How can that be considering that everyone uses a bathroom at some point during the day, but not everyone rides a bike. Of course not everyone falls in the bathroom, but then not every cyclist falls either... but the sheer difference in the number of cyclists vrs bathroom users has got to make bathroom falls more common.

I think the biggest obstacle to cycling is laziness... I almost succumbed to that this morning (the irony will be thick on this). I was getting ready to go to the gym, to do some arm strengthening exercises (I like to ocean swim... and certain muscles tend to suffer while just cycling) and I briefly toyed with the idea of driving, to save a few seconds involved with getting the bike out of the garage... I had to laugh however as it struck me as counterproductive to drive to a gym... so I got in both some weight lifting and aerobics, by jumping on the saddle... and yes, I did have to pump up the tires a bit... I've been out of town for a few weeks. Still, to me that was no excuse to drive. However, that may not be the logic for most Americans, who would just jump into the car to go a few blocks to a store or even the gym.

I think the "safety excuse" just adds another excuse to the laziness issue... yet further rationalization to just drive.

The problem is that in many American cities, designed for the automobile, the "necessities of life" are a not within easy biking/walking distance and public transit can be a pain to use... this society is just too darn auto centric... shops tend to be clustered in malls which may be some distance away, unlike in say European countries where one may find all the needed vendors within blocks of where you live. More dense American cities such as San Francisco or NYC may offer everything in a reasonable distance, but the same may not hold true in say Minnesota or Montana or Arizona. In places like San Fran and Portland and NYC it can actually be frustrating to drive, and thus foster a car free existence.

Even here in San Diego, there are some neighborhoods that really foster a car free existence and others that are practically hostile to peds and cyclists. I recall working in one area that had minimal sidewalks, and just to go across the street to a shopping center from my office required that I walked either in traffic in a busy driveway or through gardens and across lawns. (I thought it just down right lazy to drive the 1/2 a block from my building to the mall area where the food court was.)

WITH ya on this one -- I'm already to the point of BELLOWING:

**SHUT

THE

F

UP**

ABOUT

HELMETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't CARE what your OPINION is about being "a fool" for not wearing one -- OPINIONS are like SPHINCTERS...EVERYBODY has one, most all STINK. If you feel stupid not wearing one, WEAR one. Call *ME* stupid or foolish, and we have a PROBLEM.

How about "bad weather excuse" ??...I think bad weather can really play tricks on the persons mind and cause them to give in to "laziness" or give in to fear of getting sick..and they end up driving instead of biking.

Bathroom falls can be more common but that doesn't mean that as many result in serious head injury. But I checked the stats again anyway and I think I found the difference. The bicycling stats included kids under 14 while the bathroom stats didn't. Kids under 14 accounted for almost half of the cycling head injuries. So taking that into consideration bathroom falls do result in more head injuries for adults but if you excluded adults over 65, I'm not sure that would be true.

Still, 90% of the cyclists killed in 2009 were not wearing a helmet, - most of them were middle aged men.

Agreed, but the root cause is laziness, everything else becomes further rationalization for the root cause... "Oh it's not safe...;" "Oh it's raining...;" "Oh I don't look good in bike clothes...;" "Oh the helmet messes up my hair...;" on and on ad nauseam.

Around november last year(2012), a 56 year old bike courier was killed in Toronto. He was riding through an intersection and was hit by a taxi which was "racing" to get through just as the light turned orange. It was "bad timing" I guess... The cyclist was wearing a helmet which was shattered to pieces and he died from head trauma.

I like the goals of this article and do think the writer is sincere, but reality does get in the way.

Relatively speaking cycling is not a safe mode of travel in the US as only pedestrians and motorcyclists have higher death rates. Victoria Transportation Institute has stats on fatality rates by miles traveled broken down by mode:

commuter rail: 0.1
transit bus: 0.6
passenger car: 7.9
cyclists: 82.2
pedestrian: 198
motorcycle: 303

http://www.vtpi.org/safetrav.pdf

And yes when you do look at it by number of trips taken the gaps will narrow but they will not close as far as any data that I have seen.

Does this stop me from riding? No, but it does make me rethink certain trips, riding at certain hours, specific routes, etc.

Well...err...I looked it up, and according to my gps I went 11.41 miles at 12.6mph average speed. I mean to be fair - I gain some on the bike because I avoid rush hour traffic which slows me down some (it's slower, but not stop and go in the car). And my bike route only has like 2 stoplights on it.

Lol, wasn't trying to start a flame war on that one. Maybe I was to over the top, because I've known 3 people to try it and that's it. Just saying you forget what a pain the weather is when you're used to driving a car where rain just means people drive slightly slower - maybe...

I had no input into the people I knew going back to having a car. One of them lived in Florida, the other two in Minnesota.

I imagine this argument has been had over and over again, so I'll leave it at that.

