Build it and they won't come

On Fri, 06 Oct 2017 08:04:31 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 10/5/2017 10:14 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:17:20 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/5/2017 8:48 AM, AMuzi wrote:


Indeed, Chicago[1] is among the most restrictive places in the country
for legal firearms, to the point of being in defiance of SCOTUS ever
since Otis McDonald in 2010. Not that criminals obey laws with much rigor.

http://heyjackass.com/
http://maggionews.com/

[1] surrounding suburbs being no better, Morton Grove notably

Right. Strict gun laws in a relatively small jurisdiction are not
particularly effective if all the surrounding territory has permissive
gun laws. If my village outlawed rapid fire guns, there would be no way
to stop people driving into the village with them.

So Australia didn't pass gun laws city by city. They did it for the
entire country. Ditto Canada, Britain, Netherlands, etc. etc. Now
compare firearm homicide rates.

But Australia is not a government of separate states that agreed to
work together to form a nation while carefully retaining their own
identities and laws. Australia is a single country.


Uh, sorta. Used to be five separate colonies. One
Commonwealth from 1901 but an actual sovereign state only
since 1986.

And the gun laws, the subject under discussion, was promulgated in
1996.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 6 Oct 2017 11:09:30 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/6/2017 1:00 AM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:14:07 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 10/5/2017 2:44 AM, John B. wrote:

But guns aside, just think of all the terrible things we could make go
away by just banning something. Why we could save ~1,000 lives just by
banning bicycles.

Wrong. The health and longevity benefits of bicycles are proven beyond
doubt. Banning bikes might lead to fewer deaths while riding (which,
BTW, haven't reached 1000 in the U.S. for many decades), but banning
bikes would lead to many more deaths overall.

I think that you should quantify your claim. I see the advantages of
bicycling touted as a healthy pastime but I can't remember ever seeing
any actual figures to justify the claim.

I've got several papers on the subject filed here. The _least_
optimistic was de Hartog, et. al., "Do The Benefits of Cycling Outweigh
the Risks?" Environmental Health Perspectives, v. 118 no.8, August 2010.
They estimated longevity benefits of cycling outweighed risks by 7 to
1 for Britain. Other papers assessed benefits vs. risks by other factors
(e.g. medical costs, years of life gained vs. lost, etc.) and came in at
18:1 benefit, 20:1 benefit, 77:1 benefit, etc. I'm not aware of any such
study that found a net detriment to bicycling. Not even close.


Are there actual facts to back up this? You know, something like a 5
year double blind study of, oh say, 5,000 participants? Something that
defines, again lets say, daily use, monthly and annual use versus no
use at all?

Or just someone smoking a cigar and wiggling his eyebrows and
repeating "bicycles are good for you"?



And I read that even in areas that have built special roads for
bicycles the actual use of bicycles is still very low. Thus what would
be the actual ratio between road deaths and lives saved?

By the way the '~' before a number is usually taken to mean "about",
"perhaps", estimated, or other non specific values

Understood. But the 11 year average count of U.S. bicycle fatalities is
about 717. 39% error is a bit much, especially when it crosses that
three digit psychological threshold.

Yup, and just think, if we averaged bicycle deaths over say 40 years
we could come up with even better numbers, couldn't we. 396.45 I think
it was.


High capacity, rapid-fire guns exist only for killing people, and are
especially useful for killing many people at once. They don't have a
great track record of stopping crimes. No civilian should be able to buy
that sort of gun.

(Note - Vegas was a country music concert in a state with super-liberal
gun laws, yet none of the hundreds of "good guys with guns" concert
goers saved the day. _Except_ for the cops.)

The problems with your assertions is that they are not really very
precise. What, for example is a "rapid-fire" Gun. With a manually
operated revolver Ed McGivern, on September 13, 1932, shooting five
rounds from a double-action revolver at 15 feet in 2/5 of a second,
and covering the group with his hand. More recently Bob Munden fired
12 rounds out of a manually operated revolver, with a reload, in 2.99
seconds.

Or "high capacity"? My grandfather used an 1894 Winchester in 38-55
that held 8 rounds and was considered to be a high capacity rifle when
he bought it. On the other hand the gun pods on the original C-47 gun
ships held 1,500 rounds.

Note that I did not say "rapid fire OR high capacity." I said "high
capacity, rapid-fire" implying AND instead of OR.

