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HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.



 
 
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  #121  
Old May 21st 19, 04:26 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
SMS
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On 5/19/2019 6:56 AM, Duane wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, May 18, 2019 at 8:55:35 PM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:

I wouldn't assign ulterior motives to people who feel very uncomfortable
riding around traffic.


+1. There are some roads that are objectively dangerous to ride on. We
have several such going out of town. On the worst of these dangerous
roads, there are trucks thundering along this narrow country road in both
directions at maximum permitted speed, and a hard shoulder 12in wide at
best, disappearing totally in some places. I've been on it, and it's an
unpleasant ride with trucks thundering 18in max from your shoulders. You
can't take the lane either, because there won't be enough space for the
truck behind you to slow to your speed, and he can't pass you in the
opposite lane because trucks are thundering towards him in that lane. I
refused to ride on it with the police superintendent for this area, and a
while later he was killed cycling on that road. Think on it: who should
know the safe roads better than the police superintendent?

There are some places it simply isn't smart to ride a bicycle. Morons
like Krygowski screeching "Danger! Danger!" and "Take the lane!" don't
help; instead they leave the impression that cyclists are a bunch of
reckless idiots antisocially endangering other people's lives by their
insistence on riding where the speed differential is simply too large and
the traffic too heavy and the sightlines for drivers too short.

In any event, cyclists always have other choices, recreational cyclists
admittedly more than commuters. A bus driver spoke to me at the
supermarket about a four-seasons commuter on one of his routes, a very
narrow twisty road with many unsighted corners, asking me to speak to the
fellow about the danger. I did, and he said, "I'm on that road because
all the bus drivers and motor commuters know me and look out for me. The
only alternative is the main drag to the city--" he watched me shudder
"--and the road past the airport." That bit left me speechless, not a
common occurrence. I've been on both the roads he rejected, and the only
safe way to go on them is in huge convoys of cycles, as on for instance
charity rides, with several big SUVs spaced out behind to break the speed
of the normal motor traffic. On one such ride I joined, the organisers
thought five ambulances necessary, and I couldn't help wondering what
Franki-boy would say to them. I also heard insurance was hell to get,
with some insurers simply refusing even to quote.

The small country road the town's premier bicycle-commuter considers
"safer", we cross and recross on many small country lane rides. At one
point on an otherwise really good workout ride in pretty surroundings on
smooth roads with almost zero traffic, you need to ride for a couple of
hundred yards on it, and somebody never fails to have a tense moment with
a car or a truck on it even in those couple of hundred yards because we
enter just after a blind corner, and the cars are travelling at a speed
that makes it difficult for them to slow to our speed, and there's no
shoulder so perforce we're in the lane, or already in the middle of the
road because we want to turn across the oncoming traffic (coming around
another unsighted corner; some who're otherwise keen just won't ride with
us if the route will take us onto that road. At several times of the day,
even just crossing that road, what with its many blind hills and blind
corners, on the country lanes that cross it, can take ten minutes before
there's a break in the traffic long enough to cross.

There's another ride, on an even smaller country road, but fast and
wide-sweeping so that cars can see you a long way off and slow
appropriately, which requires one to be on the dangerous road (the one
the admirable commuter prefers to even more dangerous roads) only for
about fifty yards before one of our small lanes turns off it, but we go
there only on Sundays when everyone else is in church (this is a Catholic
country, still) because those 50 yards lie between two black spots (a
black spot is the scene of regular automobile accidents, because the road
is intrinsically dangerous, and the road authorities put up warning
boards with a black spot on them).

It may sound like I'd better ride intervals around my orchard, but in
fact the majority of miles around here are on small, safe lanes**, all of
them tarmac-topped. Since we're recreational riders, we don't mind
mapping routes that keep us off the six dangerous roads out of town*.
It's not worth the stress of going on them. I ran into an old pedalpal
with whom I'd lost contact and he reminisced about how thirty years ago
we used to go on three of those six roads (the other three were already
too dangerous) after dinner in the summer, returning at about midnight
when it was pitch dark, with only the inadequate bicycle lamps of the
period, because there was almost no traffic and what there was proceeded
at a reasonable speed, about half the rate they drive at today; he went
out on one of those roads in broad daylight the other day and in less
than three miles experienced so many close passes of trucks and cars that
he turned off the main road and continued on the lanes. He said, "I'm
cycling for my heart. Man, I was praying for Baxter's Bridge to come up
so I could get the **** out of that Death Rally. I don't need that
stress." I understand how he feels. A favourite downhill ride of mine
ends on that road only a few hundred yards from town, but rather than
ride on that road, I turn around and slog back up the hill and go home
the long, hard but stressless way (or at least, via my HRM, in control of the stress).

