Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009

On 11/23/2010 7:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

If you change your mind, try reading Pucher's paper, "Making Walking&
Cycling Safer: Lessons from Europe" that I've cited many times.
You'll love it because Pucher is both "Mr. Danger" and a facilities
fanatic. But you'll come across the data that he presents showing
walking over three times more dangerous than cycling per km.

What this means is, per km, you have a 3x chance of being fatally struck
by a motorist than when riding a bike. So? I guess the presumption is
that walking is acceptably safe so cycling must be more so. I contend
that both rates are unacceptably high.

On 11/23/2010 7:09 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 23, 5:19 pm, wrote:
On Nov 24, 8:46 am, Frank wrote:

Right! 10 killed in your area per year, so cycling is "dangerous."
In the US as a whole, we get maybe 700 cyclists killed in a year, so
people say it's "dangerous."

OTOH, we get about 3000 dying from drowning, yet people don't think of
swimming as being as dangerous as biking! When was the last time you
heard about a mandatory water wing law?

How many per hour of activity?
How many hours of swimming versus cycling?

http://www.vehicularcyclist.com/comparat.html

- Frank Krygowski

Which presume exposure rates, which are not given.

On 11/23/2010 10:01 PM, James wrote:
On Nov 24, 1:54 pm, someone called gibberish wrote:
On 11/23/2010 8:47 PM, SMS wrote:
[...]

I'd look at kids going to school's less than a mile from their homes,
since some kids walk, some ride their bicycles, and some are transported
in vehicles.[...]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080

A book about poor Irish folk?

Wrong thread?

JS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal:

"Swift has his proposer further degrade the Irish by using language
ordinarily reserved for animals. Lewis argues that the speaker uses "the
vocabulary of animal husbandry"[12] to describe the Irish. Once the
children have been commodified, Swift’s rhetoric can easily turn "people
into animals, then meat, and from meat, logically, into tonnage worth a
price per pound"."

Tom Sherman is obsessed with over-population. His "solutions" tend to be
simplistic and generally involve similar comparisons between humans and
livestock (e.g. parents are "breeders"). He does live in Iowa.

On 11/23/2010 10:54 PM, James wrote:
On Nov 24, 2:00 pm, Frank wrote:
On Nov 23, 8:18 pm, wrote:

Ok, Frank, for you cycling is all butterflies, rose petals and pots
full of gold at the ends of the rainbow.

It actually is a wonderful experience. I wouldn't have missed it for
the world.

I enjoy cycling as well.

You are in no danger at all.

Rather, I'm in negligible danger if I ride competently, which I do.

Are, the key word _competently_. Does that include watching for
motorists who fail to give way?

Obviously pedestrians are incompetent.

You admit there is danger there, but you take steps to mitigate. The
danger still exists though. The road is a dangerous place.

Wear a flower in your hair, and don't bother with a helmet.

I don't bother with a helmet, unless it's required for some organized
ride I want to do. But you can keep the flower.

I prefer to leave the flowers attached to the plants, they tend to
last longer that way, and around here I always wear a helmet, it's the
law.

Cycle all over the tram tracks in the wet, you won't fall off.

I know how to ride over tracks, wet or dry. That's part of
competence.

You see _competence_ comes into it again. That's all part of avoiding
dangerous situations and having an escape route.

Ride beside all the parked cars, no one will open a door in front of you.

Sorry, James, the joke isn't to post the _opposite_ of what I've
said. I've mentioned avoiding the door zone plenty of times.

But there's no danger - wait a minute, your _competence_ steers you
away from the parked cars. Hang on, how did you get all this
competence? You learned from mistakes or from listening to other
peoples advice and your own observations. Without competence the road
is a very very dangerous place. With competence it is a lot less
dangerous, but there is still danger. A momentary loss of
concentration, the sun or a bug in your eyes, a drunk driver coming
home from the pub, or just some asshole that doesn't like it that
you're on the road (yes we have those).

You can be carefree and cycle, all over the road if you like.

Pretty much! I do have a right to the road, you know! I share with
courtesy when it's safe to do so, which is part of competence, and of
course I use appropriate lanes for my destination; but I certainly
don't skulk in the gutter.

In this country motorists are obliged to allow a 1m gap when
overtaking cyclists. They often don't. Had a bus driver leave about
15cm (6") just the other day. I wasn't skulking anywhere. That's
another Frankism.

Pretend vehicles don't exist, they'll move out of your way anyhow.

That's silly. My bicycle is a vehicle, legally and practically. And
I get along fine with other vehicles and their operators.

You must live is some sort of utopian cycling nation.

Cycle in the middle of the road if you like, the motorists wont mind you
slowing them down at all.

I do _precisely_ that when I need to. And it works, because motorists
are NOT out to kill me! Very few even get annoyed, from what I can
tell. You should try it, instead of gutter skulking.

Again you assume I ride in the gutter. When did I say that I do
that? The way some motorists drive over here, they may as well be out
to kill me! It's only my _competence_ that keeps me out of harms way.

Cycling is safer than walking, see I have the statistics to prove it.

Good lad! You're learning!

Poor you.

With the necessary corrections, yes. Sorry you're so fearful,
instead.

A little fear now and again keeps you alive.

JS.

Don't waste your time. All you're going to get is vehicular cycling
"talking points", i.e. dogma.

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/07...cret-sect.html

On 11/23/2010 7:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

snip
I'll try to simplify for you.

You asked "Are you surprised that people question that?"

I said "I'm not at all surprised."

That was where I answered your question - just before you said "You
didn't answer my question." I can't think of a simpler way to explain
that I did, indeed, answer your question.

You lump it into a response about people questioning
cycling safety.
What I want to know is whether you actually think that
cycling is safer than walking and whether you notice that
people think that's crazy.

