Help the MTB Community - ride more

Cypher

Likes Dirt
Mountain biking suffers from a lack of good data to support our validity as trail users.

This is a survey that will track a number of riders over 6 months to see what sort of accidents, mechanicals and other riding behaviours we have. Please email me if you would like to be involved at mtb.census@gmail.com

Often it seems that many councils, national parks and other land managers are hesitant to allow mountain biking because it is seen as too risky and they are worried about litigation.

There are a number of studies that look at injuries in mountain biking. Quite a few of them only look at people who have been admitted to hospital – and both you and I know that it is many, many rides before someone ends up in hospital

A lot of the studies are around 10 years old or older. Think of all the changes that have happened in MTB over the past 10 years! Also a lot of the studies are for overseas places – are Australian conditions different? Are Aussie riders different in the way they ride?

My survey is designed to track a number of riders over 6 months, who ride a number of styles. From this data I’d like to be able to present the following:
• What sorts of accidents are common and how common?
• How risky is a particular style of riding?
• What should you include in a first aid kit?
• What types of mechanicals are common?
• What should you include in a bike kit?
• How often to people ride?
• How far they go for a ride?
• Who they see/meet along the way

I’m sure I’ll be proving much the same thing as the other studies done 10 years ago, but at least the data will be fresh. It will also be Australian centric. This data will be publicly available so that anyone wanting to put a submission for trail access can do so using this data to help them.

You can find the survey here: https://sites.google.com/site/mtbcensus/survey

If you want to contribute you will need to register first, so I can share the site with you. Then you can add data

Remember your information will be public. Please email me if you would like to be involved at mtb.census@gmail.com
 

Isildur

The Real Pedant
Heya Cypher,
It's been good to see more traffic on your Survey/Census as the days & weeks progress.

I was out riding today with some of my DH/FR buddies, and I mentioned the Survey to them. They were definitely keen to help out, but had missed the post due to the fact that they're lazy ass mofos sometimes (;) :D) and don't browse anything else other than the DH forum.

I reckon you should cross post this in each of the specific style areas (if the mods are ok with this), or at least start a thread in each forum with a link to this thread (that way all the replies should stay in this thread). The more people that see, join and then post data in the survey, the better!

Good luck!
 

Cypher

Likes Dirt
Cool. Thanks!

I was thinking about posting on all the forums, but wasn't sure if people would pooh-pooh that :)

The survey is going really well. Preliminary results show that you need to ride around 40km before anyone has a mishap (a tiny stack which may or may not result in a bruise) or ride around 110km before a minor technical event, such as a flat.

Or put another way, every 11th person you ride with (including you) will have a small stack.

Check out the link above for the current spreadsheet :)

There is still time to be part of the survey. Crank has stated that he would like to ride 1,000km a month. Will he do it? Can you beat him? :)
 
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