Pumpkin spice products on shelves

As pumpkin spice products have colonized American store shelves with the autumnal aggression of a flavor that believes it belongs on everything, more cyclists have been killed on US roads. The coefficient is 0.882 across twenty-one years, during which both metrics climbed with the determination of trends that refuse to acknowledge a ceiling. The pumpkin spice latte and the unprotected bike lane: two autumn experiences with very different survival rates.

Pumpkin spice products grew from a handful of items to over 150 SKUs between 2002 and 2022, as Starbucks's seasonal launch expanded into an entire economy of pumpkin-flavored everything. Cycling fatalities grew from about 660 to over 1,000 during the same period. Both trends track consumer culture expansion: pumpkin spice proliferated because brands discovered seasonal products generate free social media coverage, and cycling grew because urbanization created demand for alternative transportation. The shared variable is not squash but the general expansion of consumer culture and urban life during the same two decades.

Twenty-one years of pumpkin spice and cycling deaths is a correlation that feels like autumn: warm, slightly dangerous, and over-flavored. Both trends measure the expansion of things—products on shelves, cyclists on roads—that have grown faster than the systems designed to manage them. The spice is everywhere. The bike lane is nowhere. The season continues regardless.