No surprise here.
A scoping review of 87 studies from 19 countries found clear benefits for social wellbeing in every study that measured it, concluding that bicycling not only improves physical fitness but also enhances mental well-being, reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression, strengthens social connections, and sharpens cognitive function.
But you probably didn’t need a study to tell you that, since you live it every time you ride.
At least, when the angry people in the big, dangerous machines let you.
Photo by Olya Kobruseva from Pexels.
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Road.cc readers set off a minor online tempest over the weekend by questioning whether anti-bicyclist abuse on the roads of the UK and Ireland is getting worse.
That was posed this week by road.cc reader the little onion, who sparked the debate by revealing that they are shouted at by people in vehicles “once per hour or so of riding” in the north of England.
And almost always, the commenter noted, at the hands, horns and lips of male drivers.
“I reckon that about once per hour or so of riding, I get someone in a vehicle – almost exclusively male – winding down their window to randomly shout abuse at me, telling me to get a car, get off the f***ing road, or something like that.
“Mostly it is people overtaking, sometimes people travelling the other direction. And completely unprovoked, not reacting to anything I may have done, other than existing as a cyclist. Am I unique here? Does this chime with other people’s experiences?”
Evidently so, since that observation has been born out by recent studies.
A recent government report in Ireland found that a high percentage of women are put off riding a bike on the road thanks to an increasing “car culture”, “aggressive” driver behaviour, and potential abuse.
And earlier this year, a women’s cycling safety audit carried out by the Norwich Cycling Campaign noted that female cyclists are disproportionately affected by verbal abuse, intimidation, and street harassment while on their bikes.
However, while men are the usual perpetrators, the abuse seems to fall equally on both sides of the saddle.
“Unfortunately, it isn’t just you,” said NickSprink. “South of England here, I’d say just as common, especially if beeping of horns and finger gestures are included.”
Clem Fandango wrote: “Twice in the last six months I’ve been making my way along a quiet two-lane road. No vehicles behind me and no drama. Until on each occasion the driver of a vehicle coming the other way, and in no way affected by me minding my own business on the other side of the road, decided to roll down the window as they passed, to drop a C-bomb on me.
“No need for any conflict or interaction of any kind in that situation, it’s just pure narrow-minded abuse.”
Meanwhile, Momentum says the question isn’t whether anti-bicyclist abuse is getting worse, but why has it become so normal?
In North America especially, roads have been culturally framed as spaces built for cars first. So when someone rides a bike in traffic, some drivers react as if a social rule has been broken.
And because cycling has become tangled up in conversations about climate change, bike lanes, urban politics, and “car culture,” a simple bike commute can suddenly become symbolic to people already angry about broader social changes.
At the same time, roads themselves feel more hostile than they used to. Drivers are stressed, distracted, impatient, and increasingly isolated from one another inside vehicles. Cyclists — visible, exposed, and vulnerable — become easy targets for frustration that often has nothing to do with them personally.
One Reddit commenter captured it perfectly: “You are subject to this abuse simply because you are vulnerable to it.”
USA Today picks up the same theme in another story examining the “alarming rash of bike crashes” in the US.
“People have the opinion that cyclists don’t have the right to use the public roads,” said Maggie Ardito, who advocates for greater safety for cyclists as president of the St. Johns River-to-Sea Loop Alliance and as a board member of the Florida Bicycle Association.
Ardito says the sight of a group of cyclists can enrage drivers, and – in Ardito’s experience as a cyclist and a leader of the biking community in Florida – it’s been happening more and more.
And with predicable outcomes.
Data shows a concerning trend: Recent years have seen a sharp increase in bicyclist fatalities among men over the age of 20, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute. Deaths have increased 15% since 1975, and 86% since an all-time low point in 2010. Meanwhile, fatalities have decreased for children. In 2024, 1,103 bicyclists died in traffic crashes, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data shows.
Granted, not every crash or death is the result of enraged drivers. The paper also blames over-engineered roads that encourage higher speeds and reckless driving.
