Per capita cheese consumption in the US

As Americans have eaten more cheese per capita, more cyclists have been killed on US roads, a correlation that spans twenty-one years and suggests the nation's relationship with dairy is somehow entangled with its relationship with bicycle safety. The coefficient is 0.867, which is strong enough to make a cyclist think twice about a charcuterie board and a statistician think twice about publishing the result. The cheese ages, the cyclist does not, and the chart draws its line with the aged confidence of a well-matured Gouda.

Per capita cheese consumption in the US has climbed steadily from about 31 pounds per year in 2002 to over 40 pounds by 2022, driven by pizza culture, the snacking economy, and the proliferation of artisan cheese counters in grocery stores. Cycling fatalities grew from about 660 to over 1,000 during the same period. Both are measures of a growing, urbanizing consumer economy: more cheese is consumed because more pizza is eaten, and more cyclists die because more people ride in cities without adequate infrastructure. The shared variable is economic growth and the consumer behaviors it enables—more spending, more urbanization, more of everything including cheese plates and bike commutes.

Twenty-one years of cheese and cycling deaths rising together is a correlation that captures the mundane truth behind most statistical relationships on this site: two things growing in the same economy will correlate, regardless of whether they share a mechanism. The cheese melts, the cyclist pedals, and the economy that produces both does not pause to consider whether either is safe. The board is stacked. The lane is not.