What do you do?

Tom Crispin said:

On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 16:15:57 +0000, Tony Raven <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

To support that Kaplan (and Moritz) found that CTC members had one
eighth the accident rate of the general college level adult population.

So perhaps the best thing the Government could do to cut cyclist
accidents is to give everyone CTC membership ;-^)

You are Troll R and I claim my five pounds.

Our resident 'Care in the Community' Matt B's argument goes that the
easiest way to cut speeding convictions is to raise speed limits.

They could save a great deal of money currently spent on police salaries by
simply noting that no one is officially dead until so certified by a doctor.

Thus, whenever there's a murder, instead of protracted police investigations,
simply arrest the doctor. The victim wouldn't be dead if it weren't for them.

Helen Deborah Vecht said:

Tony Raven <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

So perhaps the best thing the Government could do to cut cyclist
accidents is to give everyone CTC membership ;-^)

Seriously, I think the best way to cut cycling accidents would be to
make motorists liable for cyclists injuries in the case of collision.

That would also be the best way to increase the number of 'hit-and-runs'.

I would prefer that we first eliminated the elements of our current
'road safety' measures which give motorised traffic de facto priority on
most of our public roads, and which lull motorists into going too fast
to deal with the unexpected. And then to re-engineer our roads to made
them friendly to /all/ road users.

If, after removing the cues that have been created to speed motorists
along, and which minimise their perception of risk whilst so doing, and
after redesigning the roads to be usable by all road users equally, we
still see motorists using inappropriate speed and we still have
unacceptable road casualty rates, then we will have proven that
motorists are different from 'normal' human beings, and so must have
different laws, and different standards applied to them.

Quoted message said:

I think this might also increase cycling enormously.

Ah, but would alienating, demonising, and victimising motorists make
our roads safer - or more dangerous?

--
Matt B

On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:05:47 +0000, Tony Raven <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

My name is Tom Crispin and I'm a troll feeder.
It's been 12 days since I last fed Troll B.

And is the grass in the meadow

It certainly is now.

--
My name is Tom Crispin and I'm a troll feeder.
It's been 12 1/2 days since I last fed Troll B.

Tony Raven said:

I am in a discussion on a Cycling Campaign list at the moment and when I
said that cycling was not dangerous one of the members responded:

"This is the mistake of taking casualty figures as a measure of danger
(that Mayer Hillman is always criticising).

It's like the situation of the road crossing for pedestrians that is so
dangerous, no-one ever goes there, so there are no casualties. It is
apparently safe, because it is so dangerous. This is exactly the
situation with cycling for the social groups who are almost
unrepresented amongst cyclists. They make a correct judgement of the
high level of danger that cycling on the roads presents to them,
therefore they don't do it, therefore they don't add to the casualty
figures.

It's fairly safe for most of the people who do it, because people can
judge their own capabilities. But this situation limits cycling, like
skydiving or mountaineering, to a small subset of the population. This
is serious because cycling is so socially and economically useful,
unlike those other activities."

What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling?

First, it's actually encouraging to hear someone talking rationally
(sorry) about statistics. Far too many people haven't the first clue
about what all those numbers mean.

He does have a point about the value of statistics, but you can co-opt
his example to strengthen your argument for cycling. In his argument,
the pedestrians exercised their senses (sight and sound) and their
judgment and their good sense. They saw a danger, thought things
through, and planned to avoid the danger altogether.

Cyclists are no less intelligent than pedestrians. The simple act of
cycling is not, of itself, inherently dangerous. Sharing a roadway with
automobiles does increase the risk. Cyclists are smart enough to
recognize the truly dangerous places and avoid them (we aren't suicidal
[well, not most of the time]). If pedestrians can avoid dangerous
places, why cannot cyclists do the same thing?

The other problem with his argument is that he assumes that people are
unaffected by the media. People can judge their own capabilities, but
if they continually hear that "cycling is dangerous", they may be
comparing their capabilities against misunderstood requirements ("it's
too dangerous for me"😉. If there was a continual stream of stories from
ordinary folks who showed how they safely commute while avoiding nasty
bits of roadway, those same people might judge that their capabilities
were sufficient to try it themselves.

This sort of thing is why I love written communication - I have time to
think things through (I've a MHz brain in a GHz world).

In article <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah
Vecht
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Rob Morley <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Smother them in their sleep?

That would be my job...

If you have easy access then vigorous application of boot to posterior
may be effective over time. :-)

Rob Morley <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah
Vecht
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Rob Morley <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

>
Smother them in their sleep?

That would be my job...

If you have easy access then vigorous application of boot to posterior
may be effective over time. :-)

Alas, I cannot raise my lower limbs sufficiently to dress without
lifting them manually. i cannot apply my size 41s to anything other than
the floor...

--
Helen D. Vecht: [email hidden]
Edgware.

In article <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah
Vecht
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Rob Morley <[email hidden]>typed

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>, Helen Deborah
Vecht
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Rob Morley <[email hidden]>typed

> >
> Smother them in their sleep?

That would be my job...

