I truly believe that biking is very important and beneficial for all the reasons listed in this article. Biking is an easy and affordable way to get from place to place and can also be enjoyable. I am from the suburbs and I used to always love bike riding with my friends or family when the weather was nice. But aside from the convenience and fun, biking also comes with many significant health benefits. Biking can help with fitness, weight control, and improving one’s cardiovascular health. Because of all these benefits, it is shocking that so few people use bikes. This can contribute to the amount of obesity we have in this country. I was more shocked by the fact that only 24% of bikers are female. Males might enjoy sports more and be more athletic, but you don’t need to be that athletic to be able to bike, and today there are more and more women who seem to be concerned about their weight and fitness.
Although I love bike riding when I am home outside of the city, I do not think I would be willing to risk bike riding in the city. I was always under the impression that it was extremely unsafe in New York City and that you would have to be either reckless or a very talented bike rider to be willing to bike ride in the city. There is so much traffic and so many crazy drivers in the city, which makes it such a risk. Even though there are bike lanes, they are often too small, sometimes cars drive in the bike lanes, and there is always that issue with the parked car doors. I just never thought the benefits of bike riding outweighed the possible consequences of getting into one bad crash. Also, when I think of bike riding in the city, I always think about Citi bikes. It is one of the most accessible ways to get a bike, however, I think they are very unsafe because they encourage bikers to ride without helmets, which is something I am very against.
However, this article was very encouraging about the issue. The bike-vehicle crash rate was much lower than I expected at 2.3 per 1 million bicycle kilometers. Specifically on 8th Avenue in New York, only 20 crashes were reported over the past 2.3 years. I am skeptical about these numbers, because I think that there are probably a lot more crashes that occur that are just not reported to the police, but the ones with serious injuries probably are reported and the numbers are still very low. Also, NYC was just a portion of the study, and the number of crashes in New York is probably worse than in any other city. I like that there are studies being done of the different types of bicycle paths would be the safest feasible options. I am not sure exactly what it would take for me to feel safe riding a bicycle in the city, but I would definitely be more convinced if the bike lanes were designed in the optimal ways suggested in this article.
