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Comment by notch656a | Hacker News Reader

Doubtful if "cars" means motor vehicles, as most of the US has poor public transit thus cycling would be the closest best substitute readily available. The number of cyclists would explode.

There would likely also be lots of deaths due to weakness in the supply chain.

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You seem to have missed the fact that cycling deaths NOT involving cars are negligible. Remove cars, remove deaths.

Agree but that said cyclists can still injure themselves without help from cars. We'd expect the absolute number of cycling injuries to rise with the number of cyclists. However, they will be much less serious injuries.

About 30% of cycling deaths are not traffic related, hardly negligible. If cars magically disappeared there would be a lot more than 3 times the current number of cyclists on the road.

Citation? If car traffic is pushing someone into the shoulder, and they hit a grate, was that counted as car related? If it is a hit and run (super common), and someone comes up to a person that was left for dead, is that counted? How exactly is that 30% computed?

I'll cite it with anecdotal evidence: I've broken a bicycle helmet twice, and neither time involved a car.

If you suffer an impact in a helmet, that is now an ex-helmet. That is, you can't repair them, and the only way to check they're still sound is destructive testing. (not trying to rebut your anecdata)

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

It does not say what counts as non-traffic incidents

Your reply made me check for the UK, so in 2016 we have

"For teenage and adult cyclists, accidents are more likely to involve collisions with motor vehicles, but about 16% of fatal or serious cyclist accidents reported to the police do not involve a collision with another vehicle, but are caused by the rider losing control of their bicycle." [1]

Not quite 30% but much more than I expected and obviously not negligible. Thanks for the rebuttal.

1. https://www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/advice-services/road-saf... (PDF)

I think he was saying that if suddenly cars were not allowed, there would be a class of people unable to get food or services and would die. Aka, you can't replace a fedex truck delivering food to a handicapped person with 500 fedex bikers delivering one box each. (and what about couch deliveries).

> The number of cyclists would explode. There would likely also be lots of deaths due to weakness in the supply chain.

In the short term, yes.

In the medium and long term, if you Americans would put all that money you spend on cars & car infrastructure into equivalent walking and cycling infrastructure and public transport, you'd probably leave even the Dutch behind...

Most bikes these days are "motor vehicles".

Not here; I live in Oxford, UK - one of this country's "cycling cities". The great majority of cyclists are not motorized. Cycle theft is barely policed, and an electric bike worth £2,000 is worth pinching (the cops don't treat electric bikes differently from cheap rusty crap bikes). Most people here ride throwaway bikes costing under £300 new.

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