Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009

On 11/19/2010 12:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 18, 5:30 pm, wrote:

So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents the
statisticians don't know or care about. How comforting.

Last night, I read through the article on Portland bike commuter
injuries: Hoffman, Lambert et.al., _Bicycle Commuter Injury
Prevention_, Journal of Trauma, V 69 No 5 Nov 2010.

It does just what James likes: It attempts to inflate the "Danger!"
impression attached to cycling by diligently capturing every tiny
injury, no matter how slight, that any bicyclist in its study
population received in an entire year.

James is saying that using only fatalities and not other cycling
injuries is skewing the data if the data is used to determine whether
cycling is dangerous. Are you disagreeing with that?

Accusing him of trying to inflate the danger and then phrasing it
as "diligently capturing every tiny injury ..." is irritating.

On 11/19/2010 11:39 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 18, 11:26 pm, wrote:

We only get about 4 cyclists dead in Victoria per annum. Using those
statistics to say cycling is not potentially dangerous, or to identify
what are most dangerous scenarios is pointless.

IOW:

You mean in your other words.

"Cyclist fatalities are incredibly rare. Therefore we can't use
cyclist fatalities to pretend that cycling is very dangerous.

"So to advance our effort to pretend that cycling is extremely
dangerous, we'll have to use other injuries. Hmm... Maybe we can use
"serious" injuries, and define those as "any injury that the person
(or his mommie) takes to the doctor. We can imply that each one of
those is likely to ruin someone's life. With a little luck, we can
conflate skinned knees with broken legs, and get a bigger grant for
our next study!"

Why not ask the OP what his suggestion is instead of assigning
one to him that is so ridiculous?

On Nov 19, 10:46*am, Duane Hébert wrote:

Accusing him .... *is irritating.

But then, Frank has little to say that is NOT irritating.
DR

On Nov 20, 3:39*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 18, 11:26*pm, James wrote:



We only get about 4 cyclists dead in Victoria per annum. *Using those
statistics to say cycling is not potentially dangerous, or to identify
what are most dangerous scenarios is pointless.

IOW:

"Cyclist fatalities are incredibly rare. *Therefore we can't use
cyclist fatalities to pretend that cycling is very dangerous.

I said _potentially_ dangerous or to identify what are most dangerous
scenarios. You are putting your own antihelmetarian spin on what I
didn't say for your purpose.

"So to advance our effort to pretend that cycling is extremely
dangerous, we'll have to use other injuries. *Hmm... Maybe we can use
"serious" injuries, and define those as "any injury that the person
(or his mommie) takes to the doctor. *We can imply that each one of
those is likely to ruin someone's life. With a little luck, we can
conflate skinned knees with broken legs, and get a bigger grant for
our next study!"

I didn't say that. Frank Krygowski is telling lies again.

JS.

On Nov 19, 3:42*pm, James wrote:
On Nov 20, 3:39*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On Nov 18, 11:26*pm, James wrote:

We only get about 4 cyclists dead in Victoria per annum. *Using those
statistics to say cycling is not potentially dangerous, or to identify
what are most dangerous scenarios is pointless.

IOW:

"Cyclist fatalities are incredibly rare. *Therefore we can't use
cyclist fatalities to pretend that cycling is very dangerous.

I said _potentially_ dangerous or to identify what are most dangerous
scenarios. *You are putting your own antihelmetarian spin on what I
didn't say for your purpose.

"So to advance our effort to pretend that cycling is extremely
dangerous, we'll have to use other injuries. *Hmm... Maybe we can use
"serious" injuries, and define those as "any injury that the person
(or his mommie) takes to the doctor. *We can imply that each one of
those is likely to ruin someone's life. With a little luck, we can
conflate skinned knees with broken legs, and get a bigger grant for
our next study!"

I didn't say that. *Frank Krygowski is telling lies again.

JS.

James, it should be obvious that I wasn't seriously quoting you. But
that's certainly the direction you were going - looking harder to find
bad news about bicycling.

You're not alone. It's naive to think that there is not a large
collection of people who profit, one way or another, from portraying
cycling as dangerous.

