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Bike to work, get skinny
Need more incentive to ride your bike to work?
According to Trek Bicycle Corporation, the average person loses 13 pounds their first year of commuting by bike.
That’s a lot of crawfish ettouffee, coconut cake and fried catfish — all of which I indulged in during a recent visit to Louisiana.
But wait, there’s more.
Just 3 hours of biking per week, Trek says, can reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke by 50 percent. Think how happy you’ll make your doctor (and family) by pedaling more often.
Other reasons to bike, also from Trek?
Forty percent of all car trips in the U.S. are made within 2 miles of home.
Sixty percent of the pollution created by autos happens in the first few minutes of operation, before pollution control devices can work effectively.
The U.S. could save 462 million gallons of gas a year by boosting bicycle trips just half a percentage point: from 1 percent to 1.5 percent of all trips.
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By CO2creator
May 15, 2009 12:28 AM | Link to this
With the latest FDA questions about Cheerios marketing, I wonder how the above points would stand up to similar scrutiny….
To extrapolate further if the US reduces 462million gas gallons in a year would that result in a tax loss of something like $200million to the government? Will our taxes have to be raised to compensate? Should cyclists pay that amount since they are the ones not supporting the government?
By Tom
May 15, 2009 1:21 PM | Link to this
CO2creator,
considering cycling causes many times less wear and tear on the roads, the government won’t have to perform as much maintenance, thus keeping them from having to raise your taxes too much. Also, we cyclists help offset the future health care costs of those who trundle around in their SUVs.