Dangerous? Study: 77 to 1 benefit to risk

On 8/7/2011 11:22 AM, "T°m Sherm@n" wrote:
On 8/7/2011 8:10 AM, Peter Cole wrote:
On 8/7/2011 12:12 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
[...]
I agree with reduced speed limits in any place where a pedestrian or
cyclist could be expected to be traveling.

I would assume by that you mean the only exception would be limited
access highways. I think that exception should be obvious and not
particularly relevant to dense urban areas.[...]

The problem with controlled access roads in dense urban areas is too
much access. Get rid of the interchanges in the cities, and it would
make it much quicker to traverse them on the way to one's destination.


Except for those coming and going from the city, the very reason those
highways were built in the first place.

I'm sure that Boston is typical, with the exception that the Atlantic
Ocean limits our Easterly options, in that originally highways developed
in a "hub & spoke" pattern to bring workers to urban jobs from suburban
residences, following and extending streetcar lines. In recent decades,
demographics have changed, with many employers relocating to the suburbs
and many residents relocating to the city. The former phenomenon creates
a lot of suburb to suburb commutes, sometimes served by "beltways"
circling the city, but many such commutes have the shortest path through
the city. That particular commuting pattern defies an easy solution.
Urban residents being understandably intolerant of elevated expressways
blighting their expensive real estate, the only vehicular solution is to
bury them, something Boston recently did partially at a truly horrific
cost. Not a generic solution in the "new economy".

A rational and equitable policy would be to discourage "through
commutes" as they provide no benefit to either urban residents or
workers and they make poor use of precious urban space. Not
surprisingly, that is the exact opposite of your recommendation.

On 8/7/2011 4:24 PM, AMuzi wrote:
Peter Cole wrote:
On 8/7/2011 12:04 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
Peter Cole wrote:
As for the comparison with long-odds
gambling... Human nature, for whatever reason, seems to favor gambling
the
likely small loss against the unlikely large win vs. the other way
around.

Ropiek's book _How Risky Is It Really?_ deals with that, and with lots
more on the psychology of risk. Yes, humans are bad at making rational
decisions involving extremely unlikely events.

Human's might also be considered irrational at making decisions
involving mortality. How much would you pay for one more year of life?
For your spouse? For your child?

Sometimes you can make it an apples to apples choice -- e.g. years
gained by putative health benefits vs. years lost via accidents, but
sometimes not, often safety costs have to be weighed against life span
losses, and that requires a dollar valuation.

Probability is often counter-intuitive, witness the famous Monty Hall
problem.

You can say people are irrational, but that irrationality is the
product of millions of years of evolution that enabled every single
one of our ancestors to survive long enough to at least reproduce, all
the way back to the beginnings of life.

Game theory studies the outcomes of various decision making
strategies, but it has been famously observed, at least in some
scenarios, that the only ones who behaved "rationally" were
"psychopaths and economists".


"... millions of years of evolution that enabled every single one of our
ancestors to survive long enough to at least reproduce ..."


Not a very demanding standard.



Quite demanding actually. See Darwin.

On 8/7/2011 4:51 PM, "T°m Sherm@n" wrote:
On 8/7/2011 2:52 PM, Peter Cole wrote:
On 8/7/2011 11:24 AM, "T°m Sherm@n" wrote:
On 8/7/2011 6:43 AM, Peter Cole wrote:
On 8/7/2011 1:47 AM, "T°m Sherm@n" wrote:
On 8/6/2011 10:26 PM, Peter Cole wrote:
On 8/6/2011 4:21 PM, "T°m Sherm@n" wrote:
On 8/6/2011 12:50 PM, Peter Cole wrote:
[...]
I hate queuing up behind long lines of hot, exhaust spewing
vehicles
jammed curb to curb.[...]

That only happens a few times a year (at special events) where I
live in
Iowa.


I can believe that, but the context of my comments was dense urban
areas.

Yes, but why would sane people choose to live in such places?


Lots of reasons. One relevant to this thread: the potential to live
car-free and/or use a bicycle for most of your transportation.

People can do that in areas with less than a quarter of a million
people, without all the negatives huge population concentrations bring.


Yeah if you want to shop at Wal-Mart and eat fast food.

Gee, I have alternatives to both of those. *WITHIN* reasonable cycling
distance.

Contrary to myth, Iowa is *not* a northern version of Mississippi or
other backwards [1] southern state.

[1] Any place that approves of flying the Confederate Flag is *not* modern.


Now that's a low standard.

On 8/7/2011 6:21 PM, "T°m Sherm@n" wrote:
On 8/7/2011 5:00 PM, Peter Cole wrote:
But I have essentially never been significantly delayed by car traffic.
Occasionally, rarely, I've missed a green light that I could have
caught; yet that doesn't meet the definition of "significant" in my
book. And contrary to the claims of some others, I've never seen a
traffic jam so curb-to-curb that I couldn't filter forward on a bike
when I chose to. As it is, I rarely choose to... but again, that's
because the delays haven't been significant.