You're clearly an idealogue. If you want to tell yourself that you can bike through 9 inches of snow, you keep telling yourself that.

Only superficially related to what I wrote.

I'm really curious where these statistics you're quoting are from...I'm definitely surprised to hear that it's "middle aged men" who make up the largest group...

I live currently in Sioux Falls SD from Southern California and biked through a crazy winter and into June the weather is blowing my mind and I have commuted every day here for almost 1 year on a bicycle.

There is much talk about making South Dakota "bicylcle friendly" but the reality is that is not going to happen, The Great Plains finished almost dead last in the recent bike friendly places to live.
I think there may be a "hunting season" on us....ouch


I still cycle every day because I want to, helmet, hi viz clothes, lights and all.
(In Cali I was an Aerospace Engineer and Professional Jazz Bassist).

I really liked the basic tone of the article that USA needs to grow up and I would really like to hear what the Author has to say about this,

Mr. Jenkins?

OK, I guess you had a slower car route, which gives bike an edge, and since my route was longish and almost all freeway, that skews against bike. But I get it. Now I have a 5.6mi commute. Car or bike would be exactly the same route (suburban arterial streets), car would be 10-15 min (I actually haven't driven it enough to really know!), and today I set a new personal best of 25:24. (That's mostly uphill, but not super-steep. I should look up how many feet I gain on my way to work).

My guess, thats just a statistical reflection of middle-aged men being the largest demographic that cycles. How many middle-aged men have you seen out on their bikes since the last time you saw a 10-year old girl on her bike? (Unless you have a 10-year-old daughter, you know what I mean...)

it probably depends on where you live (city vs. suburb). here in chicago, the commuter/utility cycling scene seems to be dominated by the 18-35 year old demographic.

when i take longer recreational rides out in the burbs on a sunday afternoon, the white middle-age male demographic is in full control out there.

my $.02
 

I think I would rather have a helmet on than not. a little protection doesn't seem like such a bad idea. I am not sure why people are SOO against them.

I thought this was well written and wanted to add my thoughts to it as well.

Has anyone else looked at the author's five points with regard to cars?

When I flip down the visor on my van a sticker tells me "Death or serious injury may occur". To make it worse, it's telling me that this death or serious injury may be inflicted by one of the vehicle's safety devices! My wife covered this sticker in her car with a sticker that says "375 Horsepower". I guess she didn't like the auto industry selling fear to her.


Cars might fare slightly better than bikes on this one, but mostly because they're such hulking beasts that it's hard to drive a car like a kid. Cars roll through stop signs. In heavy traffic, the last car through a "yellow" light is routinely still in the intersection well after the light turns red. Speed limits? Hah!

I don't have a survey handy saying how many drivers think other people drive like idiots, but I have a fair idea what it would say.


I've got nothing here. Cars have this nailed. You can wear the same clothes to drive a car that you wear to sit on the couch in your living room. Of course, that's not really a coincidence, is it?


Please! This isn't even close. Most cyclists wave at least to one another (never mind the large minority who think this is stupid). Most, I think, are friendly toward random people who happen to make eye contact with them. People in cars, not so much. People in cars, for the most part, don't even look at one another unless it's to observe the other guy picking his nose. Then there's the not insignificant minority of drivers who are outright hostile to other people. Mean people are mean regardless of the vehicle they use.


I don't know off hand which automobile publication is the largest, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of its content centers around horsepower and sportiness. I think the magazine shelf at my local grocery store has more publications dedicated to making cars seem like something you could race than it does about any other single "sport".

This one cracks me up anyway. The guy wants people to treat bicycling for transportation as if it's "normal" but he also wants industry magazines dedicated to this "normal" activity. Yeah, I'll look for that right after the premier issue of Minivans Monthly. And Bicycle Times...this has been bugging me lately. Yes, it's a very different magazine than Bicycling, but is it really any less consumer oriented? True, the reviews don't focus on $8,000+ carbon race bikes. Instead they focus on $2,000+ steel utility bikes. I don't need a $2,000 utility bike any more than I need an $8,000 race bike. I can race on a $500 bike and use a $100 bike for utility purposes. Just because the magazine caters to the tweed crowd doesn't make it any more grown up.

It along with a bunch of other stats are here

The one about average age is under Table 3.

I deliberately picked my apartment to be 30 min away by bus because I know I can do that distance by bike :)
Not sure if this was by choice, but some of my coworkers live like 70km away. Maybe the houses are cheaper?

Tying this back to the article, using the European yardstick doesn't necessarily work on US/Canada or elsewhere. They have made it easier to be closer, things are more spread out here. We can try and change bits of it, but tackling the sprawl would do more to address cycling.

The reason why we get pissed at drivers is basically the same reason why driver gets pissed at some of us. We are not consistent, and did something unexpectedly.
Though I suspect that people have loud complains about cycling not because there's more of them, but as a group, we are less consistent. e.g. we can expect most drivers to stop at lights, we can expect that most drivers will stop at at stop sign, from a small road to a major road, and be mindful of californian stops if it's a 4-way stop in the middle of the suburbs.

