Saw an intelligent bicyclist today

Brent P wrote:

That said, there's nothing new in this thread for me and I'm done.

Nothing new indeed!

Someone who can discount a list of studies in Australia, UK,
Sweden, Denmark, Germany and something like 40 US states as
"MADD propaganda" because they disagree with his speed is
irrelevant to accident rates dogma clearly isn't capable of
recognizing anything new.

Bye flashflash.


SMH

wrote:
On Mar 3, 10:28 pm, Stephen Harding wrote:

snip

But I drive a mixed agenda. I drive 138 miles each way most weekends
during the summer in my 16 mpg Dodge half ton, V-8, 4WD pickup truck
mostly on I-90, I-195 and Rt 146 (RI/MA). These are all divided
highways. I try to save a little gas, which I can do at under 65 mph,
but I also want to get to where I'm going or home again. Sometimes I
might drive close to 75mph and just accept the 15mpg penalty.


15MPG penalty for a 10-15MPH speed differential? No way. Perhaps
what you mean is you get 15MPG @ 75MPH, and are able to squeeze
18-20MPG if you drive 60ish. That's a 3-5MPG penalty, not a 15MPG
penalty. Again, your knowledge is showing.

I meant 15mpg at 75 and 16 at 60. Actually a range of about a 2 mpg
penalty.

I can only dream of a 5 mpg advantage!


SMH

wrote:
On Mar 3, 10:48 pm, Stephen Harding wrote:

wrote:

On Mar 3, 4:31 pm, Stephen Harding wrote:

wrote:

On Mar 3, 11:36 am, wrote:

On Mar 2, 6:26 pm, Nate Nagel wrote:

I feel more at risk of having my car dented by my local cyclists than I
do by other motorists, and that's saying a lot because the drivers
around here suck.

That statement is proof of the extreme fantasies a motorhead will
indulge in! It's absolutely ludicrous!

If you can prove me wrong, do it. Give me data about, say, the volume
of body shop work caused by bicyclists, versus caused by motorists.

- Frank Krygowski

That wouldn't be a fair way of measuring. Much of the damage done to
cars by bikes is of the hit & run variety. It could be they kicked
the car and split, they just refused to exchange info, or a million
other circumstances. When your car is damaged by another car there is
usually insurance involved, accident reports filed, etc. If you hit
my *truck* (just playing with you Frank) with your car and damage a
panel, there's a fairly good chance I'll use some or all of the
insurance money to repair the truck. If a bicycle hits my truck, the
only way for it to be repaired on the offender's dime is if they stop
and give me their info willingly, if they're so injured they need
medical attention, or an officer happens to witness it and apprehend
the cyclist. Two of those three circumstances seem quite unlikely.
The exception, the cyclist being so injured they need medical
attention, is likely to somehow cause me a bunch of headache even if
they were at fault.

So do you believe this situation is so pervasive, that bicycle
damage to cars actually does exceed that from other motor vehicles?

No, I believe the "data" frank requested to "prove" him wrong was
blatantly biased, unfair, and not a quality example. I believe that's
what I typed. Where did you see the suggestion that I believe
bicycle to car damage exceeds car to car damage?

The apparent implication that all the hit and run bicyclist damage
might be greater than damage to cars than by other cars.


I never implied that bicycle-car damage is greater than car-car
damage. I simply stated that franks example was biased.



The hit-and-run bicycle scenario seemed a stretch.


Really? So in your experience if a bicycle hits your car and damages
it you would assume they're going to willfully stop, provide you with
their information and willingly pay for the damage to your vehicle?
And you're in MA? Wow...

I personally know many cyclists who will not hesitate to put an SPD
(bike shoe clip device, metal) into a car that is crowding them off
the road and endangering them. I know one of them *very* well. Ride
regularly in MA and you will encounter that situation. I don't know a
single one that will sit around and provide the damaged vehicle's
owner with contact info.

I don't know. I glanced off the side view mirror of a pickup truck
and waited for the owner to ensure no damage (there wasn't any).

I'm not so naive to believe every bicyclist would do this but I don't
know what percentage would bolt.

I was merely saying the "stretch" was that hit-and-run bicyclists
would cause any significant damage to cars compared with other cars.