Another reason, they say, is simply a numbers game. More bicyclists on the roads, combined with a post-pandemic rebound in motor vehicle traffic and a lack of safe bicycle infrastructure, means more people competing for the same space on the roads.
And yes, sometimes it’s the people on two wheels who are to blame, for crashes as well as going ballistic on the roads.
People who are more prone to road rage are more easily triggered than others by their experiences on the road, and may tend to perceive incidents (whether accidental or not) as personal slights, Hennessy said. Bikers can be just as guilty of aggressive behavior or dangerous driving, said Hennessy, who is a frequent cyclist himself.
“There are some cyclists who are antagonistic toward drivers,” he said. A cyclist might think a driver is coming up too close to them “because they’re a jerk,” he said. “In their mind, ‘How do you deal with a jerk? Well, you just piss them off even more, maybe you teach them a lesson.’ ”
Admittedly, we’re not all saints. Some of us are assholes most of the time, while most of us are assholes some of the time.
The difference is that people who ride bikes aren’t operating multi-ton weapons of mass destruction, capable of mowing down anyone and anything in their way.
Intentionally or otherwise.
But physically protected bike lanes can make a difference. There are situations where even in the presence of a dedicated bike lane, unless it is protected by barriers, it may still be safest for a cyclist to ride in the road, Von Hagen said. Bike lanes can be risky if they are too narrow, and it’s all too easy for a car to drift or swipe a rider with a side mirror, she said. Bike lanes tend to be where people illegally park, or where garbage cans or accumulating fall leaves pile up.
The team at Rutgers studied driver and cyclist behavior before and after the implementation of a temporary bike lane in New Jersey. Men are generally more likely than women to ride in the street, while women are more likely to ride on the sidewalk, Younes said. When there is a protected lane, with physical barriers or a parking lane between a bike lane and car traffic, use is more universal, and people who are more risk-averse will use it instead of the sidewalk, Younes said.
And there’s nothing like that heady blend of antisemitic and anti-bike hate. Thanks to Ted Faber for the heads-up.
Streets For All reports they helped kill two bad ebike bills in the state legislature, and are working to get two others over the finish line.
Last week, two bills that would have devastated e-bike access in California died in the legislative process. Your advocacy helped make it happen.
AB 1557 (Papan) would have severely limited access to legal e-bikes by dismantling the standard 3-class e-bike system and limiting the speed and power of e-bikes. AB 1942 (Bauer-Kahan) would have required licensing and registration for e-bikes, products which do not currently exist in California.
Both AB 1557 and AB 1942 died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee after hundreds of you called, wrote, and lobbied your legislators.
This means that California just narrowly avoided the fate of New Jersey, where a new e-bike law going into effect in July is creating massive new bureaucratic hurdles to owning and riding an e-bike.
But we’re not stopping at just killing the bad bills.
This Monday our team went to Sacramento to build on the momentum for e-bikes. We met with legislators to make the case for SB 1167 (Blakespear), which would establish clear labeling requirements that distinguish legal e-bikes from illegal e-motos. We also pushed for more funding for California’s Active Transportation Program and a new statewide e-bike incentive program.
Here’s what we’re seeing: legislators want to get e-bike policy right. When they understand the real issue — that illegal e-motos, not legal e-bikes are what need regulating — most of them get it. SB 1167 already has strong bipartisan support. And AB 1569 (Davies), which directs the department of education to create an e-bike education curriculum for 7th-12th graders, just passed the Assembly and is heading to the Senate.
The two harmful bills are dead for this year. But they could easily return next session.
That’s why Streets For All works year-round in Sacramento: So the people making policy understand the difference between a legal e-bike and an illegal e-moto before the next bill drops.
Meanwhile, CNN breathlessly proclaims what ER doctors, prosecutors and parents want you to know about ebike dangers. But evidently, they don’t want you to know, since the story is hidden behind their paywall for subscribers only.
Apparently, things are no different north of the border, either.
