R15757 wrote:
Frank K again:

snip, snip, snip

Hence, numbers are definitely hard to find.

So why do you keep making claims you can't back up?

The fact that injury numbers are "hard to find" is precisely my point
--thanks for taking the baton and running with it.

Um... yes, we apparently agree, although I had no idea that was your
point. Seems to me your point is that riding bikes is unusually dangerous.

We may be able to close this thread quickly. If you _don't_ think
cycling is unusually dangerous, say so! We can shake hands and have a
figurative beer together.

Otherwise...

They are hard to
find because they are impossible to gather.

Well, not impossible. They are difficult to gather because nobody is
interested in throwing the necessary money toward such a minor problem.

The fact that fatality
stats are easy to gather does not make them particularly useful in
this discussion.

Fatality stats form a useful proxy for serious injury stats. IOW,
public health people use fatality data to estimate injury data. It's
not perfectly accurate, of course, but accurate enough to be useful.

In fact, that fatality numbers are so readily
available has _obscured_ the issue in many important ways.

??? Sounds like you're saying that few people die on bikes, and that
hides the unprovable fact that tons and tons of people are injured!

If that is, indeed, what you mean, then you should prove it. As is,
you're merely begging the question - an elementary mistake in logic.

.. I note that, despite your
chiding me about numbers, you've given nothing beyond tales of you and
your buddies. Your war stories may be thrilling to you, but they're not
what's considered robust data.

Boy Frank, you sure like to talk, but you don't like to listen.

I have already posted two or three or nine times in a variety of
threads including this one the same USCPSC numbers you posted
above, maybe you missed it.

Maybe I did miss it. And perhaps my memory's bad. But in _this_
thread, you've been giving no numbers, while criticizing mine. In fact,
the only numbers you finally did give are the ones you now admit being
in error by a factor of two!

If numbers posted in _other_ threads absolve you, my similar ones
should certainly absolve me. But given your anonymous handle, you
shouldn't expect anyone to pay attention to anything but what you say in
this thread.

None of the numbers available suggest that serious injuries are
"vanishingly rare." Sorry dude. Nice phrase though.

Ah well. To me, what's important is: the majority of bike-related ER
visits are for minor injuries; and bike ER visits are not much more
common than those caused by beds and bedclothes.

For all I know, you have lots of horror stories of bedclothes injuries.
Maybe that colors your outlook? Whatever.

If those facts don't satisfy you, I'd say it's up to you to give numbers
indicating serious bike injuries are very common. Using the lack of
evidence to "prove" they are common is absolute nonsense.

So let me get this straight. Your belief is that the particular risks
associated with "normal," lawful cycling extend, realistically, only to
minor injuries, abrasions, skinned knees, these sorts of things.

That's pretty much it. It's not impossible to get a serious injury -
either by cycling, or by walking in a crosswalk - but it's not likely to
happen to any particular cyclist (or walker) in the next couple hundred
years, statistically speaking. If people learn to ride lawfully and
reasonably, they'll be as safe as if they were in a car. Per-hour data
for cycling, motoring and walking confirm that. (I posted it recently.)

More
serious injuries are in your words "vanishingly rare" and therefore
you feel that almost any concern about these injuries or attempt to
avoid them would just be silly, "handwringing." Fascinating..

Nope, I didn't say that, and I didn't mean that. What I meant was that
harping on the few horror stories gives a distorted image of cycling,
portrays it as an "extreme" activity, and is bad for cycling and for
cyclists. It's counterproductive.

To avoid such injuries, what a person needs to do is cycle lawfully and
reasonably. It's easy to learn. A child can do it - literally.


What I can't figure out is, if these serious injuries are so rare, how
come so many dedicated cyclists have experienced them?

"So many" is wonderfully vague. But obviously, we hear the accounts
because there are lots and lots of dedicated cyclists, and today's
communication is rather wonderful.

People's fear mechanisms are still tuned to the days of isolated
villages. If a mother heard about a child carried off by a tiger, it
was pertinent, and it caused her to keep her child indoors. Obviously,
that tiger was close by.

Today, we apparently get posters to usenet who scan Google for "bicycle"
and "death" and cheerfully report every incident in America. Or we get
anonymous posters from God-knows-where who tell tales of buddies
bleeding from the eyes. Well, in a country with many, many millions of
cyclists, these things will happen - but they are still rare.

It's all pretty straightforward.


I always figured the danger of cycling in traffic
was pretty obvious to an intelligent person...

The danger of cycling in traffic is greatly overstated by many
supposedly intelligent people.

I see that you are enthusiastically dedicated to this overstating. You
can't find numbers to back you up, so you rely on horror stories.

Fine. But I repeat, I really do wish you'd find a different hobby to
treat this way. You do cycling, and cyclists, no good.



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