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Old February 8th 18, 02:12 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Default AG: Dead Right

On 2/7/2018 1:42 PM, Ivan Shmakov wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:


[...]

But there are complications. Rather frequently, I encounter people
who have deluded ideas about dangers. On one hand, the people Joy is
addressing have no idea that they are putting themselves at risk.


On the other hand, and ever more common, there are people who imagine
that certain safe or even beneficial activities are dangerous. Those
people will (for example) never ride a bicycle at all, because they
think bicycling is very, very dangerous. As a consequence, they are
much more likely to die of a variety of ailments triggered by being
sedentary.


Now that the routes I usually follow are either covered with ice
or buried under snow, I'm not going to consider bicycling "safe,"
either.

I don't think I'm going to get anything due to "being sedentary,"
though: I walk 15 minutes every workday to get to job and the
same amount of time to get back, and I walk a few floors up and
down regularly while there. (Both for necessity and health.)

(Refusing to ride without a magic plastic hat is a variation on this
theme.)


Why, that hat saved my head from a lot of bruises I'd otherwise
have got from all the low-hanging branches I've encountered
while riding through local forests.


The magic plastic hat may make sense if you're mountain biking. For one
thing, you're much more likely to encounter a branch low enough to whack
your head. For another thing, the impact from such a branch - unlike an
impact from a car - will likely be within the tiny protective capacity
of the styrofoam.

However, there's also the strong possibility that without the hat you
might actually watch for low branches and ride in a way that avoids head
impacts. That's what I do in our local forest preserve.

I've come across a man - educated, recently elected judge - who said
he would never walk in a forest while wearing earplugs, because there
is such a high risk of a tree falling on a person. (Seriously!)


Yep; it was the last summer (or the summer before that) when a
Scots pine broke due to strong wind a few meters from me.
Thankfully, it fell pretty much the opposite direction to what
I've been standing at.


Yes, good example. "I saw a tree fall. Trees are SO DANGEROUS!"

In the entire U.S., in an average year, there are roughly six people
killed by trees falling, not counting those who die because the car they
are driving runs into a tree fallen across the road.

Trees falling is NOT a common cause of death or serious injury.

And on the third hand, there are the clueless who's deluded
self-preservation leads them to do things that put them at much, much
greater risk. Every wrong-way bicyclist is convinced that he's far
safer than those riding properly. The same is true for sidewalk
riders, despite copious research proving them wrong.


Care to suggest any? As a long-time sidewalk rider (which is,
to the best of my knowledge, entirely legal in my jurisdiction)
I'm rather curious about that.


I just googled "risks of sidewalk riding." Here are the first few hits:

http://www.bikexprt.com/bikepol/faci.../sidecrash.htm

https://onelesscar.wordpress.com/200...oad-bicycling/

http://mobikefed.org/2016/08/bicycli...ot-recommended

https://bikeleague.org/content/riding-sidewalk

We can discuss this. Note that I'm not saying one should never ride a
sidewalk. (There are two short sections I ride quite frequently.) But on
average, it's much more risky, and if a person is going to do it, there
are unusual hazards one should learn about.

--
- Frank Krygowski
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