Or even in Amsterdam, where officials want to implement a 12.5 mph speed limit to rein in illegal ebikes, but others warn that “young people don’t give a damn about a sign.”
On the other hand, New York State won’t take up consideration of an ebike bill this year, after legislators ran out of time to put one together.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A South Seattle writer complains about the city’s closure of a lakefront drive to motor vehicle traffic for 15 “Bicycle Weekends” this summer, framing it as a gentrifiers’ assault on “one of the very few simple pleasures enjoyed by the BIPOC and other marginalized communities that have been push-broomed into South Seattle,” because they can’t take a drive along the shore from Friday night to Monday morning. Apparently only wealthy, white people ride bicycles and “the BIPOC and other marginalized communities” never, ever want to take pleasant strolls or ride bikes on the lakefront.
An Irish writer complains about commenters who insist on dissecting every positive comment about bicycling while proclaiming that not everyone can ride a bike for every purpose, as if no one had ever thought of that before. And that no one ever makes the same comments about car ads, even though many people can’t drive.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The husband of an 80-year old woman who suffered a fatal brain injury when she was hit by a bicyclist participating in the Tour de Manc sportive on the Isle of Man complains that “it’s unbelievable” that people on bicycles can’t be prosecuted for speeding in the UK — even though the bike rider never topped the 30 mph speed limit, and had only two seconds to brake after she came into view on a descent.
A man riding salmon in Singapore stuck out his leg as a driver went past, in an apparent attempt to kick the car, for reasons known only to him.
@asiaone The incident happened along the East Coast Park Service Road on Saturday (May 23) evening. #sgnews #Singapore #Cyclist #Road #Safety 📹: Facebook/SG Road Vigilante
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Local
LADOT is asking the city council to speed the implementation of the city’s pilot speed cam program without putting it through the usual competitive bid process, instead piggybacking off a contract approved by Oakland after going through competitive bidding up there. After all, what could possibly go wrong, since Los Angeles and Oakland are identical in every way?
The Eastsider features of photo by Gavin Brennan of E Bike Tours LA showing at least 15 dogs lined up in Griffith Park overlooking the city. Although that strikes me as about one corgi short of a pack.
Streetsblog reports the half-mile Move Culver City Eastern Segment closed a key bikeway network gap with new bus and bike lanes on Washington and Adams.
There’s a special place in hell for the hit-and-run driver who knocked a 13-year old boy off his bicycle as he rode home from school in Cerritos last week, leaving the kid with a mouth full of broken teeth.
State
Calbike is hosting a webinar at noon tomorrow to discuss their strategic plan for 2030. My strategic plan is to still be on this side of the dirt by then.
A 46-year-old Rancho Cucamonga man faces a murder charge for attacking a homeless man riding a bicycle in a parking lot May 6th; 57-year-old Ricardo Castanon died of his injuries on Saturday.
A 15-year old boy suffered a broken leg when he slammed his Class 2 ebike into the side of a car in Pacific Beach, after the 17-year old driver made an illegal U-turn in front of him.
More proof there are still good people in the world, as the Ramona community rallied around a 37-year old autistic man after his ebike was stolen from the Circle K where he works, as one person donated a used ebike, others raised over $1,500 on a crowdfunding campaign, and a nearby business owner confronted the thief directly, demanding he return the ebike — which he did.
Like mother, like daughter, I guess. When Britney Spears was being arrested for DUI in Ventura County in March, she blurted out that her mom had killed a bicyclist in 1975; her mother Lynne was acquitted for killing a 12-year old boy when she was 20 years old.
An award-winning San Francisco chef reduces the stress of running two restaurants in the city while opening two more in Napa with “lethally fast” century rides.
Sad news from Roseville, where a bike rider was killed in a collision Monday morning. Or at least everyone is assuming it was the bike rider who died, and not the driver.
National
A writer for CNET says yes, you can replace your ebike with an AI-powered exoskeleton and a regular bicycle, but maybe you don’t want to.
