Amazon annual revenue

As Amazon's annual revenue has grown from a modest 8 billion dollars to a rather less modest 575 billion, American cyclists have been dying at an increasing rate, which is either a coincidence or the most damning product review in history. The correlation spans eighteen years and achieves a coefficient of 0.907, which in statistical terms means these two trends are nearly as synchronized as a Jeff Bezos earnings call and a journalist's involuntary gasp. One hesitates to suggest that Prime delivery vans are involved, but one also hesitates to rule it out entirely.

Amazon's growth is essentially a proxy for the explosion of e-commerce and last-mile delivery that transformed American streets between 2005 and 2022. More online orders mean more delivery vehicles—Amazon alone operates over 100,000 delivery vans in the US—competing for road space with cyclists who are themselves a growing population in urban areas. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration noted that delivery vehicle traffic in urban cores increased roughly 30 percent between 2015 and 2022. Meanwhile, cycling grew as a commute mode in the same cities where those vans were double-parking. Both trends feed on urbanization: dense cities create both the demand for rapid delivery and the conditions for cycling, while failing to provide enough road space for either to operate safely alongside traditional traffic.

What we are watching is two consequences of the same urban transformation—one measured in revenue, the other in emergency rooms—moving upward together with the indifference of trends that share a cause but not a conversation. Amazon did not set out to endanger cyclists, and cyclists did not set out to inconvenience Amazon. They simply both showed up in the same city at the same time. The streets were not ready.