Guaranteed, when a item on bikes appears in the paper, someone will comment about how dangerous the activity is so we should all avoid it.

But a post on the Washington Post's stupendous Wonkbolg points out that this just isn't true:

Biking -- as with walking -- offers a prime example of the power of crowds. As more people bike and walk, cycling and pedestrian fatalities actually decline. That's because the more people bike and walk, the more drivers become attuned to their presence (either on sidewalks or road shoulders), and the more cities are likely to invest in the kind of infrastructure explicitly meant to protect them (all of which further encourages more cyclists and pedestrians).

This pattern is confirmed in a large biannual benchmarking report released this week by the Alliance for Biking & Walking in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report, based on data from census travel surveys, the American Community Survey, and local data tracking cyclists and pedestrians, offers some crucial national perspective outside of cities like New York and Washington.

So there you go. The more cyclists there are, the safer it becomes.

The blog post has a ton of great graphs, if you're into that sort of thing, which I am.