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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cycling is the whole point of this little sub thread. Specifically with respect to the increased risks or lack of accessibility it offers for some sub populations. Besides, public transport is not an option for many people. I have a grocery store 3 miles away from me, and no public transport to get there, but again that wasn’t the topic.
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.
You need to load your body. A car takes load off of you.