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This fact has been widely circulated on the interwebs over the last week so it probably comes as a surprise to no one that riding a bike is a net economic gain while driving is a net economic loss.

How do we know that? From Copenhagen, of course.

They took a look at all the factors that are affected by transportation (including direct costs, personal and societal health, tourism, etc) and determined that one mile on a bike is a net gain of $0.42 while one mile driven in a car is a net loss of $0.20.

Towards the end of that linked article they point out that all the bike riding in Copenhagen saves everyone so much money in health care costs it equals out to about $300 per person, per year. Not only are you saving money by not buying gas, you’re also saving money by not going to the doctor. You’re also saving your neighbor money because you’re reducing the strain on the healthcare system and that benefits everyone.

So the next time you see someone on a bike (whether you are on a bike too or not) remember to thank them for saving you a bit of money.

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It’s been a few months since we highlighted facts about riding a bike but this one caught my eye this morning.

The New York Times broke down the likelihood you’ll be killed in various ways.

It turns out “bike accidents” kill 762 people per year which puts riding a bike well below drowning, falling, drug-resistant bacteria, accidental poisoning, suicide, car accidents, flu, hospital infections, stroke, cancer, and heart disease in the list of killer activities.

Annual deaths from “air/space accidents” come in at 742 people/year which appears to mean riding a bike is about as likely to kill you as flying in a plane or space shuttle.

It’s pretty incredible that only 762 people die annually in “bike accidents”, especially when you consider how poor North America’s bike infrastructure is.

What I gather from those facts combined is that the act of riding a bike isn’t dangerous in the least. After all, when is the last time you heard of someone fatally falling from their bike in a park or on a separated track?

Of the 742 people who die in “bike accidents” each year, a majority die when their bicycles collide with motor vehicles. No matter who is at fault in the collision, the fact remains that if you remove the motor vehicle (or separate the two vehicles) the person on the bike would have lived.

Those are all very grim statistics, even if they do clearly show how safe it is to ride a bike.

If you need something more to reassure yourself, you’ll be happy to know another study has come out showing that switching from a car to a bike for transportation is good for your health and any concerns about collisions on a bike are vastly outweighed by the benefits you get by exercising.

Everyone knows that long ago I ditched a car in favor of riding my bike to work. Every day since, no matter the weather, I’ve enjoyed my commute on a bike way more than any of my past commutes in a car. Yesterday, for the first time, I had a chance to commute on on my bike not between home and work, but from work to work.

To explain, my office has roughly a hundred employees that meet up quarterly to talk about items pertaining to us all. There isn’t a conference room in our building large enough to fit us all, so instead we have the meeting in a separate building with larger meeting spaces.

The building we meet in is about half a mile away from our office and while most people walk to the meeting, a good number people choose to drive their cars. That always surprised me because car parking is scarce at both our office and the other building. Factor in time spent re-parking a car at each end of the trip and suddenly driving takes just about as long as it does to walk.

The day of our most recent meeting I had my bicycle sitting next to my desk so, instead of walking or driving, I pedaled.

Riding a bike to the meeting allowed me stay around the office and work for about 5-10 minutes longer than anyone who drove. On the return trip I also got back to the office 5-10 minutes sooner than everyone trying to fight for space in our office’s parking lot.

During the extra time I had, after cruising along on my bicycle next to grid-locked traffic (all of which was a result of our meeting), I started to do a little math. If you take the low end of my assumptions of time saved and multiply it by the number of employees at the meeting, it adds up to be a pretty significant amount of wasted company time. Assuming 5 minutes are saved at both the beginning and the end of the meeting, and assuming there are exactly 100 employees in the meeting, that’s 1000 minutes of time saved if everyone chose to ride a bike like I did. That’s 16 hours and 40 minutes, or roughly two full productive work days saved by simply ditching the car and stepping on to a bicycle.

That time savings is especially impressive considering that the area around our office has little in the way of complete cycling infrastructure. At times I was forced to wait in line behind idling cars, but still with only the few bike lanes present I easily beat my coworkers’ motor vehicles. If there were complete, safe cycling infrastructure available I likely could have saved even more time. Other people in my office might then choose to ride their bikes too, resulting in additional productivity savings for my company.

This is just one of many facts supporting the notion that riding a bike is often a better choice than driving a car.