I have no problem with 8 rounds in a gun if, as I proposed, it can't
fire more than one round in five seconds. That's a rate that I think is
perfectly adequate for almost all hunting. If that's too slow for you,
let's discuss.

I'm trying to point out that gun laws can be rather complex. You say 1
round in 5 seconds and I'm telling you that thousands of target
shooters are required by the rules to fire 5 rounds in 10 seconds and
that anyone who participates in Skeet or Trap shooting competition has
to fire 2 round faster then that.

But I think it's obvious that a gun with more than (say) 8 rounds that
can all be fired in (say) one second is not designed for hunting or
target shooting.

Frank, Ed McGivern was shooting a Smith & Wesson revolver when he
fired five rounds in 2/5ths of a second. A good friend who also shot
on a base pistol team with me shot S & W revolvers which, except for
the addition of adjustable sights, were essentially the same as Ed
McGivern's guns.

And BTW, I think hunting and ordinary target shooting are fine. I know
there are whackos who "target shoot" in pretend combat scenarios. Those
guys need to either grow up or join the Marines.

Actually the "pretend combat scenario" shoots are a descendent of the
original Practical Police Course (PPC) matches designed to simulate
conditions that police might encounter :-)

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 6:13:02 PM UTC-7, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Fri, 06 Oct 2017 15:09:05 -0700, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-10-05 20:11, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 05 Oct 2017 09:23:57 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

However, even getting 1-5% of a city's population to do a larger
number of errands and other trips via bicycle it is very much worth
it in the grand theme of things. Despite some glass-half-empty guys
deriding it this is a respectable mode share for America. All those
people are much less likely to slurp $50k+ out of health care for a
quadruple bypass later.

$50k is dirt cheap for a quadruple bypass, probably more like $150K.
But I have no room to criticize, my biking accident back in May
slurped up about $190K by the time all was said and done (my total
out of pocket costs were about $15K).


Ouch! That must have been a major crash. Did you have a head-on
collision with a landing spacecraft?

No. There is a previous thread about this from some time in June. On
5/22/17 I had a head-on collision on a bike trail in a park with another
cyclist. I was descending, he was climbing; we probably had a combined
speed of close to 35-40 mph. I'm 6'3" and 225-230 lbs, he was about my
height but leaner and more muscular and probably 30 years younger than
me. He might have been on a 29er. BTW, he was apparently pretty much
unharmed except for some scrapes and bruises, so good for him. One
banged up guy was enough.

In the collision my cricoid (part of the trachea, just below the larynx)
was fractured. There was also a lot of bruising, hematomas, etc.,
around my larynx and vocal cords which nearly closed off my airway. The
collision also left me bruised from crotch to ankle on my left leg
(looked like his front tire rolled right up my leg), my right thigh had
a large contusion and I have various cuts and abrasions. I didn't hit my
head, but the near-instantaneous stop gave me a probable concussion. It
even affected my eyes, peeling the vitreous humor from my retinas (which
happens anyway with age, so it probably just finished the job; my vision
is unchanged). "Polytrauma" was the general diagnosis.

I spent 4 1/2 days in ICU, sedated with a breathing tube in. I don't
remember any of that, even the trial wake-ups they do. There were many
CT scans, an MRI or two, lab tests, X-rays, specialists, etc. I
developed atrial fibrillation for a day or two (have had that before)
and had a tracheostomy done the Friday after the accident. They woke me
up the next day. Went to the step-down unit a day and a half after
that, where I spent about 4 1/2 days also. The tracheostomy came out
after being in place for 5 days, on the 31st. I went to an acute rehab
unit a couple days after than and went home about 2 hours shy of 2 weeks
after getting to the ER. I was out of work for three more weeks with
lots of outpatent PT/OT/speech.

The end result is that I am back to what passes for normal. Everyone on
my care team told me I recovered really fast but it seemed really slow
to me! They made a point of saying that my good recovery was due to
having been an active, pretty fit guy and that the outcome would
probably have been much different if I was 2 pack smoker, heavy drinker,
diabetic with underlying heart disease. So there's a case to be made
that bicycling regularly helped save health care dollars and resulted in
a better recovery. My insurance company will probably never make a net
profit on me, though, even if I never cost them another dollar between
now and qualifying for Medicare.

