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Riding a bicycle is dangerous. If you spend much time on the road, you're competing with trucks and cars and buses. Speed is moderate and protection is low. Only motorcycles and helicopters are more dangerous.
Don't do it! Either walk or catch public transport or drive. I understand that North America sucks because the public transport system is full of drug-addled zombies and low-lifes. Fixing this should be the highest priority. It's not the 19th century anymore, engines are most efficient for travel and you can do something else at the same time, recouping some value. Even if it's just fantasizing or pondering, surely our time is worth more.
For all the condemnation of "safetyism" I swear we have the highest concentration of safetyists I have ever seen anywhere.
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I biked practically everywhere ages 8 to early 20s. I got a driver's license age 16, but cars are expensive and I was working and saving, so I biked everywhere, not counting using parents' cars to do chores. I get biking is dangerous in some larger statistical sense, but if your local weather permits, it works great.
Later I got a motorcycle and that was even better. Wear your armor and go for it.
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note that applies only in areas without real bicycle infrastructure
note that some exercise is needed for humans for healthy life - and I consider silly to either end as a diabetic land whale or first spend time in bus/car and then again in gym
If something requires you to wear a helmet while you do it, then it's hardly safe.
Exercise is nice to have but unnecessary. Obesity is a dietary problem, not an exercise problem.
Exercise is an absolute must have for a quality life.
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Cycling does not require wearing helmet.
At least commuting cycling on cycleways and low-traffic roads. If you do MTB/downhill then yes, you should have helmet. And if you drive on road where you have trucks and buses and cars going more than 30 km/h then helmet will not help so much anyway in case of a collision.
Zero exercise and eating little is better than zero exercise and eating enormous amounts. But zero exercise and sitting all day is not exactly health either.
Cycling absolutely requires a helmet. Biking in a nice American suburban neighborhood as a child, I got flung off my bike and came down hard on the front of my head. I smashed the front of a helmet and blacked out for some indeterminate period of time. I regained consciousness with a firetruck and a few firemen around me.
No cars were involved in this crash. Just a kid getting some cloth wrapped up in his front wheel. That helmet saved my life. If you get catapulted over your front wheel, you'll be wearing a helmet, or you'll likely get your head smashed open.
Yes, that's why there are no people who cycle without a helmet for their entire life and live. Oh wait.
It's impossible to say whether that is the case, since depending on the quality and design on the helmet, and how you landed, the helmet could have reduced the energy transferred to your head anywhere between almost zero to a significant amount. And even if you had been worse off, that doesn't mean you would have died.
You really should improve your reasoning ability, because the statement you made is closer to religion than to fact.
Nah. I'm rock solid correct. Some people are just terrible at judging risks. Europeans on bicycles especially.
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That is extreme outlier and car driving also has such outliers.
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Most of the country lacks “real infrastructure” for bikes. At best the state will paint a few lines on existing roads and call the rightmost lane a bike lane with no real barriers against traffic. At worst, they paint a bicycle lane symbol on a road with a 35mph speed limit and stick up a “share the road” sign or two. It gives the state prestige “we’re supporting green infrastructure!” And cash from the Feds. But it’s not a safe way to ride.
And exercise is pretty easy to get if you do a little while watching TV in the evening.
I guess you mean Canada? Still, it would be "Riding a bicycle in Canada is dangerous" not "Riding a bicycle is dangerous" and is fixable relatively easily with some competence and effort.
In the same declaring "walking alone in city center during night is inherently dangerous and cannot be safe" is not true.
that is not a bicycle infrastructure, that is just pure incompetence
I’m in the Midwest actually. And I drive on one of these “bike routes” daily. The speed limit is 35 MPH, cars regularly hit 40-45 because the speed isn’t enforced. Not only is there no shoulder on the road, but there’s a revine right at the edge of the road. But yes, after the mayor hit a biker, they painted the bike path symbols on the road and stuck up a few signs. But they did get a grant from DC for having bike lanes.
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I bike for 1 hour a day to work, the car ride would be 30 minutes. (Lights really eat up time)
during the 1 hour bike ride I get roughly 45 minutes of good cardio exercise. This lets me go to work, Lift 3x a week and still get all the exercise I need in a week in a relatively cheap package.
What exactly am I gaining by switching to driving? Cars are expensive my bike is roughly 500/year in upkeep costs from tire changes ect. What are you doing while driving other than paying attention to the road making sure you don't crash (which is also ~ 100% of my focus when riding a bike it's just that when riding a bike I'm also exercising at the same time)
You're reducing your risk of death and lowering stress. You're saving a little time.
I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, neither of which require much attention.
When I was bike commuting, I had a pretty safe path to work. I'm not actually sure what the numbers would be on risk of death/lowering stress, but I could see it being either a small factor or maybe even going either way. Exercise definitely has a inherent reduction-of-stress effect that would need to be overcome.
Commuting by car did not, however, save me time. I was in a kinda similar situation; 20min drive, 40min ride. The gym was right on the way to work. I could treat the ride as a warm-up/cool-down and not have to do those things in the gym. I could ride hard and just have it be a full cardio workout. I did spin class sometimes for cardio, so substituting riding to work for spin class was a pure time savings of the time I would have spent sitting in the car doing nothing. Public transport was very not available for my commute, for, uh, reasons.
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