17: Bicyclists

The bicycle may not be a vehicle for revolution, but bicycling – in increasing numbers – is revolutionizing our mobility patterns. In many ways, bicycling is an anomaly in the road traffic system. Bicyclists are not registered or licensed, and hence barely regulated, yet they are expected to ride on the road (and not on the curb) and obey the traffic rules (which they never learned formally, may not know, and on which they have never been tested). Also, typically health and safety go hand in hand – but this is not the case in bicycling. On the one hand, cycling is promoted as an economically viable environmentally friendly alternative to driving. It is a healthy activity that provides cardiovascular exercise in lieu of the sedentary stressed sitting position behind the wheel, and several studies have demonstrated that compared to non-cyclists cyclists have lower risk of morbidity and mortality from various causes including cancer and cardiovascular diseases (Oja et al., 2011). On the other hand, cyclists are vulnerable road users who are not shielded by anything, except – sometimes – a light-weight helmet. And when they mix with the motorized traffic they provide a recipe for disaster; a crash in which they are the primary victims. In the Netherlands, for example, per kilometer of riding, bicyclists are approximately at five times the risk of a car driver of being injured, and for older cyclists the risk is approximately ten times as high (Wegman et al., 2012). Nonetheless, because of its health benefits, reduced congestion, and reduced pollution the Dutch mortality data showed that the tradeoff is positive and bicycling should be encouraged (de Hartog et al., 2010). However, a different analysis by Stipdonk and Reurings (2012) also on Dutch data, but one that considered only traffic injuries as an outcome, suggests that a modal shift from driving to cycling would result in a net increase in both fatalities and hospitalized casualties.