The point I'm trying to make is that if you choose your routes well, the
usual amount of common sense and alertness an adult should possess will
keep you safe and make your rides a joy rather than a chore. There is no
need to force your way in where you're not wanted by people going about
their business at speeds you cannot and don't want to achieve.

Andre Jute
Some places "taking the lane" is a suicide note

*Beside one of which a few years ago a wooden cross was planted in memory
of one "John Forester". It's a road on part of which cyclists who want to
live "take the ditch", which is three feet wide, only a foot deep, and
paved, quite pleasant really in dry weather. Makes one wonder whether the
memorial is for that John Forester.

**Doesn't mean you don't need to take care; you had better: a schoolboy
was killed on his bike on one of my favourite downhills when at the
bottom of the hill he met an oncoming car whose driver never saw him
around the curve until it was far too late.



I’ll +1 your +1.


Oh jeez, something Jute wrote actually made sense.
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  #122  
Old May 21st 19, 04:29 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
JBeattie
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 4:10:56 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/20/2019 5:07 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Tom, statistically, you did not have any of your head injuries. They were imagined...


IOW: "Math is HARD!!!"



It's not math. It's statistics -- where two plus two may equal four, depending on who you are. Large population studies say little or nothing about the risks encountered by individual cyclists in particular areas or engaging in specific types of cycling. Tom is an example -- as are most of my cohorts. It doesn't take a math genius to recognize that lumping together the accident rates of NYC bike messengers and Sun City retirees is going to create a combined rate that is not accurate for either group.

-- Jay Beattie.


  #123  
Old May 21st 19, 04:37 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
SMS
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On 5/20/2019 8:16 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Mon, 20 May 2019 07:24:18 +0700, John B.
wrote:

After some consideration I realized that if the U.S. would simply ban
all bicycles there would be a savings of ~750 lives a year and prevent
an almost unimaginable number of injuries.


I was told that the State of New York proposed doing exactly that.

The Mohawk-Hudson Wheelmen's goverment-relations committee is said to
have been organized after a legislator came to a bike-club meeting to
tell them about the new law that was going to solve all their
problems.


But if you want to take things completely out of context, as the "Danger
Danger" crowd constantly does, you have to consider that those former
cyclists will now be driving or walking. Far more people die in
automobile accidents, or while walking, than die in cycling accidents.

You just have to ignore the relative numbers of people engaging in each
mode of transport for the statistics to prove your point, but doing so
is just a minor annoyance.

  #124  
Old May 21st 19, 04:47 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
SMS
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On 5/21/2019 8:29 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 4:10:56 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/20/2019 5:07 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Tom, statistically, you did not have any of your head injuries. They were imagined...


IOW: "Math is HARD!!!"



It's not math. It's statistics -- where two plus two may equal four, depending on who you are. Large population studies say little or nothing about the risks encountered by individual cyclists in particular areas or engaging in specific types of cycling. Tom is an example -- as are most of my cohorts. It doesn't take a math genius to recognize that lumping together the accident rates of NYC bike messengers and Sun City retirees is going to create a combined rate that is not accurate for either group.


Duh, of course it's not accurate. That's exactly why the "Danger Danger"
crowd does it.
  #125  
Old May 21st 19, 05:08 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Tom Kunich[_5_]
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 8:24:55 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 5/19/2019 6:56 AM, Duane wrote:

snip

Maybe he’d prefer if you talked about the percentage of cyclists who died
cycling compared to the percentage of people that sleep in beds who died
falling out of beds. Not that I think either activity is very dangerous
but this nonsense is getting boring.


It is boring, but the only way the "Danger Danger" crowd, can argue is
by taking things completely out of context. Comparing cycling to
sleeping in a bed, gardening, etc., and attempting to draw conclusions
from statistical differences in injury rates simply proves just how
incredibly weak their logic is.

No one that believes that wearing a helmet is a good idea is claiming
that riding a bike is exceptionally dangerous, nor is anyone claiming
that a helmet eliminates all chance of any head injury.


I agree with you. They had another rant on TV this morning about how children must wear helmets.

In 1922 I think 1700 people were killed by tornadoes. In 2011 553 were. There is danger everywhere. Hell, in 2015 176 people died from floods in the US alone. Do you suppose they should pass flood control laws? NYC passed gun control laws so stringent that people cannot legally own a firearm - the death rate ROSE. Did that clue the council in that perhaps legal guns are used for self protection? No, they passed knife control laws.
  #126  
Old May 21st 19, 09:45 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On 5/21/2019 11:24 AM, sms wrote:

No one that believes that wearing a helmet is a good idea is claiming
that riding a bike is exceptionally dangerous...


Oh really?

Not even the people who claim "I would have been killed three times if I
weren't wearing a helmet"?

