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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

E bikes are amazing for getting around. Did it for years before moving inner city and just walking.

The major issue I had was the fear of theft as e-bikes are stolen regularly and cost a lot to replace.

Insurance is pretty cheap though. My ~$2.5k e-bike's insurance for no-questions-asked replacement in the case of theft is $12/month. Probably higher in high-crime areas but still, nothing compared to auto insurance.

The major issue is safety. Bikers are much more (3.4x to 11.5x) likely to be fatally injured per mile travelled compared to people driving cars [1]. Better bike infrastructure is needed.

[1] https://bicycleuniverse.com/bicycle-safety-almanac/

Yet despite that, the improvement in fitness from commuting by bike rather than car, is so great that switching to bike will statistically increase your lifespan in just about every city in the world. That’s after including the negative impacts of increased exposure to air pollution, and higher likelihood of being fatally injured while commuting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cycli...

> is so great that switching to bike will statistically increase your lifespan

Yea but so can a large number of other activities that let you keep your car.

Well sure, if keeping your car is important to you, then do what makes you happy.

For me switching to a bike meant more exercise without having to commit any extra time. Just swap on type of commute for another, duration didn’t even change due to congestion which is easy to cycle past.

Given the US rather extreme obesity problem, I would suggest that it needs all the help it can get when it comes to improving fitness.

The average US commute is 41 miles (round trip). If people biked that then the obesity problem would be gone. Not very realistic though.

The average lifespan may be higher, but how's the variance?

The article is comparing biking vs not doing any exercise. Not sure how applicable that is for the average person. Does not apply to me at all.

I just use the Lyft bikes in SF and forget about maintenance and theft. At ~$3 a ride, it's about $1k/yr which works for me (of course the number is different for everyone).

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