Cycling West looks at “the incredible life of Paul Willerton,” a nearly lifelong bicyclist and founder of the bicycling sock brand DeFeet, who helped Greg LeMond recover his bike skills after he got an accidental shotgun blast to the gut courtesy of LeMond’s brother-in-law, who mistook the cycling great for a turkey.
Electrek examines the rise of the bike bus, and why people love them so much — like the weekly Roosevelt Bike Bus to Burbank’s Roosevelt Elementary School.
Now you, too, can be replaced by a robot, as engineering students at Olin College in Massachusetts have designed and built an autonomous self-balancing bicycle.
The New York Times examines the free adult bicycling classes offered by a local nonprofit group, full of nervous novice riders, many of whom are women.
A Complete Unknown and Marty Supreme star Timothée Chalamet is one of us, riding a bikeshare around New York on Friday.
A 48-year old Queens, New York man was critically injured when he was doored by a 15-year old girl opening the back door of the car she was in, knocking him into the path of an oncoming car. Dooring is one of the most common types of bicycling crashes, which is why both the Bike League and CyclingSavvy recommend riding in the middle of the traffic lane, away from swinging doors.
No need to complain about the new bike lanes in the Town of Carthage, North Carolina, because they aren’t.
A Naples, Florida man faces charges for intentionally crashing his car into a child riding an ebike, swerving towards the victim before revving his engine and crashing into the kid — apparently for the crime of being out riding the bike after getting suspended from school.
International
A couple men are in the midst of a 50-day, 2,500-mile bike ride to raise awareness of the plight of Whooping Cranes, North America’s most endangered bird; the men are following the Central Flyway migration route from the Gulf Coast through central Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and the prairies of central Saskatchewan, Canada.
She gets it. A British Columbia woman writes that bike lanes aren’t a luxury for her family, and that “blaming traffic problems on bike lanes ignores the fact that an increasing proportion of people are choosing or needing to bike.” Amen, sister.
British taxpayers can continue to claim a 20 pence per mile credit on their taxes for riding a bike to work, which works out to about 27 cents a mile on this side of the Atlantic.
Spandau Ballet lead guitarist and songwriter Gary Kemp is one of us, bicycling for “fitness, camaraderie and stories,” as well as his mental health.
Cops in an Irish town face a backlash after accusing abusive “male youths on bicycles wearing dark clothing” of damaging the local castle’s gardens by building a bike ramp. But why would bicycles need to wear dark clothing?
An Irish woman explores why making sustainable choices like giving up meat and riding a bicycle prompt such rage and outsized emotions.
The Global Times offers photos from the weekend’s spring bicycle festival in Moscow, Russia. Which looks like what you could expect at any CicLAvia.
ABC — no, the other one — examines the long and painful road to a bike-friendly Australia.
Competitive Cycling
You can probably close the door on this year’s Giro d’Italia, after Jonas Vingegaard claimed the maglia rosa leader’s jersey on Saturday, while his Visma Lease a Bike team took firm control of the race.
Italian cyclist Enrico Zanoncello learned the hard way that one of the easiest ways to get kicked out of the Giro d’Italia is headbutting a competitor, after knocking rival sprinter Bob Donaldson off his bike in the closing meters of stage 15.
Belgian pro Victor Campenaerts fessed up to being behind the Giro’s pee-gate, admitting that he was the one who relieved himself in empty water bottles and tossed them to the side of the road.
Cycling Weekly takes a look at the competitors for this weekend’s 20th edition of Unbound Gravel in the Flint Hills region of east-central Kansas, including defending champ Cam Jones and our old favorite Taylor Phinney, with Polish cyclist Karolina Migoń and three-time US gravel champ Lauren Stephens heading up the women’s roster.
Finally…
Treat your kid to an officially branded Peppa Pig bike. That feeling when your Amazon cargo bike gets tree-bombed. If you’re going to steal a bicycle from under the nose of a cop, make sure they’re busy with more important things, first.
And yes, it is possible to make cars go bye.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
