I'm just saying what I see in my area. The data I found was from a different state so might vary there. On top of that, yes, even with similar law breaking one group may be doing so in a riskier way. For example not having a light on your bike after dark is illegal (in my state) and dangerous. Driving without your lights on at night is also illegal and dangerous, but something I see much less of. On the other side, I see far fewer bicycles going an unsafe speed. The biggest factor is that I simply see more cars doing highways that aren't doing anything illegal and unsafe while I see more cyclists in suburban areas where there are more opportunites for illegal and unsafe actions. That's just my area and what I've seen. The data says they're about equal.

"Do you think those numbers are even vaguely comparable? The barrier to entry for boating is very high regardless of licensing, that is not true of biking."

Why do you think these numbers should be comparable? What barrier to entry; access to water? This is more common in some areas. Also, what do barriers to entry in boating have to do with this? If anything the fact that there are higher barriers and yet it's extremely easy to get a license would support my position.

"Schools are quite capable of running bike training courses without a licensing scheme."

I'd be for this. One drawback is that schools could teach a lot of things, but don't. There would be less pushback if we didn't push this into the curriculum too. The other drawback is that it doesn't cover the adults.

"Where have you linked this?"

https://fullfact.org/news/are-cyclists-blame-road-accidents/

"Additionally licensing should focus on ensuring that people can’t engage in an activity that endangers others with a demonstration of capability,"

Is this just your opinion, or is there a definition somewhere? There are licensing requirements for all sorts of things that don't provide risks to other people, but do to property, or to themselves. And particularly if one wants to access community resources, especially when the modest fees are used to provide safe infrastructure (such as boat ramps in the case of boating).

"You haven’t provided the data I'm afraid. Certainly not data demonstrating the risk of unlicensed cyclists to non-cyclists."

Considering the fact you missed my link... the main point is that cyclists contribute to their own accidents as evidenced by the data. My point about being a danger to others is common sense - these accidents caused by cyclists at least produced damage to property. There are occurances of fatalities and injuries to pedestrians too. Nobody has quantified them as far as I can tell. But we're talking about moot here because this detail doesn't matter to my main point (that everyone has been derailing). I really wish I didn't participate in many of these, but I got baited in by that troll and now everyone else is picking apart the details of the response.

If you read my comments, my main point is that there needs to be better training/testing for drivers and cyclists if we want cyclist involved accidents to decrease. The (limited) data absolutely shows near equal fault, and those faults being attributed to driver/cyclist error. Now we could say self training is sufficient. I'd even buy that if it weren't for all the issues I've seen. But these accidents do in fact cause harm to others on shared infrastructure, even if physical injuries are less common. We require permits for assemblies that block roads, permits for special events in public areas or noise exceptions, etc, because they inconvenience the public. So it seems acceptable and reasonable to require some basic training and testing instead of simply blaming it 100% on the drivers as the data doesn't support that.