How Many Cyclist Fatalities Worldwide?

The Answer:

This is a bit hard to pin down, especially since it takes the World Health Organization some time to analyze each year's data. However, we can get a good estimate based off of the global average. 

The World Health Organization in 2015 published their Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015. The report itself is over 300 pages long and mostly deals with policy and public safety recommendations. But, they do give us the the figure (on page 8) that around 4% of victims in fatal road injuries are cyclists. 

Now we have to make some assumptions. For the sake of estimating, let's assume that cyclist safety hasn't drastically improved worldwide in the last couple years. If we compare that 4% rate with the most recent figures from the WHO on the Leading Causes of Death Worldwide, we arrive at around 56,000 cyclist deaths in 2016. 

We can offer that 56,000 figure with some confidence. To figure out the current fatalities for 2018, we'd have to make a few more big assumptions. If we say that 2018 will have a similar number of cycling deaths to 2016, and that cycling deaths are evenly distributed throughout the year, then we'd estimate there have been around 35,000 cycling deaths around the world as of August, 2018. 

-The Editors