More Women are Dying While Cycling in Cities and Urban Environments

Among urban cycling infrastructure experts, conventional wisdom holds that when more women are biking, a city has built a successful cycling network. In too many American cities, though, a gruesome corollary to this rule is becoming apparent: When a city builds infrastructure that creates the illusion but not the reality of cycling safety, more women will die. Urban cycling has long been mostly a male activity. As Evan Friss writes in a new history of cycling in New York City, the bike messengers who helped define the city’s 1980s streets were virtually all men. Today’s food delivery cyclists are predominantly male....