KEITH BRADSHER:

Bicycles have gone from carrying more than 70 percent of travelers in Shanghai as recently as 1990 to from 15 to 17 percent now, according to the Shanghai Urban Planning Bureau....

The switch from bicycles to cars is having serious health consequences. China has seven of the world's 10 most polluted cities, according to the World Health Organization, and pollution from cars has been rising quickly even as regulators have had some success in discouraging people from burning coal in their homes for heat and cooking. Mixing cars and bicycles in traffic is also deadly: bicycles account for three-quarters of all traffic accidents, Mr. Wu said.

In a country with an average income per person of $1,000, relatively few bicyclists can dream of affording a car....

Two points: The vast majority of the Chinese people don't have that much money (although actually measured in terms of purchasing power parity, it's at least twice the $1,000 figure), and more egregiously, I'm not all that pro-bike, but just because bicycles are involved in three-quarters of all traffic accidents doesn't mean they "account for" the accidents.