Seniors don't ride bicycles. Or do they?

It's a frequent refrain: Older people don’t ride bicycles. But evidence throughout the world shows that is simply untrue. One needn't go further than the Ohlone Greenway to see plenty of bicycling seniors, with a growing percentage riding e-bikes. According to federal census data, a primary measure of mobility is commuting to work, but since retired seniors are not showing up as commuters, their mobility habits remain poorly understood.

While we know that seniors are in fact bicycling, their safety needs are being ignored. Seniors' reflexes are slower, which makes safe bicycling infrastructure all the more critical to their mobility.

But don't doubt that seniors ride bicycles! The photographs below show older people bicycling in Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, and here in California.




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