In some cases, the profit is monetary, coming from sales of their
"safety" products, from getting a badly needed publication in some
journal or other (thus avoiding the "perish" part of "publish or
perish"), from getting grant funds to study the "problem," from
getting consultants fees for dreaming up solutions to the "problem,"
etc.

In other cases, the profit is not monetary, but psychological. There
are many who have a psychological need to save others, whether from
eternal damnation, from moral vices, or from dangers that may shorten
their lives - whether that vice is eating the wrong food, or not using
sunscreen, or (horrors!) riding a bicycle.

The first step in saving those poor souls is to convince them of the
error of their ways. And that's done by explaining the terrible
consequences. That's what the authors of that article were doing -
looking very hard to find _some_ terrible consequences. It couldn't
be deaths, there weren't enough. It couldn't even be ER visits - not
enough of those either. So it was "Any tiny injury at all." Or "Any
injury that a medical person looked at," which were ludicrously termed
"serious."

I think you've aligned yourself with those authors, by your admission
that there are almost no bike fatalities in your area, so you want to
look for lesser injuries. You want to show - somehow - that cycling
really is dangerous.

I admit, I've got my own motives. I get satisfaction out of promoting
cycling. And I get satisfaction out of fixing ignorance, especially
by using correct data. Therefore, it may be that you and I will never
really agree on these issues.

- Frank Krygowski

On Nov 19, 3:44*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:

There
are many who have a psychological need to save others, whether from
eternal damnation, from moral vices, or from dangers that may shorten
their lives - whether that vice is eating the wrong food, or not using
sunscreen, or (horrors!) riding a bicycle.

Then conceded :

I admit, I've got my own motives. *I get satisfaction out of promoting
cycling. *And I get satisfaction out of fixing ignorance, especially
by using correct data. *

Excellent self analysis.

On Nov 20, 9:44*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 19, 3:42*pm, James wrote:



On Nov 20, 3:39*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On Nov 18, 11:26*pm, James wrote:

We only get about 4 cyclists dead in Victoria per annum. *Using those
statistics to say cycling is not potentially dangerous, or to identify
what are most dangerous scenarios is pointless.

IOW:

"Cyclist fatalities are incredibly rare. *Therefore we can't use
cyclist fatalities to pretend that cycling is very dangerous.

I said _potentially_ dangerous or to identify what are most dangerous
scenarios. *You are putting your own antihelmetarian spin on what I
didn't say for your purpose.

"So to advance our effort to pretend that cycling is extremely
dangerous, we'll have to use other injuries. *Hmm... Maybe we can use
"serious" injuries, and define those as "any injury that the person
(or his mommie) takes to the doctor. *We can imply that each one of
those is likely to ruin someone's life. With a little luck, we can
conflate skinned knees with broken legs, and get a bigger grant for
our next study!"

I didn't say that. *Frank Krygowski is telling lies again.

JS.

James, it should be obvious that I wasn't seriously quoting you. *But
that's certainly the direction you were going - looking harder to find
bad news about bicycling.

No, wrong again. I'm interested in why there is an overwhelming
interest in dead cyclists while the seriously injured ones are not so
interesting. It is obvious that it makes the statisticians job
harder, however the conditions under which an accident occurs,
regardless of the outcome, may be more insightful.

You're not alone. *It's naive to think that there is not a large
collection of people who profit, one way or another, from portraying
cycling as dangerous.

How do I profit?

If you are not a little bit savvy or if you are very unlucky, cycling
can be very dangerous, indeed life threatening. Luckily we are mostly
savvy enough that we mostly stay safe. There are still the unlucky
ones.

In some cases, the profit is monetary, coming from sales of their
"safety" products, from getting a badly needed publication in some
journal or other (thus avoiding the "perish" part of "publish or
perish"), from getting grant funds to study the "problem," from
getting consultants fees for dreaming up solutions to the "problem,"
etc.

If the problem exists that motorists need better education, don't you
think it's worth pursuing?

I think you've aligned yourself with those authors, by your admission
that there are almost no bike fatalities in your area, so you want to
look for lesser injuries. *You want to show - somehow - that cycling
really is dangerous.

snip

Wrong again. I want to know what accidents happened and how they
could be avoided or reduced. You really don't need to go off the deep
end with your antihelmetarianisms.

