On Friday, May 24, 2019 at 11:36:33 PM UTC+1, Duane wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
On Friday, May 24, 2019 at 5:36:16 PM UTC+1, jbeattie wrote to Krygowski:

Risk is different for different riders. If you JRA at 12mph on dry
village streets, you are at low risk of injury. If you ride in snow, ice
and rain on steep, broken roads, you are at a higher risk of injury. If
you do laps in the Arc d'Triumph roundabout or filtering through London
traffic, you're in a whole other risk category. And then, each of those
categories is modified further by skill and experience.

-- Jay Beattie.

I've given up trying to educate that obstinate jerk, Frank Krygowski. But
I must congratulate you on a good job, though your success will, like all
past efforts, be temporary. Bad pennies keep turning up.

You might add that, if you're on a road bike with narrow tyres, your risk
of an incident is higher than if you're on balloons (50mm wide and up)
though only if on downhills you proceed at the same pace as you would on
narrow tyres rather than taking advantage of the greater capability of the balloons.

Andre Jute
2.0 bar


Jay is correct. Risk is different for different riders and even for the
same rider in different circumstances. All cycling is not the same.
Sometime I’m trudging through the traffic alone commuting to work..
Sometimes I’m out in the country in a group pushing it. Both have
different parameters regarding risk etc. Some cyclists do only one or the
other. Some do both. Hard to group them together statistically. And what
would be the point anyway?

--
duane

I understand what you two are getting at, and I agree. But the actuary of an insurance company would be interested in the average danger in a representative year to all the cyclists in his demographic universe, simply as a base number from which to offset the factors we've already cited, plus no doubt others so that individual quotes can be prepared that will be different for me, riding in a country area and you, riding in a great metropolis. We've already had an example of where it has become difficult to get insurance for a mass ride of very occasional riders, where the cause might be insufficient data to make a rational quote, too many payouts for automobile crashes on that particular piece of road (from an insurance company's viewpoint not irrelevant at all), prior unprofitable experience insuring such mass bicycle rides, or simply common sense skepticism.

You have to keep these two ideas, one based on demographics in large universes, one based on particular risks in particular places, separate, because the statistical principles applying to them are quite as different as the underlying assumptions of macro- and micro-economics.That is what's so tiresome about Krygowski's ignorant insistence that all you need is a technician's rote-learned math and Leontiev is your uncle: hey, presto, you understand statistics! This ignorance and insensitivity to people, coupled to immorality, is what drives Krygowski's repeated attempts to argue from the particular (that what he himself does is superior to what anyone else does) to the general, and then to assume that 200 or 300 unnecessarily dead cyclists every year don't matter.

Andre Jute
Actuaries rule