More Bike Lanes Could Save up to 10,000 Lives a Year in Europe

European cities could reap huge rewards for building out their cycling infrastructure, but perhaps no incentive is as important as this: By expanding bike networks, they could prevent 10,000 premature deaths each year.

That’s the finding from a new European Commission-funded study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health that seeks to assess the relationship between cycling’s popularity and death rates. The findings, compiled from 167 cities and published in the journal Preventive Medicine, are striking. If 24.7 percent of all journeys were taken by bike, London could see 1,210 fewer premature deaths annually, Rome could see 433 fewer, and Barcelona could see 248 fewer. Spread across the entire network of cities investigated, that’s a substantial drop in mortality. But how exactly could cycle network expansions make this happen?