Is Cycling Safe?
It’s a question I hear a lot from non-cyclists, surprised and slightly alarmed that my family use our bikes to commute to work and school, for shopping errands and for long distance travel.
Aren’t UK roads just too dangerous for cycling? It’s a question cyclists ask themselves each time a friend is involved in a collision or you hear another incident on the news about a cyclist killed on our roads.
Safety can’t be measured in absolute terms: safety is relative. Cycling is safer than any other mode of transport when you take into account the health benefits of regular exercise. When you account for these health benefits, regular cycing is safer than driving by car!1
The statistical risks are smaller than you might fear: of the 544,044 people who died in the UK in 2023, 84 of them were cyclists in road collisions (407 were pedestrians).2 By this measure, cycling is safe.
Regular exercise makes you much more likely to survive far more serious health risks: obesity, heart disease, cancer. Mental health is a killer too: the biggest killer, as it happens, of men, women and children under 35 in the UK.
All forms of active exercise are proven, drug-free ways to improve mental and physical health, not to mention the fact that getting out and about on your bike is considerably more fun. It’s no accident (pun intended) that children who cycle to school spend less time glued to their phones.
What we can (and must) do is minimise the risks, maximise the benefits, and cycle for the love of cycling as well as its health benefits. Riding your bike improves your statistics for both length and quality of life.