And I am very grateful. While my out of pocket costs were almost 4
months of income, the overall price would have been twice as high
without the insurance company's discounts-by-fiat, had I been without
insurance and paying cash. I would have been utterly bankrupted- would
have lost my savings, my house, etc. My insurance company paid up
without demur.

Now, I have a very conservative personal fiscal policy (my wife has a
different word for that) and had savings to cover the out-of-pocket
costs. Most Americans, however, can't come up with $500 cash in the
face of an urgent expense. For a half century the median income has not
kept up with the cost of living in the US, especially housing. While
productivity per capita is at an all time high, the benefits of that
have gone into the pockets of a tiny, tiny minority and have not been
shared with the people doing the production. There are a lot of
ecomonic reasons for that, but they boil down to the psychological truth
of greed.

Wow. I had no idea how bad it was. You could have lost your airway altogether and been DOA. I hope you're all healed and up and getting a few miles before the weather turns to sh**.

-- Jay Beattie.

On Fri, 6 Oct 2017 11:13:46 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/6/2017 1:16 AM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:29:48 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/5/2017 3:58 AM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 01:38:14 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/4/2017 9:37 PM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 4 Oct 2017 09:46:56 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/4/2017 8:58 AM, Duane wrote:


I don't have time to research this, but I expect that the majority of
nutcases that commit these kinds of crimes don't have criminal records.
This guy in Vegas didn't and in fact he was apparently able to purchase
all of these weapons legally.

IMO, nobody should be allowed to purchase guns that are obviously
designed for rapid killing of people. Even semi-automatics should be
outlawed. One shot in five seconds should be a limit. If a hunter can't
get a deer except by firing more than once every five seconds, he needs
to learn how to hunt.

Well, first of all it would be impractical. I can certainly fire two
shots in less then 5 seconds with a pump action shotgun. Watch a you
tube of someone shooting doubles at trap or Skeet. And, while I never
tried it I could probably shoot faster then 5 second shots with a
lever action rifle.

With a revolver I could, when I was shooting on a pistol team,
certainly fire 5 aimed shots in 10 seconds and shoot good groups at 25
yards, and I used to shoot with a State Policeman who could fire 5
rounds, reload and fire five more, with a revolver, in 10 seconds and
put all the shots in the "10 ring" at 7-1/2 yards.

I know some people can shoot fairly simple guns faster than one shot in
five seconds. But last time I shot a single action pistol, I don't think
I could have done it. And there's no reason that double action arms
couldn't be speed limited.

Frank one in 5 seconds is pretty slow in many cases. I can pedal a
bicycle at 100 rpm with no excessive effort. That is one revolution in
0.6 seconds.

Single action revolvers, the sort that you have to manually cock for
each shot, became obsolete with the Colt 1887 :-)


But I do agree with you that the Super Dooper Automatics with great
big magazines are of no social value but the problem is how to
restrict ownership.

Well, Australia pulled it off.


Actually they didn't. I understand that they did make gun ownership a
long and drawn out process but the basic requirements a

License Requirements:
18 years or over
Judged as a fit and proper person
Have undergone a firearms safety training course and;
Have provided documentation about the storage arrangements in
which they will secure the firearm.

Licences will not be granted to people:
Under the age of 18
Who have been convicted in the previous 10 years in the current or
another state/territory of an offence prescribed by the regulations
Is subject to an apprehended violence order or at any time in the
previous 10 years has been subject to an order (unless the order was
revoked), or;
Is subject to a Good Behaviour Bond to an offence prescribed by
the regulations

You will also need a Permit:

Before purchasing a firearm, people need to complete a Permit to
Acquire application, which carries a $30 fee.

There is a 28-day mandatory waiting period for a first-time
application. If the Permit to Acquire is granted, it is valid for 90
days.

A gun can be purchased from a licensed firearms dealer and a valid
Permit to Acquire must be presented to complete the sale.

According to the AIC, there are approximately 2.75 million registered
firearms in Australia and approximately 730,000 licensed owners.

On the llicit market, The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) estimates
there are approximately 250,000 longarms - such as rifles and shotguns
- in circulation and 10,000 illegal handguns.

From what I've read and from conversation with gun owning Australians
what they really did was put guns into several classes and specify who
can own what.

Your response baffles me. You list what Australia did, but you imply
that it didn't do that.


