Well, let's see....

$30 for a new fork spring (needed, as the weaker old one pitched me off the bike, breaking my c-bone in 5 places); $70 for a new rear shock to replace the failed OEM.

$40 for new cables after 2 years; 12 tires (some went on other bikes in the family cuz I didn't like 'em, but I used up 8, including the two still on the bike), total cost there about $260.

$400 after two years, which doesn't count upgrades (saddle, crank) or chain lube; I do need to add $50 for a new cassette/chain.

I spent more than $450 on gas & PLPD in six months! And that was before the spike in gas prices!

I think I'm money ahead....

The key word in my statement is rate (although the "mile for mile" part should clue you off too). Vehicle related fatalities are usually reported in deaths per 100 million miles traveled.

Either way, you can read THE ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS OF BICYCLING AND WALKING FHWA CASE STUDY #15. From the US DOT. It is kindof old (1993), but it is the most recent study that I am aware of that was conducted by the US Government.

If you take their optimistic estimate of 21 Billion bicycle miles traveled and 1,000 cyclists died. That is 4.76 deaths per 100 million bicycle miles traveled. Compare that with 1.36 deaths per 100 million car miles traveled in 2007 (NHTSA).

That is actually 3.5x more likely to die per mile on a bicycle in 1993 compared to in a car in 2007. I don't like the numbers any more than you do, but there they are. I wish we had more up to date numbers (deaths are up to date, but no estimate on mileage for bicycles). The rate is probably lower now, if you believe that annual mileage hasn't decreased since 1993, which is probably a reasonable thing to think.

Now, as for your disbelief in statistics and random sampling, what else don't you believe? Do you not believe the official unemployment rate because they only randomly sample 60,000 homes in the US? What about Oregon's unemployment rate, they only randomly sample 1,000 homes!

I live in Los Angeles. It would be virtually impossible to live around here without a car. Of course you can take taxis and some minimal public transportation + bike but this is basically car culture.

If I lived in NYC, Seoul, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc...there's no way I would own a car.

Lies, Damn lies, and statistics.

From:

Activity # Fatalities per 1,000,000
exposure hours
------------------------------------------------
Skydiving 128.71
General Aviation 15.58
On-road Motorcycling 8.80
Scuba Diving 1.98
Living (all causes of death) 1.53
Swimming 1.07
Snowmobiling .88
Passenger cars .47
Water skiing .28
Bicycling .26
Flying (scheduled domestic airlines) .15
Hunting .08
Cosmic Radiation from
transcontinental flights .035
Home Living (active) .027
Traveling in a School Bus .022
Passenger Car Post-collision fire .017
Home Living, active & passive (sleeping) .014
Residential Fire .003

I've always liked the above chart and based on average speeds it seems to support the previous mile for mile stat. From the same site I find it statistically significant that in a typical year over 90% of cycling deaths involve collisions with motor vehicles. From the previous posts I will assume that 100% of driving deaths involve at least one motor vehicle and at least some if not virtually all deaths of pedestrians also involve motor vehicles. Since cars have at least a 3 to 1 kill ratio. It seems to me that the solution is less cars not more.

As for cost, anecdotally, for the average cost of a auto mechanic's invoice I could buy at least a new single speed / Fixie. On a bad day a 105 to Ultegra race bike. The bike I commute on cost me $1,400. I think it is far safer and vastly more reliable than all cars in a similar price range.

The average American spends $6,000 on auto expenses. The median household income in 2007 is $50,740. If everyone rode we could afford to take an extra six weeks of holiday a year. The idea almost sells itself but unfortunately mostly everyone employed in an auto sector would get 52 weeks of holidays per year (unemployed) to spend camping (homeless).

I'm sure approximately 150 million North Americans agree with the original post. How could they be wrong?

There are lies, damn lies and statistics.

-Mark Twain

I suspect many of those bicycle miles are ridden in places like china where you are likely to have a large number of bikes riding in a sea of bikes.

This situation will result in quite a few scrapes and broken bones, but, it is extremely unlikely to result in death.

