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Oxford Professor: Cycling is 10 times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Bicycle commuting reduced all-cause mortality by almost 50%. All-cause. That's with the risk of getting murdered by a driver priced into the figure.
Source? Notably bike enthusiasts are self selected from those willing and able to do what they do. It is notably not useful to say that a 20 year old commuting 10 miles a day is more healthy than grandma in her walker.
https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001295
I encourage you to save methodological speculation until you've actually read the study
Yep, meanwhile my country built bike highways. I'm at work after 35 minutes of cycling. (15 km)
I live outside of a city, so I can choose between multiple cities where I wish to work. It's pretty convenient.
I simply don't feel like accepting a job offer that has a bad commute.
The biking is a huge stress reliever, I come fresh at work and freshly home.
Seems it works out great for you but I don't think it is a great solution for Americans who on average live far further from their work in inhospitable climates and are less healthy.
Often times being pushed so far from their work because their city downtown is 60% parking lots and it illegal to build any new buildinga unless they are luxury condos or mcmansions.
If the city still had decent density, they could easily live closer to work.
Precisely. Claiming that biking is more dangerous than driving because car-supremacist land use patterns force cyclists out into suburban sprawl is essentially disingenuous victim-blaming.
@grue @FireRetardant
I live in the suburbs of Tokyo now but I grew up in Michigan in the middle of nowhere. 7 miles to a town with a traffic light and 3 miles to a town with a post office smaller than a convenience store. The town with a post office had passenger rail service 100 years ago. My grandpa told me about it. Guess what happened? The automobile manufacturers bought the line and shut it down. I rode my bike to both towns all the time and in all weather. #FuckCars
Claiming that biking is MUCH more dangerous than driving is just reality. It's a function of dividing deaths by miles traveled. Individuals live in the real world as it is now and must make decisions based on actual reality not what you imagine might be fare in a more reasonable world than we live in whilst making positive change for the future.
You aren't a victim and nobody is blaming you by understanding actual reality.
Great but we have to deal with the world as it is whilst improving it when we can. This means that we should build denser more walkable spaces going forward whilst realizing that we need trains and busses and electric cars not instead of better options but instead of gas cars.
What is such a inhospitable climate? They should aim to be healthy
I suppose you felt like sharing this information because it confirmed whatever weird biases you have but you’re obviously wrong but you still haven’t deleted your comment so I think you are a republican
I think if you think that saying that US needs more remote work, affordable housing near where we work, and investment in transit makes one a Republican you must not be very familiar with Republicans. I think you should probably rethink your entire perspective on life.
...yet city in the US been looking at this and found out biking is not as dangerous as people think, and facilities being build for cyclist is increasing.
https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2025/03/19/traffic-safety-2024-pedestrian-cyclist-deaths
It is exactly as dangerous as people think as you can clearly look at the miles biked and driven and see that the deaths per mile are massively higher. What you are posting is that its possible for it to be less dangerous than before mediation not that it is sanely possible to make mixed use as safe as cars.
Two thing:
so does walking. Pedestrian death is significantly higher than bicycle death in US. Does that mean you should stop walking? :D
cyclist doesn't ride 200miles to visit their grandma, and more often than not the trip tend to be short per day. Car driver tend to live further from everywhere(look at suburb), that mean in a single day they travel more, so of course car could rake up more non-incident mile than pedestrian and bicycle. Even in Netherlands, the cycling haven, in 2023 the death per billion km is 15.6, despite having 270 cyclist death in the whole country, and despite cycling being a part of their life there.
It looks damning if you only know how to take the statistic on face value, but in reality? It's not. And let's not talk about where the danger come from.
DUH, you're the one that saying bicycle is a laughable solution, yet city has been trying that way, so let's not shift the goal.
Yeah biking is extremely deadly where I live. You really don't see bikes at all. Sometimes they're left on the roadside where someone died on one. You can't walk, either.
The government should ban cars to make cycling safer
On the narrow roads where I live in the UK I also doubt the number of cars having to slow down and then accelerate to overtake is saving energy. I'd love to see a study that looked at the rural roads in the UK because I'm sure it's less efficiebt and more polluting.
Obviously this changes if there are dedicated cycle paths, but they are a rare thing or here in the sticks. Also there idiots on road bikes who refuse to use cycle lanes when provided. I think the highway code needs updating to stop this.
I'd also ban racing bikes from the road, if you can't cycle over a drain or a pothole then your bike isn't built for UK roads.
I'm sure I'm going to get down voted to hell and back for this post.
Note sure why this would be downvoted
I'm not surprised. It shouldn't be controversial. We have similar rules for cars in relation to the tyres to ensure minimum data braking distances in various weather conditions. It's common sense that you shouldn't have to swerve into traffic to avoid getting a puncture. It's something the should be discussed in a civil way
The efficiency part is just logic when every 4-5 seconds during rush hour a car is overtaking you. That has to be more poluting than just having another car on the road.
I'm a cyclist, I've only ever owned mountain bikes as racing bikes are too dangerous and slide too easily in the wet. I used to cycle 10 miles to work every day and I hated how cars would accelerate past me and I always questioned how much pollution must be created when they do. I didn't have a car and had no other option at the time and I'm surprised that I've never seen this considered.
My opinion changes massively when there are dedicated cycle paths.