Being in the life insurance industry, I tend to prefer looking at all-cause premature mortality rather than just accident rates. Many activities that don't kill you with accidents increase your risk of death from disease or disorders. Driving is one of those activities -- it increases not only accidental death rates, but also cardiovascular disease, diabetes, emphysema, and some cancers.

Cycling to work reduces the all-cause risk of premature death by 40%, even after controlling for other athletic activity. (Copenhagen Heart Study, Andersen et al., 2000)

Life years gained by cycling outweigh life years lost in accidents by 20 to 1 (Baden et al., 1998)

We're all going to die. Some people obsess over *how* they're going to die, but personally, I care more about *when* I'm going to die, and I'd like to delay it as long as I can maintain quality of life. Compared to driving, cycling does both -- it dramatically reduces premature mortality, and it significantly improves quality of life, with reductions in stress, obesity, diabetes, lung disease, heart disease, osteoporosis, and some cancers.

If you could bottle the health and longevity benefits of cycling and sell it as a painful injection every month for the rest of your life, you'd make billions...