US pizza restaurant spending

As Americans have spent more money eating pizza in restaurants, more cyclists have been killed on US roads, a correlation that connects the delivery economy to the cycling economy with the unfortunate directness of a pizza delivery driver turning right without checking the bike lane. The coefficient is 0.878 across eighteen years, during which both metrics climbed with the confidence of industries that serve the same urban customer from different angles. The pizza arrives hot. The cyclist arrives, hopefully.

Pizza restaurant spending grew from about 38 billion to over 60 billion between 2005 and 2022, driven by delivery apps, fast-casual chains, and the general American consensus that pizza is always appropriate. Cycling fatalities grew from about 780 to over 1,000 during the same period. The connection is less abstract than it appears: the delivery vehicle explosion—cars, e-bikes, and scooters rushing to deliver food—has added traffic to the same urban roads where cyclists ride. Every additional DoorDash driver is another vehicle competing for the same scarce lane space. Both trends are symptoms of urban density increasing faster than road design can accommodate.

Eighteen years of pizza spending and cycling deaths growing together is a story about urban roads being asked to serve too many purposes simultaneously: commuting, delivery, cycling, and parking, all in the same narrow space. The pizza gets delivered, the cyclist gets endangered, and the road was never wide enough for both. The app sends the order. The lane does not send protection.