Our scary roads weren’t built for cyclists, but neither were our bodies made to sit in cars and fret about the traffic. And experts say the physical and mental benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks.
I wasn’t that surprised to find myself splayed against the concrete, the road dense with 3pm traffic, and the driver of the car that had hit me (slowly, luckily) asking me if I was OK. I told him I was fine, the adrenaline racing through my body, though I mused bitterly that in the four years I’d been riding a bike it had seemed just a matter of time until my body collided with a car. It took me several minutes to realise that half my body was aching, my thumb had twanged out of place, and one of my bike wheels was so bent it was unrideable.
My accident last year was minor: within a week I’d replaced the munted wheel, was occasionally doing prescribed physio for my sprained thumb, and my bruises were fading. I experienced some physical pain, had a great time complaining to all of my group chats, and then endured the hassle of having my default mode of transport limited for weeks.
But what happens to the body also happens to the mind, and that was the more surprising part of my accident. For months afterwards, when cycling through even the quietest suburban roundabout my heart would speed up, my breath becoming shallow and fast. Crossing a road, even on foot, would give me intrusive thoughts, visions of collisions, my body against hurtling metal again and again. Biking is dangerous, my body seemed to be telling me, and so are roads.
Slowly, these symptoms faded as I kept walking and biking and bussing – as a human being who wants to see friends and go to the office and wander aimlessly along waterfronts and eat food I didn’t make, I needed to get places. I couldn’t afford to be too anxious about interacting with roads.
There’s a long list of reasons why I bike: I like that it’s cheap, that it gives me no guilt about polluting the environment, that it’s quiet, that I can see all around me without anything in the way. I like that I feel independent and able to go where I wish when I want, not having my patience tested by unreliable bus schedules, that I can fix most mechanical issues myself. I like feeling strong when I overtake a man in lycra pedalling up a hill (then stop at the top because my legs feel like they’re about to fall off), and the feeling of balance and control, the machine totally responsive to my body.
These practical considerations motivate many people to cycle. But it’s easy to overlook the effect transport has on wellbeing, says Kirsty Wild, a sociologist at the University of Auckland who studies public health and transport policy, and is the co-author of a study investigating the links between the two. “There’s both physical and psychological trauma associated with [our] transport system [which] isn’t particularly safe,” she says.
As an essential part of our social and physical environment, transport can be a key determiner of quality of life. Wild summarises the response to different transport types succinctly: “Driving is the most stressful mode. Cyclists are the most likely to experience their journey as exciting. Walking is the most likely to be relaxing – and public transport, unfortunately, is the most likely to be boring.”
But to those responses there are myriad other factors to consider: public transport may be boring but it’s also the cheapest and arguably the safest; cycling the most physically beneficial but most dangerous; walking the slowest and – in New Zealand, in winter – the coldest and wettest. And driving is the transport mode that most urban design prioritises.
Aotearoa’s long-held car-centric transport system is bad for our planet and our wallets, but as Wild’s 2021 study found, it’s also bad for our mental health. Infrastructure and investment in alternatives are key to making transport work better for everyone – but understanding why people make transport choices is a psychological question, too. In the case of cycling, it’s a tradeoff between the anxiety of exposure on dangerous roads made for cars, and the many benefits it offers, including physical movement, time outside, and social contact.
“Biking is not as safe as it should be,” says Wild. “When people start cycling, it’s common to have scary experiences, and that is off-putting.”
That’s partly because cycling is a marginalised transport mode, she says: the lack of space for bikes on roads increases the danger, putting cyclists and other road users at risk. But that doesn’t have to be the case.
“Cycling isn’t an inherently dangerous activity,” Wild says. In a 2017 study that used ACC data, cycling for half an hour three times a week in New Zealand was found to have a similar risk level to doing DIY twice a month, and 500 times less risk than playing rugby once every three weeks. While risk for cyclists is certainly present, some of it’s perceived, rather than actual – the cumulative effect of many near misses and close encounters with cars that don’t result in accidents but make it feel more scary than running around a sports field or building a deck.
