On Monday, August 14, 2017 at 10:08:28 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 8/13/2017 11:58 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 13 Aug 2017 22:20:48 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 8/13/2017 8:07 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 13 Aug 2017 12:15:13 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:
I was talking about
what the LAB effort pretended to determine, which was the cause of
crashes. For that you need good collection of info about the crash,
preferably by cops immediately after the crash happens.

As far as I can determine there is no accurate count of bicycle
accidents and or deaths. In fact I've read mention of this in a number
of studies as (the studies say) some? many? bike accidents are either
not reported or do not result in a visit to a clinic, or even if a
clinic is visited the injury may be recorded but not the fact that it
was a "bicycle accident".

That's true of almost everything. There's probably no really accurate
count of chair accidents, stairs accidents, shoe accidents etc.

Even where, it appears, that an effort was made to acquire accurate
information, such as the L.A. county study (that reported that more
then half of the bike - auto crashes were the fault of the cyclist)
only the initial cause was recorded. If a bicycle was riding the wrong
way the blame was attributed to the bicycle regardless of any other
actions that might have added to the severity of the crash.

Right. If we really want to understand the situations and behaviors that
cause bike crashes, we need better data.

I just came across a site that claims that beds are more dangerious
than firearms, with 835 deaths from falling out of bed in 2014 versus
only 364 due to mass shootings :-)
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeaut..._of_bed_in_us/

Given that U.S. bicycle deaths were only 749 in 2014 it becomes
obvious that we don't need bike paths to be safe. What we need are
lower beds - Japanese futons? :-)

I've noted before that falling out of bed deaths frequently exceed bike
deaths. It illustrates how rare bike deaths really are; yet many people
worry so much about getting killed while riding.

It doesn't matter how rare it is. Bicyclist themselves go way out of their way to emphasize the dangers of cycling - "Always wear a helmet". In most states it is illegal for a minor to bicycle without a "safety" helmet.