Bicycling instead of, say, driving, is healthy exercise. It is also dangerous if you get in an accident. Maybe you die. On average, what is the change life expectancy from bicycling? This is hard to measure. But is it positive? I suspect there are diminishing returns of health benefit, but the probability of death remains constant per mile. What is the crossover distance?
Which bicycling practices affect the bicyclists expected lifespan the most? Quantitatively how many hours do you gain or lose? After wearing a helmet, what is the #2 most life-expectancy changing bicycling practice? I hypothesize biking on sidewalks.
Instead of asking about life expectancy, we can ask about costs, in particular health care costs. If you get injured bicycling, you will face health care costs. If bicycling causes you to be healthier, you save health care costs. What is the net expected cost?
Health care costs do not capture all the effects on the quality of your life.
Wherever we can ask about statistical expectation we can also ask about variance.
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