SMH

wrote:
On Mar 3, 10:45 pm, Stephen Harding wrote:

On the Pike, they're parking themselves in the left lane and moving
as fast as they can appears to be de rigeur.

But then, MA drivers as a group are not exactly noted for good driving
technique.


On this we agree. Unfortunately, based on your posts here, I have a
feeling you're part of the group causing that stereotype.

Of course you do.

I'm keeping you from your desired speed because I
won't get out of your way fast enough.


SMH

On Mar 4, 12:44 pm, Ed Pirrero wrote:
On Mar 4, 9:01 am, wrote:



On Mar 4, 11:45 am, Ed Pirrero wrote:

On Mar 3, 6:27 pm, Stephen Harding wrote:

Says a person who doesn't believe in "speed kills" statistics?
(Or am I confusing you with a myriad of others?)

That's right, I don't. For a very good reason - the data don't
support it.

Speeds are higher on the German Autobahn, yet fatalities per mile are
lower. Hmmm.

Are you a person who pretends there is no other difference between
German driving and American driving? IOW, that American driving skill
equals that of Germans? If so, your thinking is extremely
simplistic. Other car fans have recently argued the opposite point,
very strongly.

Your position is weak if it relies on a straw man.

Speeds have been going up on U.S. highways for the past three decades,
yet fatality statistics are trending down

I think Stephen's data was much more complete than your simple
assertion.

Faltalities for VMT are down, even as speeds go up. If speed kills,
where's the carnage?

Furthermore, have you accounted for the environmental
differences caused by improved medical skills and techniques in the
past three decades? If nothing had changed at all but the invention
of CAT scans - for just _one_ example - the fatality statistics would
still be trending down.

Nothing happens in a vacuum, Frank. The old saw of "speed kils" is
just not true.

"Speed kills" is a lie.

And so is the concept of kinetic energy, I suppose?

Nice straw man.

Logic, much?

E.P.

Nice post, Ed! Several unsupported assertions, a couple false calls
of "straw man" (you must not know the definition of that term!), no
real response to any of the points I made, and trimming and ignoring
the data presented in a citation.

The final "logic much?" was unintended irony at its best!

- Frank Krygowski

On Mar 4, 2:21*pm, Stephen Harding wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 3, 10:45 pm, Stephen Harding wrote:

On the Pike, they're parking themselves in the left lane and moving
as fast as they can appears to be de rigeur.

But then, MA drivers as a group are not exactly noted for good driving
technique.

On this we agree. *Unfortunately, based on your posts here, I have a
feeling you're part of the group causing that stereotype.

Of course you do.

I'm keeping you from your desired speed because I
won't get out of your way fast enough.

SMH

Actually, you drive faster than I do on unobstructed MA highways. I
do, however, believe you're keeping others from their desired speed in
a MFFY fashion. We've both posted our highway travel speeds in this
thread, and yours are higher. Not that there's anything wrong with
that, mind you, and you certainly won't be held up by *me* in the
passing lane.

If you ever do manage to hold me up, it'll be if you're part of the
mass exodus to NH that happens every Friday, or the return mess on
Sundays. In that case I'll be expecting the highways to be full of
the inconsiderate types mentioned here, and I'll be taking back roads
home. I prefer not to sit stopped in traffic with my EZ Pass in hand,
within sight of 3 empty EZ pass lanes and unable to get to them. The
reason I can't get to them is because of all the idiots trying to cut
across multiple lanes of traffic to a faster (rarely is faster) line,
effectively blocking all the EZ pass lanes. The people who are
willing to block those lanes to try to cut into a different cash line
instead of staying in the lane they were in when the traffic stopped
are probably the same people who drove there in the left lane on
cruise control at whatever speed they felt was as fast as anyone
should be going. Heck, average speed during these weekend migrations
is usually well below the SL due to sheer volume alone anyway.

On Mar 4, 1:04*pm, Stephen Harding wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 3, 10:28 pm, Stephen Harding wrote:

snip

But I drive a mixed agenda. *I drive 138 miles each way most weekends
during the summer in my 16 mpg Dodge half ton, V-8, 4WD pickup truck
mostly on I-90, I-195 and Rt 146 (RI/MA). *These are all divided
highways. *I try to save a little gas, which I can do at under 65 mph,
but I also want to get to where I'm going or home again. *Sometimes I
might drive close to 75mph and just accept the 15mpg penalty.