I think that you left out the last sentence in my post where I said
something like

"From what I've read and from conversation with gun owning Australians
what they really did was put guns into several classes and specify who
can own what."

Which seems to me pretty much what the U.S. has done".

The U.S. has not done enough of that. In some states, they've recently
worked to remove almost all restrictions.

If the U.S. did precisely what Australia did, mass shootings wouldn't be
frequent events.

But why should all gun owners be penalized because a tiny minority of
gun owners shoot a bunch of people?

After all Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer to kill 168 people... should
we outlaw fertilizer?

In July 2014 A man armed with a chainsaw rampaged through the Swiss
town of Schaffhausen on Monday, wounding five people... do we outlaw
chain saws?

In July 2016 Nineteen residents were killed in a knife attack at a
care centre for people with mental disabilities in the Japanese city
of Sagamihara, by a knife wielding 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu... do
we outlaw knives?

Or bicycles... after all some 700+ people die every year on
bicycles... while the Los Vegas shooter killed 58 people. So twelve
times the number of the of deaths in Los Vegas occur on bicycles...
every year...
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Fri, 06 Oct 2017 15:08:00 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-10-05 20:22, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 05 Oct 2017 07:34:14 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-10-04 19:03, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 04 Oct 2017 07:41:03 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-10-03 17:53, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 03 Oct 2017 16:33:40 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-10-03 12:34, jbeattie wrote:

[...]



There are other options. We could have invested the SS trust in the
market like Norway -- it now has $1T in its sovereign wealth fund
(from oil).
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01...n_4576887.html
But Norway is socialist and bad. Bad Norway, bad! You're too rich!


They are an oil-rich nation which makes it easy to amass wealth. Just
like Venezuela is except they didn't squander it through wanton socialism.

"wanton socialism"? Aren't you one of those that ague that the
"government" should spend millions of dollars to build bicycle paths
for a tiny percentage of the population?


IMO the best would be if we could build our own, like in Utah and other
places. And yes, when roads for cars are built one should rightfully
expect that cyclists are also served. If no road is built then no bike
path needs to be built. Everyone who rides MTB a lot knows this.

What "we"? The citizens of California? Or the bicycleing community?


We the people. It doesn't matter which state or country. The problem of
a lack of cycling infractructure or bad "solution" is almost universal,
maybe with the exception of the Netherlands and Denmark.


As for building roads to incorporate service for cyclists? You mean
because of the road tax that all the bicyclists pay?


They also pay taxes, not just because most also own cars but because
they have income. However, that is not the point. If a road or other
infrastructure is built and prevents safe cycling or walking the builder
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
of such infrastructure has an obligation to make sure nobody is being
cut off by it.

Of course it is the point. California has a gas tax which pays most of
their road costs. In fact wasn't there a recent increase, or plan to
increase, the tax to pay for the crappy roads in the state?

Do bicycles pay a gas tax?

Or to put it another way, if California levied a tax on bicycles to
pay their share of the public road uses would you be the first to
complain?


Read again what I wrote. I underlined the salient point. Do you really
not understand it or just pretend you don't?

Yes I understood it and wonder about your perception.

After all there are about 50,000 miles of interstate highways in the
U.S. which were apparently built with no thought to bicycles and
pedestrians.

The Germans, of course, were the first, I believe, with about 8,000
miles today. I've never been to Germany but from photos it appears
that bicyclists and pedestrians aren't welcome.
http://tinyurl.com/yaaype3g

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 7:15:04 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 6 Oct 2017 11:09:30 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/6/2017 1:00 AM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:14:07 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 10/5/2017 2:44 AM, John B. wrote:

But guns aside, just think of all the terrible things we could make go
away by just banning something. Why we could save ~1,000 lives just by
banning bicycles.

Wrong. The health and longevity benefits of bicycles are proven beyond
doubt. Banning bikes might lead to fewer deaths while riding (which,
BTW, haven't reached 1000 in the U.S. for many decades), but banning
bikes would lead to many more deaths overall.

I think that you should quantify your claim. I see the advantages of
bicycling touted as a healthy pastime but I can't remember ever seeing
any actual figures to justify the claim.

