Today is of course Anzac Day, when we come together to honour those who have sadly died in various battles around the world. Closer to home, tragically we have also lost a few people cycling this year including two in Hawkes Bay and Taranaki in recent weeks. At times like this, many people can be a bit worried for their own personal safety when out biking; part of the reason why cycling numbers still are a struggle in some places around NZ. With that in mind, I’d like to cast our thoughts back to Sep 2012, when a university public seminar on this topic highlighted how the many benefits of regular cycling tend to vastly outweigh the potential risks…
The University of Canterbury has been running a series of “What If Wednesdays” public lectures, showcasing a number of thought-provoking and topical issues that its academics have been working on. As part of its Eco-Week for 2012, Prof Simon Kingham from the Dept of Geography will be presenting a seminar on Wed 12th Sept asking “What if cycling was safer than driving?”
Actually that’s a bit misleading, because the question seems to imply “(because it’s not safer at the moment)”. In fact, as Simon will demonstrate, the health and environmental effects of cycling (or not) mean that actually your life chances are already pretty good on a bike compared with driving. Even the much-worried-about crash dangers are overstated and in many cases no worse than driving. Simon will draw on recent research from UC and elsewhere, looking at people’s perceptions of cycling vs the reality.
Ed: If you want to watch Simon’s seminar, you can find it on YouTube.
What’s your perception of risk when cycling?