Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009
 

On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:30:43 -0800 (PST), James
wrote:

On Nov 19, 12:22*pm, wrote:
On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:30:18 -0800 (PST), James



wrote:
On Nov 19, 5:47 am, wrote:
On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 03:32:37 -0800 (PST), James

wrote:
On Nov 18, 5:52 pm, wrote:

Speaking of not riding while drunk . . .

"One In Three Fatal Bicycle Accidents Linked To Alcohol"

Dear Carl,

Why is it that we tend to focus on the death statistics and overlook
the serious injuries?

Regards,
James.

Dear James,

Dead is worse than a serious injury. Similarly, a serious injury is
worse than a minor injury, so we focus on serious injuries and
overlook minor injuries, and minor injuries are worse than near
misses, and so on.

Dead is also easier to agree on and count than a serious injury. Most
bicyclists die on the spot and make the newspapers. (Lingering cases
like a friend's uncle, who broke his neck when a front fender failed
and took about two years to die of complications, are rare.)

In contrast, what's a "serious" injury? The usual definition is
anything that leads to a full day or more in the hospital, which
misses some rather horrifying injuries that modern medicine
successfully treats and discharges with surprising speed.

A rider can suffer a "serious" injury and take a day or two to admit
that his back, knee, ribs, wrist, or face hurts so much that he needs
to see a doctor. After an office visit, it may then take a few more
days to schedule surgery, which may lead to a day or more in the
hospital. It's iffy whether this will be counted as a bicycle injury.

***

Incidentally, medical advances skew historical data. Modern death
rates are much lower than they "ought" to be because victims now
survive what used to be fatal wounds--we now survive leg, chest,
belly, and head wounds that routinely killed people in accidents,
wars, and crimes.

For example, a greater proportion of assault victims used to die,
turning into homicide statistics. You died of a festering leg wound,
of peritonitis after a belly wound, of complications after chest and
head wounds. You didn't get the modern emergency treatment that
routinely saves lives.

In 1903, Officer Slater accidentally shot himself in the leg while
trying to stop a drunken pharmacist who had just shot Slater's
partner. Slater died the next day of his leg wound, something that
would be astonishing with modern medicine.

This trend toward survival is reflected in military statistics, which
show modern casualties surviving wounds that routinely killed soldiers
within living memory.

And it suggests that bicyclists were more likely to die from
accidents in the past. That is, many posters can probably remember
times when a bicycle accident was more likely to be fatal just because
treatment was nowhere near as good.

Thoreau is a good reminder of how much we take for granted. His
brother John nicked himself shaving in 1842 and died of tetanus.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. *Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents the
statisticians don't know or care about. *How comforting.

Regards,
James.

Dear James,

No, you're saying that.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Dear Carl,

It is the net result.

Cheers,

James.

Dear James,

No, I didn't say that. You said it, putting words in my mouth and
picking a foolish quarrel.

Goodbye,

Carl Fogel

Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009
 

carl lives in the desert

Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009
 

On Nov 19, 2:52*pm, wrote:
On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:30:43 -0800 (PST), James



wrote:
On Nov 19, 12:22 pm, wrote:
On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:30:18 -0800 (PST), James

wrote:
On Nov 19, 5:47 am, wrote:
On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 03:32:37 -0800 (PST), James

wrote:
On Nov 18, 5:52 pm, wrote:

Speaking of not riding while drunk . . .

"One In Three Fatal Bicycle Accidents Linked To Alcohol"

Dear Carl,

Why is it that we tend to focus on the death statistics and overlook
the serious injuries?

Regards,
James.

Dear James,

Dead is worse than a serious injury. Similarly, a serious injury is
worse than a minor injury, so we focus on serious injuries and
overlook minor injuries, and minor injuries are worse than near
misses, and so on.

Dead is also easier to agree on and count than a serious injury. Most
bicyclists die on the spot and make the newspapers. (Lingering cases
like a friend's uncle, who broke his neck when a front fender failed
and took about two years to die of complications, are rare.)

In contrast, what's a "serious" injury? The usual definition is
anything that leads to a full day or more in the hospital, which
misses some rather horrifying injuries that modern medicine
successfully treats and discharges with surprising speed.

A rider can suffer a "serious" injury and take a day or two to admit
that his back, knee, ribs, wrist, or face hurts so much that he needs
to see a doctor. After an office visit, it may then take a few more
days to schedule surgery, which may lead to a day or more in the
hospital. It's iffy whether this will be counted as a bicycle injury.

***

Incidentally, medical advances skew historical data. Modern death
rates are much lower than they "ought" to be because victims now
survive what used to be fatal wounds--we now survive leg, chest,
belly, and head wounds that routinely killed people in accidents,
wars, and crimes.

For example, a greater proportion of assault victims used to die,
turning into homicide statistics. You died of a festering leg wound,
of peritonitis after a belly wound, of complications after chest and
head wounds. You didn't get the modern emergency treatment that
routinely saves lives.

In 1903, Officer Slater accidentally shot himself in the leg while
trying to stop a drunken pharmacist who had just shot Slater's
partner. Slater died the next day of his leg wound, something that
would be astonishing with modern medicine.

This trend toward survival is reflected in military statistics, which
show modern casualties surviving wounds that routinely killed soldiers
within living memory.

And it suggests that bicyclists were more likely to die from
accidents in the past. That is, many posters can probably remember
times when a bicycle accident was more likely to be fatal just because
treatment was nowhere near as good.

