Editor in chief at IamExpat Media
Whether for environmental reasons or simply for fun and fitness, more and more people in Germany are using bicycles to get from A to B. But while the number of road traffic deaths in Germany recently reached a 60-year low, the number of cyclists killed in traffic is rising every year.
One in every seven people who died in a road traffic accident in 2019 was riding a bicycle, according to new figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). A total of 445 cyclists died in an accident in Germany last year; 118 of them were riding electric bikes.
Compared to 2010, this is a 16,8 percent increase in the number of cyclist fatalities. It goes completely against the general trend for road traffic fatalities; the number of people killed while driving has been falling for years and in 2019 reached a 60-year low.
According to the statisticians, older cyclists are particularly at risk: 53,8 percent of those who were fatally injured in the past year were aged 65 or above. In fatal accidents involving electric bicycles, the proportion of older citizens was even higher, at 72 percent.
Cyclists themselves were responsible for less than half (45,4 percent) of the accidents. However, there were differences depending on the other people involved: if the accident involved a motorist, the cyclist was culpable in 23,4 percent of the cases and, in accidents involving goods vehicles, just 18,8 percent.
In the case of accidents with pedestrians and motorcycles, however, the main culprit was the cyclist in more than half of cases (59,5 and 51,7 percent, respectively).