[cycomanic]

Are you serious? My mother is 72 and pretty much bikes everywhere. If you walk or bike around in many European cities you'll see people from 2-90 on bikes. Have a look a Videos from Finland where you see people of all ages biking around in sub - 10 C.

It's also hilarious how - 25 C is being brought up as not suitable for people to bike around. Like how many people in Europe/Northern America actually encounter these temperature even once (let alone regularly that it should determine our traffic policies). These are the same arguments that ICE car proponents make against electric cars, "I might want to make a cross country road trip once every 5 years and so every car with a range of less than 800km on a single charge is not suitable".

[ineedasername]

The level of risk your mother is willing to take with a body that can’t bounce back from injuries very easily does not generalize to an obligation for others to accept the same level of personal risk.

[kiba]

Sedentary behavior is in itself risk factors for dying. If you break your hip bones, then your health is going to spiral downward because you can't walk.

You need to load your body. A car takes load off of you.

[ineedasername]

Irrelevant. A person can stay fit without avoiding cars.

[oblio]

Yet in practice we're all getting fatter, especially so since cars took over.

I wish people here would just accept that on average people don't exercise.

[ineedasername]

What don’t I accept? You’re reading too much into things. A lot of people don’t exercise enough. But countless millions of people stay at an acceptable weight without walking everywhere. Mostly it involves simply eating modest portions of balanced foods.

I am making a narrow, targeted argument in the context of a thread that has diverged into claims about the viability of bicycles as a primary means of transport, particularly for some sub populations. Fitting that question into a broad explanatory framework for widespread weight issues is outside the scope of that, and would only be a small part of such a framework in any case.

[kiba]

What don’t I accept? You’re reading too much into things. A lot of people don’t exercise enough. But countless millions of people stay at an acceptable weight without walking everywhere. Mostly it involves simply eating modest portions of balanced foods.

Exercise only account for a small portion of our time. The rest is spent on doing daily living. Time spent outside exercise are going to matter more.

Having an environment that encourages walking and biking keeps the population healthier than an environment that encourages sedentary behaviors.

The elderly especially need physical load bearing activities of some kind, or otherwise their bones are going to deteriorate to the point of hip fractures.

[inferiorhuman]

Irrelevant. A person can avoid cars without increasing their risk for injury.

[ineedasername]

Some can, not all, and that too is still irellevant: the on-topic question for this side thread are the risks associated with bikes in particular as a primary means of transport for certain sub populations. look above and you will see that’s the context of my original response.

[enriquec]

as a cyclist, no, they can't.

[inferiorhuman]

As a pedestrian who often uses public transit, yes they can.

[nerdbert]

As a cyclist, they sort of can, it requires proper separated bike infrastructure, comprehensively linked.

Still have to deal with cars at some intersections, and on streets that are so narrow that their full width from curb to curb is only one lane, but things move slowly on those streets and good intersection design takes a lot of the risk away.

[epivosism]

I lived in Beijing for 10 years, where it regularly gets to -10 or -20C for a few months, and I did commute by bike through those winters, and it is extremely taxing and hard. I don't think you'll succeed in convincing more than say 20% of the population to do that in reality. If you think you have the power to convince more, please go for it!

[waveBidder]

20% is actually the trip fraction by bike that places like Amsterdam have, so that's actually what success would look like. it's one option many.

[epivosism]

Yes, I am. What percent of people have dementia or alzheimer's - it's at least 5-10% right? What about Parkinson's? What about cancer? What percent are not able to manage their own lives and need constant oversight (psychological, etc.) What percent are <10 years old? these are huge chunks of humanity.