Nice Bike to Work Day Today--With Observations on Bicycle Types,Lighting, and Helmets

On Sat, 22 May 2010 09:16:19 -0700, SMS
wrote:

On 22/05/10 8:19 AM, Jay Beattie wrote:

snip

I wouldn't tie bicycle riding to bicycle sales either -- I would also
wonder about US population trends before looking at sales numbers.
You can't sell a bike to a kid who does not exist.

As for sales versus riding, every kid gets a bike, but most just sit
in the garage. Many kids think that riding a bike is dorky -- not
just the helmet part. Teen kids want to drive, and even when I was a
kid, that was where most of my peers quit riding. What is weird about
modern times is that there are far more adult riders, but there are
far less kid riders. -- Jay Beattie.

Yet if you look at the sales figures from the National Bicycle Dealers
Association, sales of bicycles, have steadily increased with an
occasional blip due to economic reasons. The blips don't coincide with
the big increase in child helmet laws.

Dear Steven,

Er, no.

Bicycle sales per 100 population in the USA have remained essentially
flat for the last three decades

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, if you look at sales figures
per population since 1981, bicycle sales in the USA have an absolutely
flat trend line (the blue line):
http://i40.tinypic.com/jtsxtd.jpg

Here's the post in this thread which Frank Krygowski explained things,
along with the graph from his data:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.b...4f1c5bd9dee137

The yearly USA bike sales figures are in a yellow table near the top:
http://nbda.com/articles/industry-ov...-2009-pg34.htm

USA population figures:
http://www.forecast-chart.com/chart-population.html

Cheers,

Carl Fogel