Which Cycling Politics: Doom or Possibility?

A woman walks into a marketing and public relations firm and sits down to talk with their lead strategist.

“Our organization has a fun, safe and healthy activity we wish to promote, but we’re struggling to figure out the right approach,” she says.

The strategist thinks for a moment, then responds, “I recommend the approach bicycle advocates have been using for the past 20 years; reinforce the public’s fears about your activity.”

The woman is taken aback, pauses for a moment, then says, “Oh! You had me going there for a moment!”

“What do you mean?” asks the strategist.

“Well, you were joking, right?…”

If only.

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The Politics of Possibility

Because cycling is not very risky. The average bicyclist – and this includes all those ones who ride in a less-than-competent manner – will travel about 4 million hours before experiencing a fatal crash. (That is equal to 456 years of non-stop cycling.) Competent cyclists will travel at least five times farther before a fatal crash. But we focus way too much on these rare crashes, instead of on the hundreds of millions of miles cyclists travel every year without incident. (Motorists by comparison travel about 2 million hours before experiencing a fatal crash. Yes, their risk is twice that of bicyclists.)
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<a href="http://mighkwilson.com/2009/10/which-cycling-politics-doom-or-possibility/">http://mighkwilson.com/2009/10/which-cycling-politics-doom-or-possibility/</a>;