STUDY: Better Bike Policy Could Prevent 15K U.S. Deaths Every Year — And Not Just in Crashes
If U.S. leaders take aggressive, but realistic, action to replace car trips with bike trips by 2050, they could prevent more than 15,000 premature deaths every year — and not just in traffic crashes, a new study finds.
In the first study ever to model the comprehensive global public health impacts of the mode shift to cycling, researchers at Colorado State University and a coalition of Spanish universities explored two very different transportation futures for 17 countries. Then they estimated how many lives might be saved by each approach as residents shift (or don’t) from sedentary modes to life on two wheels — and how many might be lost to traffic violence and diseases caused by inhaling air pollution along the way.