My point is
that no one is going to think that cycling is less dangerous
than walking.

Of course. Unless they look at data, that is. And we both know that
few people want to bother with that, right? You've certainly
resisted.

Here you answer my question. You do actually believe that.
When your stats show you something so bizarre, you should
question them instead of waving that result as a banner.

If you change your mind, try reading Pucher's paper, "Making Walking&
Cycling Safer: Lessons from Europe" that I've cited many times.
You'll love it because Pucher is both "Mr. Danger" and a facilities
fanatic. But you'll come across the data that he presents showing
walking over three times more dangerous than cycling per km.

Will people believe it? Probably no. People have lots of erroneous
beliefs. One of them is that bicycling is deadly. I think we should
work to overcome that false belief.

So people who think that walking is not more dangerous than cycling
do so because they think that cycling is deadly? Nothing to do
with relative speeds, locations etc. etc. etc.?

You don't
want to do any study, you don't think it's useful, and you're
certainly not adding any value!

Then don't respond.

Sometimes my responses are not actually written for the person to whom
I'm responding. I'm aware that others read these threads, and may
learn even if the person posting does not.

In other cases, I hope to convince the poster to actually look up some
facts and learn. Occasionally it works.

Maybe you should question your own facts. Perhaps talk to one
of the stats profs where you teach. Preferably in the math department
and not the marketing department.

You clearly take the outliers (deaths by cycling) as your argument,
stating that this is because the statistics available aren't good
enough otherwise and then challenge someone who disagrees with this
to find better stats or shut up. A bit circular in your reasoning
don't you think?

But don't bother responding.

On 11/23/2010 7:09 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 23, 5:19 pm, wrote:
On Nov 24, 8:46 am, Frank wrote:

Right! 10 killed in your area per year, so cycling is "dangerous."
In the US as a whole, we get maybe 700 cyclists killed in a year, so
people say it's "dangerous."

OTOH, we get about 3000 dying from drowning, yet people don't think of
swimming as being as dangerous as biking! When was the last time you
heard about a mandatory water wing law?

How many per hour of activity?
How many hours of swimming versus cycling?

http://www.vehicularcyclist.com/comparat.html

What does "estimates of fatal risk" mean? Aren't these
percentages based on cases?

At any rate, don't bother with smoke detectors in the
home. Less people die from residential fires than cycling
and cycling is totally without danger.

On 11/23/2010 7:34 PM, James wrote:
On Nov 24, 11:09 am, Frank wrote:
On Nov 23, 5:19 pm, wrote:

On Nov 24, 8:46 am, Frank wrote:

Right! 10 killed in your area per year, so cycling is "dangerous."
In the US as a whole, we get maybe 700 cyclists killed in a year, so
people say it's "dangerous."

OTOH, we get about 3000 dying from drowning, yet people don't think of
swimming as being as dangerous as biking! When was the last time you
heard about a mandatory water wing law?

How many per hour of activity?
How many hours of swimming versus cycling?

http://www.vehicularcyclist.com/comparat.html

Apparently passenger cars are twice as deadly as bicycles, however
I've received far more injuries from bicycling than driving, and I
drive for a similar number of hours as I cycle each week.

Statistically impossible.

BTW, most sane people think that driving is pretty damn dangerous.
If cycling is in fact half that dangerous something should be done.
Again, broken stats that don't make sense.

On 11/24/2010 7:17 AM, Peter Cole wrote:
On 11/23/2010 7:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

If you change your mind, try reading Pucher's paper, "Making Walking&
Cycling Safer: Lessons from Europe" that I've cited many times.
You'll love it because Pucher is both "Mr. Danger" and a facilities
fanatic. But you'll come across the data that he presents showing
walking over three times more dangerous than cycling per km.

What this means is, per km, you have a 3x chance of being fatally struck
by a motorist than when riding a bike. So? I guess the presumption is
that walking is acceptably safe so cycling must be more so. I contend
that both rates are unacceptably high.

Especially given that they are both more dangerous than
riding in a car.

On 11/24/2010 5:21 AM, Duane Hébert wrote:
On 11/23/2010 7:09 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 23, 5:19 pm, wrote:
On Nov 24, 8:46 am, Frank wrote:

Right! 10 killed in your area per year, so cycling is "dangerous."
In the US as a whole, we get maybe 700 cyclists killed in a year, so
people say it's "dangerous."

OTOH, we get about 3000 dying from drowning, yet people don't think of
swimming as being as dangerous as biking! When was the last time you
heard about a mandatory water wing law?

How many per hour of activity?
How many hours of swimming versus cycling?

http://www.vehicularcyclist.com/comparat.html

What does "estimates of fatal risk" mean? Aren't these
percentages based on cases?

At any rate, don't bother with smoke detectors in the
home. Less people die from residential fires than cycling
and cycling is totally without danger.

One thing you can be sure of is that for anything you read at
vehicularcyclist.com, the opposite is actually true. It's a treasure
trove of junk science and statistics.

On 11/24/2010 4:38 AM, Peter Cole wrote:

Tom Sherman is obsessed with over-population. His "solutions" tend to be
simplistic and generally involve similar comparisons between humans and
livestock (e.g. parents are "breeders"). He does live in Iowa.

Ironically, in pats of the world, the problem is that couples are not
having enough children (Japan, Western Europe, Russia, Singapore). This
leads to a declining population and the need for countries to import
labor from third world countries, which leads to social problems. It
also leads to an insufficient number of high wage earners contributing
to programs like Social Security.

At one time Germany was considering collecting higher retirement taxes
from childless individuals because their failure to "breed" was helping
to make the retirement system insolvent.