If you didn't need to filter then the queue didn't last more than one
light cycle. Lucky you. I wouldn't call that gridlock. You might not be
aware that many/most people would not be comfortable filtering at all,
particularly between lines of traffic. You have an elitist view of
cycling. Tell a grandmother with her grandchildren in tow to filter
between lines of rush hour traffic. I would love to see how that's
received, even in the cycling utopia of Pittsburgh.

Filtering is legal on motos in California. You can also filter in Moscow
(Russia, not Iowa):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XihQeZpwqpE&feature=player_embedded.


If that was the grandmother, I didn't see the kids.

Per "T°m Sherm@n" ":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XihQeZpwqpE&feature=player_embedded.

YAOD

Yet Another Organ Donor.
--
PeteCresswell

On 8/7/2011 12:26 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Are you aware that Portland's green bike boxes haven't been shown to
work? Last I heard, data shows just as many intersection conflicts as
before.

Maybe you haven't been following:

http://bikeportland.org/2010/09/14/p...xes-work-39441

On 8/7/2011 5:01 PM, Michael Press wrote:
In ,
Simon wrote:

"T°m " writes:

On 8/6/2011 3:37 PM, Dan wrote:
[...]
And the surest way to get people out of their cars and using bikes
instead is to create dedicated space and bike facilites from what is
now essentially space dedicated to cars - space that bicyclists may
have a *right* to use, but that die-hard cagers think is too dangerous
to ride in, and that cagers think belongs exclusively to them.

I prefer economic incentives to get people of of their giant cages - an
$8/gallon tax would be a start.

(Also, don't berate them as irrational cowards for their choice to
wear a helmet. It takes experience to develop a realistic concept
of the risk.)

And the uselessness of bicycle helmets.

Bicycle helmets protect the skull if it comes into contact with the
road. How is that useless?

They might protect against superficial abrasions
at the cost of inducing other injuries. A helmet
can hit something and drive the temple piece of
eyeglasses into the skin, when the bare head
would never have hit in the first place. Notice
how bicycling helmets are going over to hard
shells. That is a tacit admission that soft shell
helmets grip the road and induce torsional neck
injuries.


Back in the day (first non-leather helmets in the 1970's to 199x
something), almost all [1] bicycle helmets had hard shells. I still
have a Kiwi helmet with a shell that is about 4mm thick (and the helmet
has a mass of 420g).

[1] Even the SkidLidâ„¢ had a hard covering:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/SkidLid_01.gif.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731°N, 83.985007°W
I am a vehicular cyclist.

On 8/7/2011 3:50 PM, Peter Cole wrote:

Maybe you haven't been following:

http://bikeportland.org/2010/09/14/p...xes-work-39441

But this was actual research, from an accredited university. In the
world of hearsay, this has no credibility. He heard that the boxes don't
work, and that settles it. "I heard" is much more credible than an
actual study!

On 8/7/2011 5:29 PM, Peter Cole wrote:
On 8/7/2011 11:22 AM, "T°m Sherm@n" wrote:
On 8/7/2011 8:10 AM, Peter Cole wrote:
On 8/7/2011 12:12 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
[...]
I agree with reduced speed limits in any place where a pedestrian or
cyclist could be expected to be traveling.

I would assume by that you mean the only exception would be limited
access highways. I think that exception should be obvious and not
particularly relevant to dense urban areas.[...]

The problem with controlled access roads in dense urban areas is too
much access. Get rid of the interchanges in the cities, and it would
make it much quicker to traverse them on the way to one's destination.


Except for those coming and going from the city, the very reason those
highways were built in the first place.

I'm sure that Boston is typical, with the exception that the Atlantic
Ocean limits our Easterly options, in that originally highways developed
in a "hub & spoke" pattern to bring workers to urban jobs from suburban
residences, following and extending streetcar lines. In recent decades,
demographics have changed, with many employers relocating to the suburbs
and many residents relocating to the city. The former phenomenon creates
a lot of suburb to suburb commutes, sometimes served by "beltways"
circling the city, but many such commutes have the shortest path through
the city. That particular commuting pattern defies an easy solution.
Urban residents being understandably intolerant of elevated expressways
blighting their expensive real estate, the only vehicular solution is to
bury them, something Boston recently did partially at a truly horrific
cost. Not a generic solution in the "new economy".

A rational and equitable policy would be to discourage "through
commutes" as they provide no benefit to either urban residents or
workers and they make poor use of precious urban space. Not
surprisingly, that is the exact opposite of your recommendation.

I would be fine with re-routing the controlled access roads to the
periphery or beyond and eliminating many that currently go through the
urban core. The key would be to limit exchanges, since otherwise urban
sprawl develops around them.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731°N, 83.985007°W
I am a vehicular cyclist.

On 8/7/2011 5:42 PM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per "T°m ":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XihQeZpwqpE&feature=player_embedded.

YAOD

Yet Another Organ Donor.

Pity if a nice bike got trashed.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731°N, 83.985007°W
I am a vehicular cyclist.