Most cycling casualties occur among older cyclists. Almost three quarters of the cycling fatalities and over half of the seriously injured cyclists occur among cyclists aged 60 or over [2]. Per kilometre travelled, older road users also run a higher risk of being killed or seriously injured in a bicycle crash, as is shown in Table 2. For cyclists aged 80 or over, fatality risk per distance travelled is 17 times higher than average (for all ages). Fatality risk for cyclists aged 70-79 is four times higher. This increased risk can largely be explained by the greater risk of serious crash injuries, and seems to a lesser extent to be due to more frequent crash involvement (see SWOV fact sheet Older road users).
In the last decade, the share of the over-60s among seriously injured cyclists increased from 42% in 2010 to 53% in 2020. The increasing ageing of the population in combination with increased cycling mobility – partly due to the popularity of pedelecs - may at least partially explain the rise in serious injuries [16] [21].
Table 2. Fatality risk by cyclist age group, based on the real number of road deaths per billion kilometres travelled (2012-2021). Source: Statistics Netherlands, edited by SWOV.
Most cyclist fatalities are men. In 2017-2021, they made up over two thirds (68%) of the actual number of cyclist fatalities.
