Do the Health Benefits of Cycling Outweigh the Risks?

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Although from a societal point of view a modal shift from car to bicycle may have beneficial health effects due to decreased air pollution emissions, decreased greenhouse gas emissions, and increased levels of physical activity, shifts in individual adverse health effects such as higher exposure to air pollution and risk of a traffic accident may prevail. OBJECTIVE: We describe whether the health benefits from the increased physical activity of a modal shift for urban commutes outweigh the health risks. DATA SOURCES AND EXTRACTION: We have summarized the literature for air pollution, traffic accidents, and physical activity using systematic reviews supplemented with recent key studies. DATA SYNTHESIS: We quantified the impact on all-cause mortality when 500,000 people would make a transition from car to bicycle for short trips on a daily basis in the Netherlands. We have expressed mortality impacts in life-years gained or lost, using life table calculations. For individuals who shift from car to bicycle, we estimated that beneficial effects of increased physical activity are substantially larger (3-14 months gained) than the potential mortality effect of increased inhaled air pollution doses (0.8-40 days lost) and the increase in traffic accidents (5-9 days lost). Societal benefits are even larger because of a modest reduction in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and traffic accidents. CONCLUSIONS: On average, the estimated health benefits of cycling were substantially larger than the risks relative to car driving for individuals shifting their mode of transport.