If you have easy access then vigorous application of boot to posterior
may be effective over time. :-)

Alas, I cannot raise my lower limbs sufficiently to dress without
lifting them manually. i cannot apply my size 41s to anything other than
the floor...

You don't have to be wearing the boot - just attach it to a long stick.
Or trip him up first. :-)

"Ewan" <[email hidden]> wrote

[snip]

Quoted message said:

They could save a great deal of money currently spent on police
salaries by
simply noting that no one is officially dead until so certified by
a doctor.

I'm old enough to remember when the difference between the British
definition of being dead, and the French definition, made French
fatality statistics look about 4% more optimistic than British.

Britain then used a different definition of death for traffic
statistics than they did for murder, so if you had killed somebody
with your car it would have been theoretically possible for your
victim to have been dead enough for you to be hanged for murder, but
not dead enough to be counted as a fatal traffic statistic.

Jeremy Parker

"fred" <[email hidden]> wrote

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Cyclists are no less intelligent than pedestrians. The simple act
of cycling is not, of itself, inherently dangerous. Sharing a
roadway with automobiles does increase the risk. Cyclists are
smart enough to recognize the truly dangerous places and avoid them
(we aren't suicidal [well, not most of the time]). If pedestrians
can avoid dangerous places, why cannot cyclists do the same thing?

[snip]

If intelligence was all it took to avoid bike accidents, then bike
training would be a waste of money.

In actual fact it's possible to combine intelligence with being
grievously misinformed, as posts on any Usenet newsgroup will show
you. Britain's bike culture, inasmuch as it ever had one, has,
thanks to mass motoring, been lost for two generations

Novice cyclists combine being both too frightened of cycling, and
not frightened enough.

A few years ago, when AIDS was new, there was a slogan, "don't die of
ignorance". Here in London cycling is increasing, so there are a lot
of novices around, and lots of cyclists dieing in accidents which
would have been trivially easy for those cyclists to avoid. You
can't say they volunteered to die, because they didn't know, but it's
truly appalling to hear of each accident as it happens.

Not long ago I heard of yet another cyclist killed by a left turning
lorry. The moral, I think, is not to get into the coffin corner, but
how do we spread the word that there is such a thing as the coffin
corner?

John Forester, of Effective Cycling fame, thinks it takes, to become
a competent cyclist, about:

50 000 miles of riding alone, or
5000 miles of riding with a club (of mostly competent cyclists) or
2500 miles of riding, along with reading books like Cyclecraft or
Effective Cycling, or
800 miles along with taking a good course

Compulsory Basic Training supposedly has had a dramatic effect in
lowering motorcycle accidents. I'm not advocating compulsory
anything for cyclists, but I am advocating that all Cyclists buy and
read both Cyclecraft and Effective Cycling

And anyone who reads this post, and later gets killed by a left
turning lorry, almost certainly will deserve a Darwin award.

Jeremy Parker

"wafflycat" <w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Helen Deborah Vecht" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Yes. There are huge numbers of women and children who perceive (or
parents perceive) that cycling is too dangerous and so do not cycle.
Here, in Outer London cyclists are a rarity and female cyclists are
really few and far between.

The only way for a cyclist to survive locally is to be very assertive.
My partner is a shy guy.

I've had women tell me that they are surprised that I cycle *alone* and
how they would never do such a thing as *it's too dangerous out there* and
how I'm a bad mother as I allow my offspring to cycle to school.

You allow your chidren to cycle to school, absolutely disgraceful!

How can you live with yourself?

My son always cycled to school, until he got a motorbike, then he biked to
school!

Alan

Quoted message said:

"Tony Raven" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Jeremy Parker wrote on 03/02/2007 15:09 +0100:

Quoted message said:

John Forester thinks experience and training teach cyclists to avoid
accidents - at least four out of five accidents are avoidable, he thinks.
He discusses this in Effective Cycling (6th ed, p 271) and Bicycle
Transportation (1977 ed, p60)

Somewhere I've seen the statistic that for cyclists who ride over 1000
miles per year the annual risk of accidents is a bout the same, no matter
what their mileage. In other words, after the thousandth mile, each
extra mile carries no extra risk whatsoever. If anyone can give me a
reference for this I would appreciate it.

To support that Kaplan (and Moritz) found that CTC members had one eighth
the accident rate of the general college level adult population.

So perhaps the best thing the Government could do to cut cyclist accidents
is to give everyone CTC membership ;-^)

One way to cut cyclist accidents, is to force all motorists to spend at
least a year on the road every day on a bike, and not issue any new licence
until the applicant has spent at least a year on a bike.

Alan

Quoted message said:

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Alan Holmes wrote on 04/02/2007 20:28 +0100:

Quoted message said:

One way to cut cyclist accidents, is to force all motorists to spend at
least a year on the road every day on a bike, and not issue any new licence
until the applicant has spent at least a year on a bike.

You mean like London cab drivers doing the knowledge? So much for that
idea.

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

fred said:

He does have a point about the value of statistics, but you can co-opt
his example to strengthen your argument for cycling. In his argument,
the pedestrians exercised their senses (sight and sound) and their
judgment and their good sense. They saw a danger, thought things
through, and planned to avoid the danger altogether.