I've got several papers on the subject filed here. The _least_
optimistic was de Hartog, et. al., "Do The Benefits of Cycling Outweigh
the Risks?" Environmental Health Perspectives, v. 118 no.8, August 2010.
They estimated longevity benefits of cycling outweighed risks by 7 to
1 for Britain. Other papers assessed benefits vs. risks by other factors
(e.g. medical costs, years of life gained vs. lost, etc.) and came in at
18:1 benefit, 20:1 benefit, 77:1 benefit, etc. I'm not aware of any such
study that found a net detriment to bicycling. Not even close.


Are there actual facts to back up this? You know, something like a 5
year double blind study of, oh say, 5,000 participants? Something that
defines, again lets say, daily use, monthly and annual use versus no
use at all?

Or just someone smoking a cigar and wiggling his eyebrows and
repeating "bicycles are good for you"?



And I read that even in areas that have built special roads for
bicycles the actual use of bicycles is still very low. Thus what would
be the actual ratio between road deaths and lives saved?

By the way the '~' before a number is usually taken to mean "about",
"perhaps", estimated, or other non specific values

Understood. But the 11 year average count of U.S. bicycle fatalities is
about 717. 39% error is a bit much, especially when it crosses that
three digit psychological threshold.

Yup, and just think, if we averaged bicycle deaths over say 40 years
we could come up with even better numbers, couldn't we. 396.45 I think
it was.

After all of this I still have the heart rate and blood pressure of an 18 year old. I just don't have the maximum heart rate.

On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 7:53:05 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 06 Oct 2017 15:08:00 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-10-05 20:22, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 05 Oct 2017 07:34:14 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-10-04 19:03, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 04 Oct 2017 07:41:03 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-10-03 17:53, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 03 Oct 2017 16:33:40 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-10-03 12:34, jbeattie wrote:

[...]



There are other options. We could have invested the SS trust in the
market like Norway -- it now has $1T in its sovereign wealth fund
(from oil).
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01...n_4576887.html
But Norway is socialist and bad. Bad Norway, bad! You're too rich!


They are an oil-rich nation which makes it easy to amass wealth. Just
like Venezuela is except they didn't squander it through wanton socialism.

"wanton socialism"? Aren't you one of those that ague that the
"government" should spend millions of dollars to build bicycle paths
for a tiny percentage of the population?


IMO the best would be if we could build our own, like in Utah and other
places. And yes, when roads for cars are built one should rightfully
expect that cyclists are also served. If no road is built then no bike
path needs to be built. Everyone who rides MTB a lot knows this.

What "we"? The citizens of California? Or the bicycleing community?


We the people. It doesn't matter which state or country. The problem of
a lack of cycling infractructure or bad "solution" is almost universal,
maybe with the exception of the Netherlands and Denmark.


As for building roads to incorporate service for cyclists? You mean
because of the road tax that all the bicyclists pay?


They also pay taxes, not just because most also own cars but because
they have income. However, that is not the point. If a road or other
infrastructure is built and prevents safe cycling or walking the builder
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
of such infrastructure has an obligation to make sure nobody is being
cut off by it.

Of course it is the point. California has a gas tax which pays most of
their road costs. In fact wasn't there a recent increase, or plan to
increase, the tax to pay for the crappy roads in the state?

Do bicycles pay a gas tax?

Or to put it another way, if California levied a tax on bicycles to
pay their share of the public road uses would you be the first to
complain?


Read again what I wrote. I underlined the salient point. Do you really
not understand it or just pretend you don't?

Yes I understood it and wonder about your perception.

After all there are about 50,000 miles of interstate highways in the
U.S. which were apparently built with no thought to bicycles and
pedestrians.

The Germans, of course, were the first, I believe, with about 8,000
miles today. I've never been to Germany but from photos it appears
that bicyclists and pedestrians aren't welcome.
http://tinyurl.com/yaaype3g

Joerg has a valid complaint. There are long distances in this country where the only practical route is along Interstates upon which bicycles and pedestrians aren't allowed because there are no proper facilities for them.

I used to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and along where the freeway is now and turn off and ride down a rather steep hill into Sausalito that bypassed several of the rather dangerous areas that bicycles are forced to use presently.

As I explained - slightly more than half of the gas taxes are robbed by the Legislature for their own ideas even though the highway commission says that if they obtained 100% of the gas taxes it would still be insufficient for proper road maintenance.