But different cyclists do different things. Some stay on the sidewalk, some stick by the rules strictly, some bend it a bit (guilty as charge, at stop signs with clear visibility, I will slow and roll through if I know there's plenty of space), and some are just outright reckless.

Tackling that problem would be interesting, yet tough.

Who is more mature?

A) Person in tight jeans/short skirt with flip flops/high heels pedaling a 40 lb batavus into a rainy headwind.

B) Person in water proof pants/lycra shorts with cycling shoes pedaling 25 lb crosscheck into a rainy headwind.

Cool! :-)

Thanks for posting back the source!

This was interesting though -
As shown in Table 2, the majority of pedalcyclist fatalities in 2011 occurred in urban areas (69%) and at non-intersections (59%).

Also interesting -More than one-fourth (28%) of the pedalcyclists killed in 2011 had a blood alcohol
concentration (BAC) of .01 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or higher, and around one-
fourth (23%) had a BAC of .08 g/dL or higher

Minnesota only had 5 fatalities? Whereas both California and Florida had over 100 (the worst states for that statistic). Though that's probably also a reflection of the fact that with the temps it's easier to bike year round there...

Also, what's the population of CA vs the population of MN? Not 20x, but you're right climate probably does a lot to explain the difference.

does it matter? ;)

Though it would be funny to see a)

Who's "They"? In Europe there's less land, so higher population density is a necessity, cars are less necessary, and bikes and other options are more viable.

Here in the US, without that land constraint, we have spread out. Urban planners have prioritized suburbia and designed everything around a car-centric lifestyle. And that's only recently, before there were urban planners, when the economy was shifting from agriculture to industry, too many clung on to the fanatasy of living in the country, and thus chose to live farther from city centers, in tract housing with yards, not fully understanding the deal with the devil they were making by embracing a lifestyle that requires a car. Now we're stuck with their legacy, and road infrastructure that is anti-bike.

Great point, in Europe you have to be rich and it is hard to get a license, many are riding bikes out of necessity and they build their infrastructure around this.
Europe in the whole is small compared to the USA so logistics come into play here.
It seems like every 50 miles you have to show your passport, where in USA the land is vast and If you commute in a large city many factors come into play.

Culture is a huge factor also, that is why soccer and cycling is huge in Europe and not so much here.

Perhaps that is why Europe esp. France is mad at a certain American for winning 7 something or another.
(disclaimer don't want to turn this into a whats his name thingy or a helmet debacle...lol)

Good stuff really as a I for one love a healthy debate and find humor in the flames...

I would really like what the author has to say, and he is a member........hmmmm

Quote:

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So, for crying out loud, quit preaching helmets. They aren’t necessary and you won’t die riding without one. Anyone who has thoroughlyexamined the literature will reach the conclusion that helmets can do little toprotect you against serious injury.

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What?!?! This guys a doctor? . . . Oh, a chiropractor. nevermind. I have hit my head twice while riding a bike. Did the helmet prevent serious concussion? I don’t know. Maybe I should stop wearing it and the next time I fall I’ll find out.

Quote:

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Start riding like adults. .

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I do

Quote:

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Save the spandex for when you need it. . . . There is nobody on the planet Earth who has not looked at a pair of Lycra shorts and said to themselves “There’s no way in hell I’m gonna look good in that

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I need it to be comfortable when riding a bike. I do not give a dam what others think. Maybe they would like it better if I took fashion que’s from the Kardashians. Hard to do since I don’t lead my life by what others think about what I wear, and never watch crap like that.

Quote:

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Be nice to others. .

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I am, unless they write stupid, logically flawed articles.

Quote:

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It all comes down to this. If werent cycling to grow beyond its small, homogeneous niche, all of us cyclists need to change our behavior to reflect the cycling culture that we want to bring about. In other words, if you want an environment where most of the population rides a bike — then you should ride your bike as you would in that environment..

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Slowly, in uncomfortable clothing while risking the most precious attribute I have; my brain? No thank you.

RubeRad: that should've been a "That". The lack of sprawl makes normal commute easier, because you can't be that far from where you work. My bad.

Culture is another big thing - In Hong Kong (lived there for last 3 years), everything is "close", but the drivers has 0 sense that bicycles are there. There was a handful of incidents where trucks back into bikes and run them over (with fatalities). Their cultural thing is that cars is a sign of luxury, and only see bicycle as a recreation thing, so it actually is rather dangerous because drivers are simply not going to expect a cyclist on the roads at all.

There are also no way to lock up bikes, etc...

Cultural change is always the hardest one. We can fix availability issues, we can fix urban sprawl if we wanted to. Getting people to believe in the new norm is the tough part.