Not even the people who claim you can die from just toppling over while
riding slowly in your own driveway?

Not even the people who go on and on about 800 bike deaths per year, but
never compare it to the number of deaths from other causes?

Not even the people who say car tires must never be allowed to touch the
same pavement bike tires ride on?

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #127  
Old May 21st 19, 10:07 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On 5/21/2019 11:29 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 4:10:56 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/20/2019 5:07 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Tom, statistically, you did not have any of your head injuries. They were imagined...


IOW: "Math is HARD!!!"



It's not math. It's statistics -- where two plus two may equal four, depending on who you are. Large population studies say little or nothing about the risks encountered by individual cyclists in particular areas or engaging in specific types of cycling. Tom is an example -- as are most of my cohorts. It doesn't take a math genius to recognize that lumping together the accident rates of NYC bike messengers and Sun City retirees is going to create a combined rate that is not accurate for either group.


Jay, that has nothing to do with your quip "Tom, statistically, you did
not have any of your head injuries."

Obviously, that's not what the statistics say. But unfortunately, there
are plenty of people who seriously engage in your logical fallacy. One
way it's been expressed is "Yes, there may be only one bike fatality per
ten million miles ridden. BUT WHAT IF THAT ONE IS _YOU_??"

And regarding large population studies: It's true that every large
population has its probability distribution, usually a bell curve. And
there are certainly individuals out on each tail end of each bell curve
- the good end and the bad end.

But that does not mean the studies say "little or nothing" about
individual risks. Unless the individual is riding his bike off the roof
of a skyscraper, his individual values are best thought of as
modifications of the mean value. One individual will very likely be
within two standard deviations of the mean. He's very unlikely to be
more than three standard deviations away from the mean. Or in other
words, almost everybody is almost average.

Above all, if a person chooses situations and behaviors that are well
within his skills and capabilities, he can place himself further on the
"good" side of that bell curve. If he takes excessive risks, he places
himself further toward the "bad" side.

An individual with a large number of crashes almost certainly didn't get
those because statistics failed. It's because one way or other, his
choices were bad.


--
- Frank Krygowski
  #128  
Old May 22nd 19, 03:11 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Andre Jute[_2_]
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

Oh dear. When did you last get anything right, Franki-boy?

On Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 10:07:39 PM UTC+1, Frank Krygowski wrote:

An individual with a large number of crashes almost certainly didn't get
those because statistics failed.


No, no, no! Statistics don't fail. Statistics are an inanimate concept for mathematically determining from a relevant sample or compilation of cases the likelihood of a random event happening to any individual in a given universe in a particular time period. Statistics can therefore fail as little as any kind of math can fail -- ask yourself, does the math fail when a student fails to grasp Timoshenko's meaning, or is it merely the student who fails? Here, let me help you: It is not the math that fails, it is the foolish people who apply the math that fail. You give multiple samples every year, Krygowski, of really dull, commonplace ways in which the less bright among us can contaminate even simple statistics. But that never means the statistics have failed, only that you have failed to grasp what statistics can and cannot do, and because you have no relevant experience of handling statistics, you invariably go beyond what the math really describes into the bee-space in your bonnet.

It's because one way or other, his choices were bad.


No, no, no! Jesus Christ, how thick can you be? This is a novice conceptual error. Statistics are random, and have already taken into account the fact some people are accident-prone. You cannot now come and say, "Yes, but an exception must be made for the accident prone, or the drunk, or anybody I, the Great Frank Krygowski, don't like."

Then we have this prize idiocy:
But unfortunately, there
are plenty of people who seriously engage in your logical fallacy. One
way it's been expressed is "Yes, there may be only one bike fatality per
ten million miles ridden. BUT WHAT IF THAT ONE IS _YOU_??"


Once more, dear friends, into the breach of Krygowski"s endless, malignant, mindlessly stubborn stupidity. That is exactly what statistics do: they tell you a likelihood that a randomly chosen member of the cycling universe will, in the particular case under discussion here, be killed on his bicycle -- and by logical extension they tell you that you may be that random fatality. The greatest, all-embracing law in physics is that chaos prevails, that events, if you measure enough of them, are random, which for the individual biped mean they can happen to him, but Krygowski, who claims to be an engineer, doesn't understand the implications of what (if he's around 70) he was no doubt taught.

BTW, the smartest thing Krygowski ever said was his complaint that we talk only of fatalities. There are of course things a bicyclist can do to avoid becoming a statistic, but let's not pretend that his fate is entirely in his own hands when it is actually in the hands of the motorist texting his husband (see how intersectional I am? -- next Krygowski will become pregnant), the cell phone here being the deus ex machine of randomness. And do let's finish with the fatalities before we turn away to less serious injuries, because Krygowski still refuses to discuss the New York compilation of injuries and fatalities over a period of years tending* to show that between a third and half of national US bicycle fatalities can be avoided by a mandatory helmet law. That's a serious policy consideration even for a lightweight pol like Scharfie -- and it is a proper use of statistics. It leads to the frightening question: "What if you're one of the 300 odd bicyclists dying *unnecesarily* on American roads because clowns like Krygowski zealously hate helmets and abuse statistics to get their way?"

