bicycle – Page 8 – Things Are Good

Lower Your Risk of Cancer and Heart Disease by Cycling to Work

Bicycle

We all know that encouraging bicycles as daily transportation is good for cities, economies, and traffic flow. Cycling is really good for you too and the evidence that you should bike more is more prevalent than ever. The most recent contribution to why riding a bike to work is good for you comes from Glasgow. Researchers there found that over the course of five years people who biked regularly had lower instances of cancer and heart disease!

But, during the course of the study, regular cycling cut the risk of death from any cause by 41%, the incidence of cancer by 45% and heart disease by 46%.
The cyclists clocked an average of 30 miles per week, but the further they cycled the greater the health boon.
Walking cut the odds of developing heart disease but the benefit was mostly for people walking more than six miles per week.
“This is really clear evidence that people who commute in an active way, particularly by cycling, were at lower risk,” Dr Jason Gill, from the University of Glasgow, told the BBC News website.

Bicycles are the New Trucks

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Trucks are loud, big, and clog the roads. Bicycles are quiet, small, and only need a fraction of the space larger vehicles need. Moving freight around a city is tough because of the traffic, so how about using bicycles to transport freight?

Bicycles are often thought as only a recreational or commuter transportation solution, but more and more people are looking into using bicycles to move freight. This already happens in large cities to deliver food and small packages, so why not use bikes to move larger goods?

This isnâ€™t a new concept. Not so many years ago, delivery by bike was routine across Britain and remains so in many other less industrialised nations.

Newer bike-based cargo and courier firmsÂ have been around for a whileÂ but advances in e-bike technology are increasing the loads that such machines can carry and also the ease of use, particularly in hilly places.

Sleek, whirring machines are increasingly visible, even in places like the UK, where theÂ delivery giant DHL is using them. Elsewhere, the ambitions are greater,Â as with Gothenburgâ€™s â€œarmadilloâ€, an articulated bike-and-trailer system that transports deliveries to city centre shops and businesses.

Riding a Bike in the USA is Getting Safer

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Riding a bicycle is getting safer in American cities thanks to improvements in infrastructure. Usually the USA is associated with being the land of the car (and it still is very car-focussed) so it’s really nice to see that a sustainable and friendly form of transportation is getting the attention it needs. Over the last decade more bike lanes and cycle-friendly construction has made the streets safer for everybody while improving local economies – and above all protecting people from cars.

Researchers examined 10 cities that have been â€œespecially successful at improving cycling safety and increasing cycling levels by greatly expanding their cycling infrastructure.â€ The above table shows recent changes in bike network growth, cycling rates, and crash and injury rates for cyclists in those cities. Minneapolis, Portland and New York City have seen the largest drop in injury and fatality rates among this group.

Bike Lanes Save Lives of Non-Cyclists

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Cities can improve the health and well being of everyone by simply adding bike lanes. That’s right, drivers not only benefit from faster traffic flow they also benefit from increased health when cities install bike lanes. As Bloomberg reports, cities around the world are catching on and adding bike lanes to benefit all citizens.

Thereâ€™s math to show how cost-effective the strategy could be for public health. When New York spent about $8 million in 2015 on bike lane expansion, the cost per additional â€œquality-adjusted life year,â€ or QALY, was about $1,300, according to the Mailman paper.
A QALY, pronounced â€œqually,â€ is a standard measure of cost-benefit analysis. It takes into account the number of people who benefit from an intervention, how many years of extra life they can expect to get, and how healthy they will be during the extra years.
As it turns out, when you apply this to bike lanes, it makes them more economical per added QALY than, say, kidney dialysis, which costs over $100,000 per QALYâ€”although not quite as cost-effective as standard vaccines, which cost in the low hundreds of dollars per QALY, Mohit said.

Bicycling is the Safest Form of Transportation

In Toronto, the car rules the road so much so that the city is fine with non-driver (that’s everyone) deaths, and the city won’t do much to stop drivers from killing. Sadly, Toronto isn’t a unique case. In far too many places bicycling infrastructure is an afterthought that plays second fiddle to cars. Despite this lack of support for safety, riding a bike is still the least dangerous way to get around.

Bicycling is so safe that you can actually lengthen your lifetime by riding! Mr Money Moustache ran the numbers and found out that statistically no matter where you live you’ll live longer by riding a bike! So get out there and get on a bike and remember the more people out there commuting via bicycle the safer the streets!

Riding a bike is not more dangerous than driving a car. In fact, it is much, much safer:

Under even the most pessimistic of assumptions:

Net effect of driving a car at 65mph for one hour: Dying 20 minutes sooner.Â (18 seconds of life lost per mile)

Net effect of riding a bike at 12mph for one hour: LivingÂ 2 hours and 36 minutes longerÂ (about 13 minutes of lifeÂ gainedÂ per mile)