James.

On Nov 19, 11:20*pm, DirtRoadie wrote:
On Nov 19, 3:44*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:

There
are many who have a psychological need to save others, whether from
eternal damnation, from moral vices, or from dangers that may shorten
their lives - whether that vice is eating the wrong food, or not using
sunscreen, or (horrors!) riding a bicycle.

Then conceded :

I admit, I've got my own motives. *I get satisfaction out of promoting
cycling. *And I get satisfaction out of fixing ignorance, especially
by using correct data. *

Excellent self analysis.

If only it were true. I was horrorstruck that Krygowski, who has been
repeatedly exposed by everyone here as lying about the data, can now
claim he's 'using correct data' without at least half a dozen people
pointing it out.

Frank Krygowski lies and lies and lies. So what else is new?

Andre Jute
Hold the map the other way round, Krygo; you got it upside down.

On Nov 19, 6:28*pm, Andre Jute wrote:
On Nov 19, 11:20*pm, DirtRoadie wrote:

On Nov 19, 3:44*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:

There
are many who have a psychological need to save others, whether from
eternal damnation, from moral vices, or from dangers that may shorten
their lives - whether that vice is eating the wrong food, or not using
sunscreen, or (horrors!) riding a bicycle.

Then conceded :

I admit, I've got my own motives. *I get satisfaction out of promoting
cycling. *And I get satisfaction out of fixing ignorance, especially
by using correct data. *

Excellent self analysis.

If only it were true. I was horrorstruck that Krygowski, who has been
repeatedly exposed by everyone here as lying about the data, can now
claim he's 'using correct data' without at least half a dozen people
pointing it out.

Frank Krygowski lies and lies and lies. So what else is new?

No disagreement here except that it may be harsh to call his words
"lies" when his delusions are very real to him.
I did not think his laughable reference to his "fixing ignorance" and
using "correct data" required any further explanation.
But Frank's own words regarding the "psychological" disorders of
others illustrate that he suffers from (and admits) having similar
delusions and the same "disorder" that he describes.

DR

On Nov 16, 11:27*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 16, 11:01*pm, James wrote:

On Nov 17, 2:33*pm, Phil H wrote:

The
most common manner of collision is when a driver strikes a cyclist
from behind"

What the ~!?

Calling Frank Krygowski to the terminal...

(He just loves to write about what he calls "fear from the rear".
According to Frank, we shouldn't be concerned at all that we might be
hit from behind.)

Hits from the rear are responsible for a large percentage of cyclist
fatalities. *But cyclist fatalities are extremely rare. *(There were
not even 700 in all the U.S. in 2009, if I recall correctly, compared
with over 4000 pedestrians, and tens of thousands of motor vehicle
occupants.) *In the US, there are at _least_ 8 million miles ridden
between bike fatalities.

The vast majority of bike crashes or wrecks are caused by something
you see in front of you, not behind you. *Most common causes of bike
crashes are simple road hazards - things like gravel, potholes,
slippery stuff, cracks that swallow wheels, etc. *After that, there
are cars that turn left in front of you (left in the US), cars that
right hook you, cars that pull out of stop signs or driveways, car
doors that open in front of you. *There are a surprising number of
bike-bike crashes, too.

If you worry about the minuscule chance of being killed from behind,
and therefore spend a lot of time gazing into your rear view mirror,
you're almost certainly _more_ likely to get into a wreck from a left
cross, a right hook, a door, a pull-out, a pothole, a slippery spot,
or even a dog.

- Frank Krygowski

Riding on sidewalks is an excellent way to reduce those "unwanted
events."

The number of bicylists in Pearland, Texas has really increased due to
the job and economy.

We have a bike lane in the downtown area, but I usually use the
sidewalks during the going to/coming home
time of the day.

Bicylists get to see all kinds of interesting things and there are
financial payoffs.

Some items I have found in dumpsters include:

Fully functional P-4 system to replace my old P-3.
(Just had to fabricate a front cover.)

Bike rack that mounts on most any car.

I am currently cold-calling in my job search.
I lock up my bike, and try every store.

Have a great day,
Andy

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