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?

--
Tony

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wildly inaccurate..."
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