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Accidents for passenger cars and motorcycles

publish date: 2022/07/02 12:52:00 GMT+10

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The government’s Fatal Accident Reporting System says that 27,102 passenger cars were involved in fatal accidents in 2002. Only 3339 motorcycles had fatal accidents
that year. 

Does this mean that motorcycles are safer than cars? 

Note: the number of cars is by far higher than the number of motorcycles.

Yes
No

Correct Answer

No

Explanation

Not at all— there are many more cars than motorcycles, so we expect cars to have a higher count of fatal accidents.

A better measure of the dangers of driving is a rate, the number of fatal accidents divided by the number of vehicles on the road. In 2002, passenger cars had about 21 fatal accidents for each 100,000 vehicles registered. There were about 67 fatal accidents for each 100,000 motorcycles registered. The rate for motorcycles is more than three times the rate for cars. Motorcycles are, as we might guess, much more dangerous than cars.

Reference

Introduction to the practice of statistics (6th edition)

Quizzes you can take where this question appears