As it is, that table makes no sense. There are pretty certainly not 4,840 motorcycle fatalities "per hour of travel" - and almost certainly also not per "billion hours of travel". We may be able to infer something about the relative danger, but a badly crafted table does not fill me with confidence about the underlying data preparation...

Bear in mind that most of these pedal cycle and foot fatalities are due to people driving their cars into pedestrians and cyclists, so these aren't inherently dangerous modes of transport, they're made dangerous by the poor safety features of cars and urban planning.

@StephanKolassa A billion km of foot journeys take about 250 million hours, so a figure of 220 deaths per billion hours would be correct based on the 54.2 deaths per billion km.

Please note: "hours of travel" means "fatalities per billion of hours of travel", not "fatalities per hours of travel"

@StephanKolassa What is wrong with 4,840 motorcycle fatalities per billion hours of travel? The data (apparently from a UK report) suggested an average speed of around 45 km/h and average journey time of 20 minutes and average distance of about 15 minutes, so is at least plausible in that sense.

@Henry: yes, for his particular one it may make sense. but then we should also assume that the middle column is "per billion journeys", so the three columns are all per billion in the denominator. And then we can immediately calculate that the average (say) motorcycle journey is of 1640/108.9=15km and takes 4840/108.9=44 hours. Which does not make sense. There is something off in the table.

@StephanKolassa : 1640/4840 hours, close to 20 minutes

@StephanKolassa it's not hard to see that 'billion' applies to all three columns, and nobody else has found an apparent inconsistency.

@StephanKolassa What you calculated is that motocycle drives 44 km/h on average. You need to use 1640/4840 for trip duration.

I guess this table would look completely different if we compare numbers for the same trip in each vehicle. I.e. look at a 1000 km cross country trip where there is actually a choice between different transports. It's quite obvious that it is rather difficult to have a lethal accident in a bus traveling 30 km/h in a city, but not so much on the highway.

@asdfex there have been incidents in UK where a bus has struck a very low bridge, causing fatalities. In many cases the same trip can't be compared anyway.

@mmmmmm Nope, it's right there at the top: "The number of fatalities per [measurement]"

@StephanKolassa you're math is a bit off: (4840 death/Bh) / (108.9 death/Bkm) = 44.44km/h, and (1640 death/Bj) / (108.9 death/Bkm) = 15km per journey. Finally, (1640 death/Bj) / (4840 death/Bh) = 20 minutes per journey (or, 15km at 44km/h)

@AndrewT. I mentioned the sample source in the answer itself, and did look for it as being better than the linked article that quotes it, but I didn't find anything.

How does one calculate "journeys" on an equitable level for a transatlantic flight vs a city bus? Is the transatlantic 1 journey (for planeload) or 300 (because pax + crew)? Is my "journey" on a city bus 1 because I get on, then get off, or is it 18, because there were 16 stops along the way? How does the driver factor into the "journeys" calculation? Makes sense that there are more deaths/"journey" for air travel because takeoff/landing is the most dangerous and the short hop flights have more danger/time & distance than long-haul. "There are lies, damn lies and statistics." M. Twian

Oh, and I don't think a bus is a particularly safe way to get from NYC to London... ;)

@Freeman it seeems pretty obvious that the table is about personal risk. There are even more damned lies than statistics, and they are cherry-picked statistics.

OK, you made me go look at the link. They say, "Nowadays, aircraft accidents are less likely than 20 years ago. Nevertheless, the growing number of flying aircraft and their increasing capacity cannot result in a reduction of onboard fatalitie." (sic, emphasis added). Nor can the number of fatalities due to bus/rail/other accidents when you count since the beginning of time. However, the number of accidents/fatalities per year for air travel is going down due to increased safety measures. Busses still travel on the roads with incompetent other drivers that cannot be accounted for.

Also, "Bus and rail are the safest form of transport by any measure". Except they're not by fatalities/mile, with roughly 10 times more fatalities per passenger mile than air travel. While the statistics themselves may be accurate, their written analysis is at least somewhat suspect.

And, it's not particularly clear (at least not to me) exactly how they define "journey" (which was my original point of contention).

@FreeMan from the table, bus travel is clearly the safest by all three measures, except the km comparison with air travel. And no, it is very unlikely that a single bus ride with 10 stops will count as 10 journeys. However if it has 10 passengers, that will be 10 journeys.

"Clearly the safest by all three measures, except the one where it isn't". That's funny. The system is yelling at me about chatting now, so I'm out...

@FreeMan and Air, the exception in the first list, is well below bus in the other two lists, giving a strong idea that bus is safer. The first list is km, where air is significantly longer journeys than bus.

@WeatherVane: I suggested an edit to your answer that replaces the image of the table with an actual table. I also added some more text from the quoted page to provide a bit more context for the table. I hope that's not too extensive an edit. As always, feel free to keep or reject my edit as you wish.

@AndrewT. I looked through the many pages of articles by Roger Ford in Modern Railways, and there were 3 in October 2022, the most likely being Informed Sources: Constraints needed for accident investigation closures but the site needs a subscription to read the article. I also searched on Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) at The National Archives but found nothing for "travel safety air bus train"

@IlmariKaronen thank you, I have accepted that, apart from I don't like super-large headlines.