On 10/6/2017 8:34 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 4:27:07 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-10-06 15:36, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 3:11:26 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-10-05 19:11, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 10/5/2017 8:32 PM, wrote:
On Thursday, October 5, 2017 at 5:19:06 PM UTC-7, Frank
Krygowski wrote:
On 10/5/2017 7:46 PM, Joerg wrote:

CA Highway Patrol would also and give you a ticket,

I haven't ridden in California for a while. I don't recall
ever riding a road with a bike lane there, but I rode narrow
roads without bike lanes. And I rode where I normally would -
that is, if the lane was narrow, I was close to the middle of
it. No tickets. (I've never gotten a ticket on a bike.)

Well since you haven't ridden in California "in awhile" perhaps
you shouldn't be so strident in your idiotic claims. In
California you are required to use a bike lane unless for some
reason it is impracticable.

Perhaps we'd better review, since you've already forgotten
important parts of the thread.

I avoided a bike lane yesterday because of debris. Joerg claimed
doing that would get me a ticket in California.

But California specifically lists avoiding debris as legal
justification for leaving a bike lane. I quoted the law.

Which part of that don't you understand?


What you don't understand is this: The debris is only as
inconveniencing as the cop says it is, _not_ as the cyclist sees
fit. Yeah, you can go to court and the judge will side with the
cop.

The chance of getting a ticket is low -- ...


It is, unless you just p....d off a cop by riding in the lane and
causing a traffic jam.


... and the chance is even lower
that the cop will show up in traffic court.


Mine did and the judge found wrong :-(


... I get out of bike lanes
all the time to avoid debris and other bikes -- in the presence of
cops. No tickets. The risk is imaginary.


I do the same. But this is not riding in the lane the whole time. Out
here, if you ride in the car lane while there is a bike lane and a cop
is irked by that he'll ticket you. Same in other states:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/284248-nyp...-in-bike-lane/

Yes, because he was not relying on an exception to the bike lane law, i.e. avoiding a hazard or passing another bicycle. We were talking about leaving the bike lane to avoid debris and not simply ignoring a bike lane. Don't keep moving the goal-post. The likelihood of getting a ticket for following the law is low or none. Like I said, I go around other cyclists and avoid debris every day in front of cops. I squeeze between stopped traffic and parked cars, in the door zone -- totally dangerous, but legal. I do it past cops. They don't ticket me. I ride lane center down the same road in morning traffic. They don't ticket me. All those things are legal. The cops know it. There is no giant cop conspiracy to bust you if you take the lane to avoid a hazard. Except in Cameron Park? (should have known).

Looks to me that Joerg tried to answer our challenge. He googled to find
incidents where riders in his area were ticketed for avoiding debris.

The best he could find was one rider ticketed for other reasons, almost
3000 miles away.

Nice try, Joerg.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 10/6/2017 10:15 PM, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 6 Oct 2017 11:09:30 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/6/2017 1:00 AM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:14:07 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 10/5/2017 2:44 AM, John B. wrote:

But guns aside, just think of all the terrible things we could make go
away by just banning something. Why we could save ~1,000 lives just by
banning bicycles.

Wrong. The health and longevity benefits of bicycles are proven beyond
doubt. Banning bikes might lead to fewer deaths while riding (which,
BTW, haven't reached 1000 in the U.S. for many decades), but banning
bikes would lead to many more deaths overall.

I think that you should quantify your claim. I see the advantages of
bicycling touted as a healthy pastime but I can't remember ever seeing
any actual figures to justify the claim.

I've got several papers on the subject filed here. The _least_
optimistic was de Hartog, et. al., "Do The Benefits of Cycling Outweigh
the Risks?" Environmental Health Perspectives, v. 118 no.8, August 2010.
They estimated longevity benefits of cycling outweighed risks by 7 to
1 for Britain. Other papers assessed benefits vs. risks by other factors
(e.g. medical costs, years of life gained vs. lost, etc.) and came in at
18:1 benefit, 20:1 benefit, 77:1 benefit, etc. I'm not aware of any such
study that found a net detriment to bicycling. Not even close.


Are there actual facts to back up this? You know, something like a 5
year double blind study of, oh say, 5,000 participants? Something that
defines, again lets say, daily use, monthly and annual use versus no
use at all?

Or just someone smoking a cigar and wiggling his eyebrows and
repeating "bicycles are good for you"?

No, it's not just an informal judgment. The methods, data and
computations differ markedly, but are quite technical and serious.
Despite the different methods, all yielded positive results for bicycling.

