The third reason is a spread of bike-friendly infrastructure. Bicycles mostly died out as a form of transport in the mid-20th century not only because cars were faster and cushier, but also because cars made cycling catastrophically dangerous. In 1950 no fewer than 805 cyclists were killed on the roads in Britain—ten times the number killed last year. In 1987 P.J. O’Rourke, an American satirist, gleefully predicted that cyclists would “go extinct” as they were run over by lorries. Alas for bike-hating motorists (though happily for everyone else), he had not anticipated the invention of the separated bike lane.