15MPG penalty for a 10-15MPH speed differential? *No way. *Perhaps
what you mean is you get 15MPG @ 75MPH, and are able to squeeze
18-20MPG if you drive 60ish. *That's a 3-5MPG penalty, not a 15MPG
penalty. *Again, your knowledge is showing.

I meant 15mpg at 75 and 16 at 60. *Actually a range of about a 2 mpg
penalty.

I can only dream of a 5 mpg advantage!

SMH- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Drive 45 with your tailgate down.

Ed Pirrero wrote:

In almost all cases, when the 55 NMSL was repealed and the states set
higher speed limits, fatalities went down.

How incredibly strange.

"Speed kills" is a lie.

Fatality rates have indeed declined due to better cars. We
know this because the accident rates have NOT gone down. They
went up after 1992 when the 55 mph national speed limit was totally
abandoned (1987 was limited release from the 55 speed law) and
continue to rise.

So we have two processes working against one another: more cars on
the road making for more possibility of accidents; and safer cars
keeping fatalities down (and thus decreased fatality rates).

See
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/portal/nhts.../TSF2006FE.pdf
Figure 1.

So I guess "speed kills" is more an indirect relation.

Speed merely increases the likelihood of an accident while the
safety features of your car keep you out of the fatality column.

Given the correlation between accident rates and severity of
accidents with speed, we would expect even lower fatalities if
speeds were reduced to some point that isn't too much lower than
the mean speed of what people will actually drive, since we know
accident rates will climb again at too low a speed limit.


SMH

In article 7s2zj.2416$VS2.1076@trndny05,
Stephen Harding wrote:
Ed Pirrero wrote:
On Mar 3, 11:48 am, (Matthew T. Russotto)
wrote:

Wrong again. More than half were drivers in single vehicle crashes.

Hey - Frank never lets *facts* get in the way of a good rant. Unless
he can use them to try and obfuscate the issue.

Says a person who doesn't believe in "speed kills" statistics?
(Or am I confusing you with a myriad of others?)

According to NHTSA 2006 statistics
(http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/portal/nhts...PDF/810837.pdf
page 32; updated Jan 2008) about 57% of accidents are single car accidents.

However, just because a crash is single vehicle doesn't mean only the
driver goes to motorist heaven (we'll presume he's already living
in driver Hell dealing with scofflaw bicyclists and drivers who don't
respect flashing headlights astern).

There's a concept called "the passenger".

In 2006, there were 38,588 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United
States, killing a total of 42,642 people. Of those, 22,627 were
drivers in single-vehicle collisions.
--
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but certain accounting practices can
result in a fully-depreciated one.

Ed Pirrero wrote:
On Mar 3, 6:34 pm, Stephen Harding wrote:

I'm not asking the person to do 50! I'm only asking for the
period of time it take me to complete my pass that the car
back off on his desired speed.

But you shouldn't have to change yours. What makes you special, that
the world should bow to YOUR desires, and noboy elses' desires are
important?

Explain the contradiction, if you will. I'd love to hear your
rationale.

I guess I'd have to flip your question around and say if you
expect no one to hinder your speed plans at all, you must never
cause anyone to slow or speed from their travel speed intentions
or you would be a hypocrite yourself, no?

So you never end up with a person behind you wanting to go
faster as you're passing someone? You are so skilled a driver
that the predicament never arises?

Then I don't believe you are of this driving world. You drive
idealic roadways with nice open spaces between cars and open
left lanes where everyone has dutifully swung right again after
the pass in perfect time for the car behind to pass without even
a feather touch of force lessened on the accelerator.

This sounds more like a military formation than a typical
heavily used public highway.

How about on the on-ramp with someone wanting to go faster?
Do you accelerate so as not to cause him any inconvenience
being stuck behind you until in lane on the highway? How
about the off ramps? Accelerate into it because someone behind
you might have to slow and that might be inconvenient?

On and off ramps are part of highway driving realities as much
as passing. Does your "thou shalt not hinder" driving paradigm
apply to those sections or is it only for passing situations?


SMH