I gave you a citation for one of the papers. Why not get it and see?

High capacity, rapid-fire guns exist only for killing people, and are
especially useful for killing many people at once. They don't have a
great track record of stopping crimes. No civilian should be able to buy
that sort of gun.

(Note - Vegas was a country music concert in a state with super-liberal
gun laws, yet none of the hundreds of "good guys with guns" concert
goers saved the day. _Except_ for the cops.)

The problems with your assertions is that they are not really very
precise. What, for example is a "rapid-fire" Gun. With a manually
operated revolver Ed McGivern, on September 13, 1932, shooting five
rounds from a double-action revolver at 15 feet in 2/5 of a second,
and covering the group with his hand. More recently Bob Munden fired
12 rounds out of a manually operated revolver, with a reload, in 2.99
seconds.

Or "high capacity"? My grandfather used an 1894 Winchester in 38-55
that held 8 rounds and was considered to be a high capacity rifle when
he bought it. On the other hand the gun pods on the original C-47 gun
ships held 1,500 rounds.

Note that I did not say "rapid fire OR high capacity." I said "high
capacity, rapid-fire" implying AND instead of OR.

I have no problem with 8 rounds in a gun if, as I proposed, it can't
fire more than one round in five seconds. That's a rate that I think is
perfectly adequate for almost all hunting. If that's too slow for you,
let's discuss.

I'm trying to point out that gun laws can be rather complex. You say 1
round in 5 seconds and I'm telling you that thousands of target
shooters are required by the rules to fire 5 rounds in 10 seconds and
that anyone who participates in Skeet or Trap shooting competition has
to fire 2 round faster then that.

Bird hunting is precisely why I included the phrase "ALMOST all
hunting." Skeet and trap are essentially training for bird hunting. For
those, I'm certainly willing to allow two quick shotgun shots with a
bird load. That can be covered by my "let's discuss."

Those target shooters who are "required" to fire 5 rounds in 10 seconds
are playing a game. We can, and probably should, change the rules of
that game. What, really, are they practicing for?

But I think it's obvious that a gun with more than (say) 8 rounds that
can all be fired in (say) one second is not designed for hunting or
target shooting.

Frank, Ed McGivern was shooting a Smith & Wesson revolver when he
fired five rounds in 2/5ths of a second. A good friend who also shot
on a base pistol team with me shot S & W revolvers which, except for
the addition of adjustable sights, were essentially the same as Ed
McGivern's guns.

I know there are fast shooting specialists and quick draw specialists.
I'm not impressed; I don't think of those guys as heroes, the way gun
nuts do.

But if you want laws to give exceptions to these circus performers,
let's discuss. Personally, I'd be happier if they took up professional
juggling.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 10/6/2017 9:15 PM, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 6 Oct 2017 11:09:30 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/6/2017 1:00 AM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:14:07 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 10/5/2017 2:44 AM, John B. wrote:

But guns aside, just think of all the terrible things we could make go
away by just banning something. Why we could save ~1,000 lives just by
banning bicycles.

Wrong. The health and longevity benefits of bicycles are proven beyond
doubt. Banning bikes might lead to fewer deaths while riding (which,
BTW, haven't reached 1000 in the U.S. for many decades), but banning
bikes would lead to many more deaths overall.

I think that you should quantify your claim. I see the advantages of
bicycling touted as a healthy pastime but I can't remember ever seeing
any actual figures to justify the claim.

I've got several papers on the subject filed here. The _least_
optimistic was de Hartog, et. al., "Do The Benefits of Cycling Outweigh
the Risks?" Environmental Health Perspectives, v. 118 no.8, August 2010.
They estimated longevity benefits of cycling outweighed risks by 7 to
1 for Britain. Other papers assessed benefits vs. risks by other factors
(e.g. medical costs, years of life gained vs. lost, etc.) and came in at
18:1 benefit, 20:1 benefit, 77:1 benefit, etc. I'm not aware of any such
study that found a net detriment to bicycling. Not even close.


Are there actual facts to back up this? You know, something like a 5
year double blind study of, oh say, 5,000 participants? Something that
defines, again lets say, daily use, monthly and annual use versus no
use at all?

Or just someone smoking a cigar and wiggling his eyebrows and
repeating "bicycles are good for you"?
-snip-

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