Compare this to a typical US commute where many of us have to do battle with the big fast metal things that like to kill us.

What I am getting at is that throwing around stats with something that varies extremely with the environment is kinda dumb.

Urban bike commuting is certainly more risky than car commuting in a similar area, because, if you are in a car in a congested area, by definition, you are likely going slow. But even at those speeds, a bike comuter can get dead with frightful ease.

Compare this to a 17 year old high school kid driving a car on rural roads to school or riding his bike to school. 17 year old boys + high speed vehicles sometimes = death. In this case, the bike is safer, IMO.

It all comes down to just weighing each situation, trying to use good judgement and crossing our fingers. If we all started living to try to maximize our statistical odds of not getting dead, we'd live pretty miserable lives.

All of the statistics I posted were for the US.

On another interesting note, some people have calculated that 30,000 people per year die from exposure to automobile exhaust every year in the US. That would raise the death rate from the ~45,000/year that die in collisions to a total of 75,000/year.

well, the thing about deaths per mile is that it takes a car more miles to get to a destination than it takes a bike.

Your math is flawed!

Flats may be annoying but unless you break the valve stem they are super cheap to fix. 25 cents for a patch and less than 10 minutes of time. A dozen flats is a lot in two years - are you riding in the gutter/ where there is a lot of debris, and keeping tires at proper pressure? Cars cost a helluva lot more to maintain, in terms of shop time as its much less likely you can do the repair yourself and parts are very expensive on cars!

There may be periods when lots of things go wrong on an old well-used bike at once, at which case maybe it is better financially (though not environmentally) to scrap the thing and buy a new commuter for about $350 or $400 with a few years of warranty on it.

I bought tires for about half that price that lasted me at least twice that long.

I'm not sure how you are ensured you will be okay being hit in a car. To me the bicycle has much greater mobility, I can get to work usually faster than a car, and almost always in the same amount of time. I don't have lost productivity due to sitting in gridlock. Maybe you meant to say greater range. (which obviously comes at a lot higher operating costs)

But while mentioning other costs not accounted for there's the gym membership I don't need because I bike commute and get in shape that way, the sick days I don't need to take because I'm healthier, the societal costs of the car I don't add to my city, the more productive I am due to getting to work in a better mood, and less stress not having to hunt for parking.

I don't know why anyone would find this that shocking. A great deal of money, research, and public education has gone into increasing the likelihood that people involved in a car crash will survive with minimal injuries.

What do cyclists get? A piece of styrofoam to wear on their heads.

I'm not complaining. We just need to understand we are riding on the streets using a vehicle that offers us no protection from collisions at all and we should act accordingly.

i smoke, and while it is easier to smoke while driving... it's much more fun on a bike. although i'm not advocating that people smoke.

also... the amount of environmental impact of the automobile cult in our country should be enough to motivate all of us to dismantle it.

Except that there are 2 major considerations you didn't mention:
1. Cars are often travelling at 60-75mph, where as bikes and cars using the same streets are typically on streets where the speed limit is 25-40mph.
2. Cars always have to be on the streets, whereas bikes can be on separate bike-only bike trails. A biker going down at 20mph or hitting another bike head-on at that speed is bad, but 200lbs of biker + bike hitting something (perhaps another 200lbs of biker + bike) is very different than a 3,500 pound car hitting another 3,500 pound car.

If everyone is biking on streets with cars I could understand. I cannot believe that cars on streets have a worse fatality rate than bikes on bike paths. I would agree with what you're saying, theoretically, in car vs bike collisions.

That's the funniest thing I've read all day.

How many people can commute to work entirely on bike paths? Mine is about 1/2 to 2/3rds and I think I'm fortunate that I can do that much.

Even though cars are often traveling at 60+ mph, my guess is that most collisions (car or bike) occur at intersections which are more frequent in areas where the speed limit is 25-45 mph.

we all have our reasons for commuting, why try to rain on someone else's parade. Some people around here can't afford to make a distinction between saving money by commuting by bike and commuting by bike out of necessity. Just because you can't save money by biking doesn't mean that someone else who is more frugal or more carefull with their equipment can't.