Cyclists are no less intelligent than pedestrians. The simple act of
cycling is not, of itself, inherently dangerous. Sharing a roadway with
automobiles does increase the risk. Cyclists are smart enough to
recognize the truly dangerous places and avoid them (we aren't suicidal
[well, not most of the time]).

Actually, I don't think many cyclists are good at recognising and
avoiding danger. Most cyclists avoid the most frightening places,
which are not the same as the most dangerous.

Quoted message said:

The other problem with his argument is that he assumes that people are
unaffected by the media. People can judge their own capabilities, but
if they continually hear that "cycling is dangerous", they may be
comparing their capabilities against misunderstood requirements ("it's
too dangerous for me"😉. If there was a continual stream of stories from
ordinary folks who showed how they safely commute while avoiding nasty
bits of roadway, those same people might judge that their capabilities
were sufficient to try it themselves.

Most people, cyclists or not, overestimate how hazardous cycling is
overall, and haven't a clue how to cycle to minimise the danger. How
can they know, when the answers are counter-intuitive and the loudest
voices are saying it's lethal whatever you do?

This is why National Standards training is so important.

Colin McKenzie

--
No-one has ever proved that cycle helmets make cycling any safer at
the population level, and anyway cycling is about as safe per mile as
walking.
Make an informed choice - visit www.cyclehelmets.org.

fred said:

Cyclists are no less intelligent than pedestrians. The simple act of
cycling is not, of itself, inherently dangerous. Sharing a roadway
with automobiles does increase the risk. Cyclists are smart enough to
recognize the truly dangerous places and avoid them (we aren't
suicidal [well, not most of the time]). If pedestrians can avoid
dangerous places, why cannot cyclists do the same thing?

the difference is that the pedestrian on the pavement is safe from the
hazard and chooses when to share road space with cars - ie chooses when to
cross the road. A cyclist is permenamtly sharing the road space with cars.

By that arguemnt, cycling is inherently more dangerous

pk

p.k. wrote on 05/02/2007 00:13 +0100:

Quoted message said:

the difference is that the pedestrian on the pavement is safe from the
hazard and chooses when to share road space with cars - ie chooses when to
cross the road. A cyclist is permenamtly sharing the road space with cars.

By that arguemnt, cycling is inherently more dangerous

But over 40 pedestrians a year killed on the pavement and a further 80
on pedestrian crossings which is more or less the same as the number of
cyclists killed on the whole road system.

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Quoted message said:

What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling?

Give up? The campaigners round my way say (to paraphrase) that it's
certain death to cycle in daylight without hi-vis clothing. They now do a
'critical commute' where the message seems to be 'cycling is dangerous, you
need hi-vis' rather than anything positive.

Tony Raven said:

p.k. wrote on 05/02/2007 00:13 +0100:

Quoted message said:

the difference is that the pedestrian on the pavement is safe from the
hazard and chooses when to share road space with cars - ie chooses when to
cross the road. A cyclist is permenamtly sharing the road space with cars.

By that arguemnt, cycling is inherently more dangerous

But over 40 pedestrians a year killed on the pavement and a further 80
on pedestrian crossings which is more or less the same as the number of
cyclists killed on the whole road system.

There are a hell of a lot more pedestrians than cyclists.

Coming up with a statistic such as the one you just did is nothing more than
attempting a smoke and mirrors trick.

The above should not be taken to indicate that I agree or disagree that cycling
is more dangerous than walking. The statistics simply aren't available.

And I'll bet that the ratios are quite different for:

Deaths per minute spent persuing activity
Deaths per mile travelled
Deaths per trip

Mark Thompson wrote on 05/02/2007 09:30 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling?

Give up? The campaigners round my way say (to paraphrase) that it's
certain death to cycle in daylight without hi-vis clothing. They now do a
'critical commute' where the message seems to be 'cycling is dangerous, you
need hi-vis' rather than anything positive.

The latest response to the suggestion of cycle training of the sort Tom
does is to demand evidence that training is effective having ignored
repeated requests for any evidence that the big investment over many
years in building facilities has had any positive effect on the numbers
cycling or the safety of those that do cycle.

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Mark Thompson wrote on 05/02/2007 09:30 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling?

Give up? The campaigners round my way say (to paraphrase) that it's
certain death to cycle in daylight without hi-vis clothing. They now do a
'critical commute' where the message seems to be 'cycling is dangerous, you
need hi-vis' rather than anything positive.

The latest response to the suggestion of cycle training of the sort Tom
does is to demand evidence that training is effective having ignored
repeated requests for any evidence that the big investment over many
years in building facilities has had any positive effect on the numbers
cycling or the safety of those that do cycle.

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Tony Raven" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

The latest response to the suggestion of cycle training of the sort Tom
does is to demand evidence that training is effective having ignored
repeated requests for any evidence that the big investment over many years
in building facilities has had any positive effect on the numbers cycling
or the safety of those that do cycle.

Mmmm :-(

Who's doing this response?

cheers,
clive