage of deaths attributable to RTAs lower for them, but that seems very unlikely.
Posted: 11/05/2011 at 13:06