Same idea applies to those people you see driving a 20 year old beat up peice of junk car because thats all they can afford and they make it work.

You should just be glad that you have a choice to make.

Don't have any facts to dispute whether auto or bicycle commuting is more expensive. But, I totally agree w/t rest of this post. Spent alot of money over the last year on cycling gear and upgrades and drove my vehicle sparingly. The gear and upgrades I will have for years. The truck, too. Probably because I drive it less than 5000 milles per year. Its 19 years old and runs perfectly.

Set goals the last 2 years of over 7500 cycling miles and under 5000 truck miles. Though we're not car-lite it's gratifying to reach those goals.

This contributes to a sense of well being and optimism in a time of great social consternation. My medical needs are minmal as when one is healthy overall there're less maladies than can attack one's immune system.

All that aside it's just FUN to ride a bike.

I regret to say that if you're breathing harder you're sucking in more of those fumes.

Huh? Maybe in some cases. In my case the commute is much longer by bike since I can't use interstate highways. I'd have to guess that it is probably a wash in most cases.

According to certian statistics it costs me about $0.72 a mile to drive my Jeep Compass. I believe this includes average cost of all possible maintenance, insurance, financing, registration, etc. Basically any sort of cost involved with motor vehicles was factored in and averaged and $0.72 a mile is about what it costs me to drive. I'll be conservative and say would I drive about 7,500 total miles during the time of year I ride bike. That equals a total of about $5400. Since 2008 I have commuted or rand errands on my bike a total of; 1,345.46 miles. 1,345.46 x $0.72 per mile = $968 that I saved by NOT driving my Jeep to commute to/from work or run errands. There is no way I have spent $968 since I started tracking this in 2008 on my bike.

I do not buy that driving a motor vehicle costs the same as commuting by bicycle.

When I sold my car in 2002, I recall that at that time the average cost per year to run a vehicle was $7000 (Canadian). That cost included everything...insurance, maintenance, fuel, depreciation, etc. With that saving in mind, I budgeted to spend about half that $7000 per year on a combination of alternative transit…bikes/equipment, public transit and the occasional car rental.

My greatest expense is public transit, which is about a grand a year and I spend very little over that amount for all modes of transportation in the whole year. I bought myself a "pretty" bike for a little over a grand and use my "beater" as a workhorse. The cost of running both bikes is so negligible, I consider it almost nil. In fact, if every year someone stole my good bike and I had to replace it with a comparably priced one; I’d still be much further ahead than with the car.

Don’t' forget, the cost of maintaining a car (especially insurance and fuel), have gone up more than the cost of living since 2002 when I sold the car, so I'm much further ahead than the ruff shot cost analysis predicted at the time.

My advice is if you are making an OK income and you are able to sell your car, then get yourself a nice bike and don’t fret about picking up some luxury bike extras as a treat.

Leo

With the tone of you reply, I regret to inform you that in my car I'm on the interstate in stop and go traffic where thousands of cars go through and someone's tail pipe is right in front of me. Where on the bike I'm on far less travelled back roads with much less vehicle traffic and thus far better air. I am working harder, but there's much less tailpipe in the air to begin with. And that's not even counting the miles of off-street bike trails I'm fortunate enough to enjoy that don't even parallel a street, or the how the exercise you would get would likely to offset any additional pollution. Or that I seem to remember some article about how the air in the cabin of a car being much more polluting that simply being outside on the road, though I can't seem to find it again so I'm not sure it counts...

There are disadvantages to bike commuting, like the weather or taking additional time or not being able to hop in your car and go to lunch with someone else....I just don't think air pollution is one of them unless you're under some really unusual circumstances (like the only way you could bike is a path running alongside a busy freeway), and even then it's up in the air.

The big things that put cars over, so far as I can tell, are maintenance and parking. This assumes you aren't buying a Really Nice Car, since of course they're expensive on their own.

But if you've got free parking, bike commuting and car commuting can be a wash. Parking gets really expensive at higher density levels.

