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Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

Eh, there’s a big difference between having known how to ride a bike when you were a kid and being willing to do it now.

Under 30% of adults ride bikes in a given year, and less then half of them even ride twice a month.

People don’t like bikes. They’re significantly more likely to injure you than a car (though more mildly, and probably a lot less likely to kill you if you’re riding somewhere designed for bikes and where there are no cars). They offer no protection from the elements. You have to wear a helmet and mess up your hair. Etc.

Adults just don’t want to bike everywhere when they could drive and billions in infrastructure won’t make that much different.

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Idk if its want in the terms you're thinking, in the USA.

I'd love to bike everywhere, it just isn't safe unless the infrastructure to it is dedicated to making it so. Even if I'm wrong and its just a perception issue (IE, I'm uncomfortable with the narrowness of bike lanes with cars so close)

If we had wide dedicated bike lanes (some cities do this) and bike infrastructure, I'm all in. I'd bike everywhere I could. I hate owning a car. I hate driving. I hate anything to do with transportation where I am doing those things because I could either be enjoying the fresh air on my own (biking) or would like to move the responsibility to a true professional (public transport).

Because, however, in most cities in the US, public transport and bike infrastructure sucks, its the best option I have.

EDIT: Also, in the US, cars are a tax on the poor and lower middle class. Hell, even solidly middle class people would have way more quality of life if they didn't need to buy and maintain the stupid things for (essentially) your entire life. They're just stupid worthless to have day to day IMO

The problem is even with that infrastructure, outside of a small handful of cities “everywhere you could” still isn’t very much, and you’d still have to have a car. You’re going to bike to the restaurant in the rain or snow? You’re going to bike to work in the snow or when it’s really hot and you’ll show up there gross? It seems pretty obvious to most people who don’t read HN why if you built a great biking infrastructure you’d just have two problems instead of one.

Poor people are much less likely to live close to where they work, so switching to bikes won’t help them. The people who want this bike infrastructure are far from poor.

Cars are not stupid and worthless. They’re expensive and the vast majority of the population owns and uses them every day, surely they have huge benefits. They are obvious to most people. They are not great for the environment but even if you magically got rid of them entirely we’d still be way over emissions targets.

Cars are expensive AND the vast majority of the population use them because they have to.

> You’re going to bike to the restaurant in the rain or snow?

Yes, yes I am? Why would I not; I own clothes for being outside in bad weather. Those clothes and bike were cheaper than a car, so why would I not?

> You’re going to bike to work in the snow or when it’s really hot and you’ll show up there gross?

Also, yes? You know people used to have to walk to places of work before cars, right? And while cars allow us to not experience any of those mild annoyances in exchange for huge sums of money, most economically minded people would rather be a bit sweaty than pay an extra pile of money for a car.

The main problem with cars isn't the environmental damage from tires / fossil fuels; it's the space they take up in our cities.

The amount of parking alone that is required at virtually every destination (and generally far in excess of actual parking demand) is the key culprit. But massive amounts of space dedicated to wide roads and highways also contribute.

This space dedicated to cars increases distances between everything and actively makes other transportation methods less convenient.

>Poor people are much less likely to live close to where they work, so switching to bikes won’t help them. The people who want this bike infrastructure are far from poor.

Poor people who are spending lots of money and time on public transit could substantially benefit from a low cost, point to point transportation system. Especially if their commute distances could be lowered in a less car dependent society.

If you are able to go outside in the rain or snow, or when it's really hot, why not bike as well?

People don't like bikes when they are surrounded by two tonne metal monstrosities driven by people who aren't even paying attention half the time.

Look at places like Amsterdam where there has been serious effort in building bike infrastructure. People bike.

> They’re significantly more likely to injure you than a car

Are there reputable statistics that attest to this? I agree that your odds as the cyclist in a bicycle v auto accident aren't good, but driving is (statistically speaking) a pretty dangerous activity in its own right.

> They offer no protection from the elements. You have to wear a helmet and mess up your hair.

FWIW, this is also true of motorcycles, which aren't exactly a rarity in much of the rural US.

Cycling is more dangerous per mile traveled than cars [1]:

"So we’ll compare risk at both the 6.2 billion and 21 billion miles traveled levels.

784 cyclists died in 2005 (p. 86). That would make the death rate of 0.37 to 1.26 deaths per 10 million miles.

33,041 motorists/passengers died (p. 86) from 3 trillion miles traveled (p. 15), making their death rate 0.11 per 10 million miles traveled.

So cyclists are either 3.4x or 11.5x as likely to die as motorists, per passenger mile. Neither conclusion is very happy."

Motorcycles are about 30x more dangerous per mile than cars, for reference. I've seen it said that walking somewhere is also more dangerous per mile than driving, but I can't find a source for that.

The page links to a source which suggests cycling is much (6x) safer per hour than driving, which intuitively seems like a more reasonable measure of safety to me, but I'm unsure.

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

How many of those deaths involve a car though?

I would also love to see the comparison when you account for secondary health effects like obesity and pollution

Basically all of them, I predict. Cycling in and of itself is extremely safe. It's only when you force cyclists onto busy city streets in the same space as fast-moving cars that cycling becomes dangerous.

Put another way, cars kill people. Bicycles do not.

Yeah I think comparing on a per mile basis is really skewy due to the typical usage patterns.

The better comparison is probably significant injury per city mile. Accidents on highways are way less common (both per mile and per hour) than city since there are way fewer points of interaction on highways (although occupant deaths are more likely on highways since speed is higher). Unfortunately, I'm not finding good breakdowns for car crashes based on road type.

People who have motorcycles in most locales don’t rely on them as their only form of transportation and typically have a car also. Which is exactly what I think would happen with bikes unless this infrastructure includes climate controlled structures.

You're right, but I don't see that as a point in the negative column for bikes. If people can use a bike for trips that would have previously required a car, that's a positive development, even if the bike isn't able to replace every trip made by car.

I try to use my e-bike whenever possible, but it's seasonal and dependent on destination and cargo (e.g., taking my cat to the vet when it's snowing? car! going to the gym or on a small grocery run in the spring? bike!). If I only had to use a car rarely, I might consider giving it up and renting as needed (like how I rent a uhaul van or pickup from Home Depot then ~1-2 times a year I need to haul a lot of cargo), but I'm a long way from that goal.

I know anecdotes are not data, but I've been surprised how much “elasticity” there is in NYC when it comes to people I know who are not disposed to ride a bike starting to ride a bike as infrastructure (meaning both bike lanes and ride share) improve.

On the other hand, there are lots of reasons why adults who can drive don't want to drive. I have a license but I'd rather bike than drive and not have to deal with parking, gas costs, traffic, etc. Plus I get some exercise.

There’s a big difference between “unwilling to ride a bike” and “cannot ride a bike“ (which is what the parent post said). If everyone that could reasonably ride a bike for their commute/errands, did ride a bike, there’d be a lot less traffic for those that cannot ride a bike.

It did not say cannot, it said don’t know how. There are lots of people who know how to ride a bike but cannot. I’m one of them when there are six inches of snow on the ground, or it’s raining and I need to get somewhere and not be drenched.

Yet somehow, people in Finland have no trouble riding their bikes in the snow. Over here in Tokyo, mothers with their small children ride on bikes all the time in the summer rainstorms, and have no trouble staying dry by using something called "rain clothing".

> People don’t like bikes.

People don't like cycling within the current infrastructure. Not only would most bikes have to share the road with vehicles (and semis!), but car dependency creates vast distances to traverse - massive parking lots, wide roads, highways, etc.

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