Figures Lie and Liars Figure

I went in to the doctor on Tuesday to get a mole removed. Well, not a mole, but some sort of similar growth. One of the questions to nurse asked me was, "Do you wear a bicycle helmet?" I told her I didn't own a bike. She looked kind of puzzled, and then said, "Well, if you had a bike, would you wear a helmet? It's important for safety." I laughed and told her it didn't matter, because I still didn't own a bike.

Then I thought, how important is it, really, that I wear a bike helmet. I looked up some statistics.

From http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm:

• There are 73 to 85 million bicycle riders in the US.
• 540,000 bicyclists visit emergency rooms with injuries every year.
• 67,000 bicyclists that visit emergency rooms have head injuries.
• 27,000 bicyclists that visit emergency rooms have injuries serious enough to be hospitalized.
• 698 bicyclists reportedly died on US roads in 2007.

Doing a little math, here are the odds of that actually happening:

• ER Visit: 1 in 135-157
• Head Injury: 1 in 1090-1269
• Hospitalization: 1 in 2704-3148
• Death: 1 in 104,585-121,777

Hmm... I originally wrote this to say how stupid wearing a helmet would be. The death thing isn't going to be that common. And ER Visits aren't a huge deal; I think every kid goes to the ER at least once in their life. But a 1:1000 chance of a head injury? That's a bigger deal that I though. To put it in perspective (from airlinepilotforums.com with these statistics added in):

The odds of...

• Having one container of ice cream in the freezer: 9 in 10
• Getting away with murder: 1 in 2
• Getting hemorrhoids: 1 in 25
• Being on a plane with a drunken pilot: 1 in 117
  
• ER Visit from Bike Accident: 1 in 135-157
• Audited by the IRS: 1 in 175
• Having your identity stolen: 1 in 200
  
• Writing a New York Times best seller: 1 in 220
  
• Head Injury from Bike Accident: 1 in 1,090-1,269
• Dying from any kind of injury in the next year: 1 in 1,820
  
• Hospitalization from Bike Accident: 1 in 2,704-3,148
• Being considered possessed by Satan: 1 in 7,000
  
• Finding a 4-leaf clover on the first try: 1 in 10, 000
• Being murdered: 1 in 18,000
• Becoming a pro athlete: 1 in 22,000
• Striking in rich on Antiques Roadshow: 1 in 60,000
  
• Being bitten by a snake, bee, or other venomous creature: 1 in 83,930
  
• Dating a supermodel: 1 in 88,000
• Death from Bike Accident: 1 in 104,585-121,777
• Being attacked by a dog: 1 in 131,890
  
• Struck by Lightning: 1 in 576,000

The average human has one breast and one testicle. ~Des McHale