Thoreau is a good reminder of how much we take for granted. His
brother John nicked himself shaving in 1842 and died of tetanus.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents the
statisticians don't know or care about. How comforting.

Regards,
James.

Dear James,

No, you're saying that.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Dear Carl,

It is the net result.

Cheers,

James.

Dear James,

No, I didn't say that. You said it, putting words in my mouth and
picking a foolish quarrel.

Goodbye,

Carl Fogel

Dear Carl,

Your "goodbye" sounds kinda final. I think you get my point anyway.
We only get about 4 cyclists dead in Victoria per annum. Using those
statistics to say cycling is not potentially dangerous, or to identify
what are most dangerous scenarios is pointless.

Goodbye,

James Steward.

Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009
 

On Nov 19, 2:53*pm, kolldata wrote:
carl lives in the desert

heat affected.

André Jute is doing that thing that makes people dislike him
 

On Nov 18, 10:32*pm, James wrote:
On Nov 18, 10:56*pm, Tºm Shermªn °_° ""twshermanDELETE\"@THI

$southslope.net" wrote:
yawn

With nothing more useful to add.

JS.

Sherman hasn't added anything at all. He stole the headline "André
Jute is doing that thing that makes people dislike him" from some
fellow called Hank who, as far as I could tell, got so bored with
sending that one refrain month after month, he went away and ate
sulphuric acid. Besides being a thief, and insular and ignorant, as
I've detailed, Sherman is dull. That's probably the height of wit in
the nowhere reaches of Wisconsin, to yawn into someone face. The most
amusing thing about Sherman is that Dolan, not exactly an incisive
judge of men, thinks Sherman is marginally smarter than he appears!
Christ, if Sherman were a rat in a cage in my lab, I would die of
boredom.

Andre Jute
A little wit goes a long way. Among the Shermans it has to.

SEE IMPERIAL DAM
 

Per James:
Sorry mate, I only catch a small portion of your points. Must be
tuned to different channels.

That one went right over my head too.

Can anybody explain?
--
PeteCresswell

Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009
 

On Nov 18, 11:26*pm, James wrote:

We only get about 4 cyclists dead in Victoria per annum. *Using those
statistics to say cycling is not potentially dangerous, or to identify
what are most dangerous scenarios is pointless.

IOW:

"Cyclist fatalities are incredibly rare. Therefore we can't use
cyclist fatalities to pretend that cycling is very dangerous.

"So to advance our effort to pretend that cycling is extremely
dangerous, we'll have to use other injuries. Hmm... Maybe we can use
"serious" injuries, and define those as "any injury that the person
(or his mommie) takes to the doctor. We can imply that each one of
those is likely to ruin someone's life. With a little luck, we can
conflate skinned knees with broken legs, and get a bigger grant for
our next study!"

- Frank Krygowski

Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009
 

On Nov 18, 5:30*pm, James wrote:

So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. *Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents the
statisticians don't know or care about. *How comforting.

Last night, I read through the article on Portland bike commuter
injuries: Hoffman, Lambert et.al., _Bicycle Commuter Injury
Prevention_, Journal of Trauma, V 69 No 5 Nov 2010.

It does just what James likes: It attempts to inflate the "Danger!"
impression attached to cycling by diligently capturing every tiny
injury, no matter how slight, that any bicyclist in its study
population received in an entire year.

Their technique was specifically designed to record even tiny injuries
that a cyclist might forget about five weeks later. From their
description, it sounds like if a cyclist pinched his finger in his
brake lever, that's a "traumatic event" and would get recorded. If a
cyclist had any medical person look at the injury, no matter how
slight, it got recorded as a "serious traumatic event."

So what did they find? Although not called out this way, they found
one "traumatic event" (i.e. tiny boo-boo or worse) every 6,700 miles
of commuting in Portland. They found one "serious traumatic
event" (e.g. the nurse put a band-aid on your blister or worse) every
25,600 miles of bike commuting.

As in all such studies, defining "serious" as "visited a doctor or
nurse" is certainly weak logic. The judgment of "serious" is thus up
to the person responsible for the trip to the treatment, as opposed to
the medically trained person. It completely prevents a doctor saying
"Oh, that's a trivial injury, too small to bother with." It means
hypochondria and outstanding medical coverage will be confounding
factors, just as health care group membership and over-protection
apparently were in the 1989 Thompson & Rivara paper.

And indeed, few as they are, the most common "traumatic" or "serious
traumatic" event in this Portland paper was an injury to "Skin/Soft
Tissue." I guess that they didn't want to come out and say "road
rash" or "skinned knee."

But still: If it takes, on average, 25,000 miles commuting in a major
city to trigger _any_ visit to any doctor, even for a skinned knee, it
sounds like cycling is really not very dangerous at all.

We should stop pretending bicycling is dangerous. It does us no good.

- Frank Krygowski

Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009
 

On Nov 19, 10:07*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 18, 5:30*pm, James wrote:
Their technique was specifically designed to record even tiny injuries
that a cyclist might forget about five weeks later. *

I have had many injuries that were healed and forgotten five weeks
later. That hardly rendered them retroactively inconsequential.

But in any case, Frank, you have my blessing, (indeed my
encouragement) to not wear a helmet.

DR

Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009
 

On Nov 19, 10:07*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

We should stop pretending there are any dangers in bicycling. *It does us no good.

Sure, Frank, anything you say.