If everything is fine, you shouldn't be getting flats on your bike too frequently. Otherwise, too, maintaining a bicycle is far cheaper than maintaining a car (i.e., it's close to free, whereas the latter — with oil checks, transmission maintenance, gasoline, etc. — costs you forever after the initial purchase).

This said, biking isn't a practical "alternative" to driving in many situations, and it's wise to stop trying to "compare" bikes with cars.

As for the 1.5x higher death rate for cyclists. The biggest problem I have with this stat is that it is measuring rate by miles traveled. I think hours driven vs. hours cycling would be a much more relevant measure.

A cyclist is never going to match miles traveled by a car, so it really isn't comparing apples to apples. For example, I spend three hours commuting to work and back (46 miles). A car can travel roughly 180 miles in that same amount of time.

Time of exposure to the dangers of a given task is a much more accurate measure of risk than mileage.

Hmm... Troll alert?

Rrrright. And an elephant is not bigger than a gopher.

Two months of car insurance alone would cost me more than all the bike maintenance over the last couple of years.

Maintenance is such an insignificant expense when it comes to comparing the cost of owning a car vs. bike, that mentioning it as the first two reasons (out of three) really does not make your argument sound very convincing.

And every time you're out of 3 bucks (if you don't patch) and ten minutes. At five flats per year (which I think is a pretty high number), that's 15 dollars and almost an hour of your time. Wow. Impressive. Not.

Anyway, I know it's bad luck to brag about a long flat-free stretch, but in the last two years I had perhaps two or three flats, one of which was my own fault (riding an old bike with worn out tires).

When I read stuff like this, I always wonder what I'm doing wrong. I've been on the same set of tires on my primary commuter for the last, um... three, I think, years. That's about 10k miles. I've no intention of replacing them anytime soon - they're doing great. $90 (Canadian) per pair, Schwalbe Marathons. I'm sure you can find them cheaper in the States.

Since you argument that "bikes cost more $ than cars" has no wheels to stand on, you're deciding to go into the non-monetary aspects. Funny how you mention the advantages of a car, but fail to mention those of a bike. How about the improved fitness (and thus prolonged life expectancy), or the fun factor?

I haven't yet been limited by my choice of transportation as to what jobs I chose to take or to decline. It's not as though you're forced to ride your bike for the rest of your life. If you get a new job far away from home, you can always devise a different transportation plan (whether it be a car commute, a multimodal commuter, or moving closer to your workplace). Once you have a job that's bike-commutable, commuting by bike and living car-free is certainly cheaper. Also, don't forget that with remote workplaces come their own costs: namely, a huge chunk of time wasted every day by sitting in traffic.

Get a trailer and you'll be able to carry a lot of stuff. For the other people - get more bikes. Another perk of a bike: great social activity.

Again, I've never felt restricted in this regard. You can always rent a car, you know, if you want to transport something bulky. You can also get lots of things delivered: even if you have to pay for it every once in a while it will be cheaper overall than owning a car.

They are not.

Not greatly. I recall a difference of a factor of two. If you measure by hour of exposure, it goes in favour of the bicycle, for about the same factor.

But in the time it takes you to get there you're actually doing something good for you body and soul while at the same time accomplishing the mission of getting somewhere. This SAVES time. No need to drive to the gym to do boring stationary bike cardio and then drive back.

Sitting in a car, you breath them in too. On a bike though, you get exercise which makes you fitter. Ever heard of that 20:1 ratio (per every life-year lost to injury, 20 are gained as a result of health benefits of road riding)?

It depends on the situation. In many situations, including my own, it's vastly superior when it comes to economic benefits as well as lifestyle benefits.

My costs over 1 year and 5000 miles of commuting: Bike, $300. 3 Tires and 3 tubes, $70. Upgrades - stem, handlebar and bar-ends, $50. Waterbottles, pump and computer, $50. That's about $470, and really that's it.

In savings we ditched one car, which would have been about $500 in gas and insurance alone over the same period. Figure in repairs and that's where it really looks good - I could replace my whole bike for another $300-400, but there's not much you can do to a car that's that cheap.