In overestimating the risk of cycling, it’s easy to underestimate the danger of not getting enough exercise. “You’re way more likely to get sick because you’re not getting enough exercise than because you’re injured on a bike,” Wild says. “Commuting [by car] for 20 to 40 minutes leads to a decline in life satisfaction. Over 40 minutes, there’s fairly significant effects on health, including mental health.” The link between a cycling accident and injury is more obvious than the slow but insidious way a more sedentary lifestyle can chip away at our physical and mental health.
I know for myself that in times when weather, injury or lockdown prevents me from walking and biking, I feel more frustrated and less productive – but it’s difficult to pinpoint a lack of exercise as the sole cause.
“I cycle because it reminds me of the joy of being a kid,” says Helen King, the communications manager for advocacy group Bike Auckland. She feels that talk of cycling often focuses on the negative aspects – danger, injury, inaccessibility – or the boring, worthy reasons to bike, which may not be compelling to those who love their cars. She’s worried that cycling’s dangerous yet dull image dissuades people from thinking about bikes in terms of the enjoyment of movement, the freedom and agility of not having to think about parking or traffic. “People ride their bikes for the pleasure of it,” she says.
Putting decent cycling infrastructure in place is a no-brainer for any city. It makes it easier for cyclists to enjoy their ride – but it also reduces traffic by converting drivers to cycling; and even reduces the stress of those who remain in cars and no longer have to worry about dodging vulnerable cyclists. This makes everybody’s journey easier, faster, less stressful.
When I tell King and Wild about my cycling accident and how it triggered a fear of roads in me, they’re sympathetic. King tells me she had a similar experience a few years ago, being hit by a car coming out from a driveway, and flipping over her handlebars. “It was a really terrifying experience,” she says. “I knew that if I let it get to me, it would stop me from doing something I loved.” A cycling skills course helped her to become more confident on the road, and she learned to avoid the direct routes favoured by car drivers, speaking instead the language of quiet side streets and the longer routes with protected cycle lanes.
I tell Wild what helped me to keep biking after being hurt. Living in an inner-city suburb, meaning the distances I biked were often shorter, was important; so was being located near bike lanes on key routes, being otherwise physically able, having support from my family who all cycle, not having kids or other dependents to transport, and being able to work from home. Those are the practical reasons, but maybe the bigger reason is that I love silently rolling down a hill at midnight on the way home from a party, the feeling of a breeze on my skin on summer days, the independence of knowing I can go wherever I need to go whenever I like for free. Meanwhile, experiences in cars have taught me that I’m not psychologically resilient enough to put up with traffic or the lack of fresh air. I couldn’t not bike; I feel like all my other transport options are worse. But the choices I have aren’t available to everyone.
“The effects of cycle trauma put some people off more than others – it’s inequitable,” Wild says. She’s studied how women who are interested in cycling feel a “triple safety burden”, responsible for keeping themselves safe from cycling accidents, from public harassment while cycling, and staying safe on behalf of the people they care for. Often, cycle routes are “designed for single white guys to get to work,” Wild says, leading into CBDs, rather than between suburbs, or being wide enough to accommodate trailers for children or shopping. This means that the positive social, physical, and mental impacts of cycling are experienced more by men and people with higher incomes.
The good thing, Wild and King say, is that the ways to make cycling safer – and less anxiety-inducing – are well known: creating separated cycle lanes for arterial routes, and having slower speed limits on residential streets. Both cite Auckland’s Northwestern cycleway as a good example of what’s possible. “Getting more opportunities to experience what it’s like to travel in different ways has such a big effect,” says Wild. “So many people say that they used to drive along the Northwestern motorway and see bikes whizzing by [on the cycleway] and think ‘I’ve got to try that, because I’m so tired of sitting in traffic in my car.’”
Wild says that in her cycling research, she’s come across a survivor effect, where the people who cycle regularly are those who can withstand the worry of being close to cars and at risk of injury. For those who keep at it, the psychological benefits are immense.
It’s been a year since I got injured while biking and I still often feel at risk from cars. But I keep doing it for all the ordinary reasons – I like getting places at my own speed, sometimes sweaty, always able to notice the world around me. I know it’s good for my mind.