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Affiliation
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Nutrition Department, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA. |
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Abstract
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Safer cycling benefits people, the planet, and the local economy
Modern cities need beautiful designs so citizens benefit from the associated economic development and improved quality of life. Modern cities also need safe bicycle facilities to mitigate climate change by reducing carbon emissions. In 1893, the City Beautiful movement, though not perfect, was an upstream response to crowded industrial cities. The American architect and urban designer Daniel Hudson Burnham built a social reform utopia at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago to show how handsome built form could improve health. American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed the parks and boulevards and Burnham later planned Chicago’s streets, which established a national standard for transportation that embodied grace.1
In a linked paper, Welsh and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj.m336) studied the association between commuting by bicycle and injury related hospital admission2 in the UK, and revealed an urgent need to improve safety for cyclists. The authors cited the health and environmental benefits of cycling but noted that cycling levels remain low because of the perceived risk of injury. To quantify actual risk, they analyzed data from 230 390 daily commuters in 22 sites across the UK who walked, cycled, used mixed modes, or traveled by car or public transport.
Compared with non-active commuters, those who cycled to work were admitted to the hospital more often, experienced more road traffic incidents, and had a greater risk of injury the longer their commute. On the positive side, cyclists had a lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and death compared with non-active commuters. Walking was not significantly riskier than non-active travel for fractures, or for injuries to the arms, legs, head, neck, or trunk, whereas cycling was associated with a significantly higher risk of injury in all of these categories ...
Language: en |