Andre Jute
The problem that all but the best engineers have with statistics is that it is an art form deceptively dressed in the outer respectability of mathematics, and so appears to be something they can understand. It isn't. For railroad minds, at best statistics is a troll, at worst a roadmap to ridicule.

* Notice the form of words I choose. This is not because I'm a weasel -- when a professional wordsmith of my experience weasels, you'll feel no pain -- but because years of thinking about the meaning of statistics in a milieu where a single mistake could cost hundreds of millions (not to mention your extremely rewarding job) powerfully inclines me to cautious spreads rather than easily attacked hard stands. You can distinguish the brainier engineers among the anti-MHL forces by their caution with the results of statistical studies -- and you can equally distinguish the incompetents and those in the grip of a beestung passion by the hard and fast rules they extract from threadbare statistics, when everyone else with the slightest experience grasps that a trend line can change direction.
  #129  
Old May 22nd 19, 09:49 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
JBeattie
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 2:07:39 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/21/2019 11:29 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 4:10:56 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/20/2019 5:07 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Tom, statistically, you did not have any of your head injuries. They were imagined...

IOW: "Math is HARD!!!"



It's not math. It's statistics -- where two plus two may equal four, depending on who you are. Large population studies say little or nothing about the risks encountered by individual cyclists in particular areas or engaging in specific types of cycling. Tom is an example -- as are most of my cohorts. It doesn't take a math genius to recognize that lumping together the accident rates of NYC bike messengers and Sun City retirees is going to create a combined rate that is not accurate for either group.


Jay, that has nothing to do with your quip "Tom, statistically, you did
not have any of your head injuries."

Obviously, that's not what the statistics say. But unfortunately, there
are plenty of people who seriously engage in your logical fallacy. One
way it's been expressed is "Yes, there may be only one bike fatality per
ten million miles ridden. BUT WHAT IF THAT ONE IS _YOU_??"


What logical fallacy? Your statistics are so blunt, its like saying that a man has a one in 1,000 chance of getting ovarian cancer because that is the national statistic.

And regarding large population studies: It's true that every large
population has its probability distribution, usually a bell curve. And
there are certainly individuals out on each tail end of each bell curve
- the good end and the bad end.

But that does not mean the studies say "little or nothing" about
individual risks. Unless the individual is riding his bike off the roof
of a skyscraper, his individual values are best thought of as
modifications of the mean value. One individual will very likely be
within two standard deviations of the mean. He's very unlikely to be
more than three standard deviations away from the mean. Or in other
words, almost everybody is almost average.


My lifetime mileage is approaching 300,000 miles which is a multiple of standard deviations above the norm and yet you would put me in the same cohort as the once-a-year beach-bike cruiser at the local resort.

Above all, if a person chooses situations and behaviors that are well
within his skills and capabilities, he can place himself further on the
"good" side of that bell curve. If he takes excessive risks, he places
himself further toward the "bad" side.

An individual with a large number of crashes almost certainly didn't get
those because statistics failed. It's because one way or other, his
choices were bad.


Thank god you're not a doctor -- you'd ignore family history, work exposure and every other relevant factor in predicting whether a particular patient was at risk for a specific disease.

All the world is not the same, and everyone in the world is not exposed to the same risks. For example, most of the pedestrian deaths in Portland happened on a handful of roads. You are at risk crossing those roads -- more so than crossing any other roads in Portland. You're crazy to ignore the specific circumstances under which others ride, walk, sleep, garden, etc.


-- Jay Beattie.



  #130  
Old May 23rd 19, 12:43 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Default HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING? DEPENDS ON WHICH NUMBERS YOU EMPHASISE.

On 5/22/2019 4:49 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 2:07:39 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/21/2019 11:29 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 4:10:56 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/20/2019 5:07 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Tom, statistically, you did not have any of your head injuries. They were imagined...

IOW: "Math is HARD!!!"


It's not math. It's statistics -- where two plus two may equal four, depending on who you are. Large population studies say little or nothing about the risks encountered by individual cyclists in particular areas or engaging in specific types of cycling. Tom is an example -- as are most of my cohorts. It doesn't take a math genius to recognize that lumping together the accident rates of NYC bike messengers and Sun City retirees is going to create a combined rate that is not accurate for either group.


Jay, that has nothing to do with your quip "Tom, statistically, you did
not have any of your head injuries."

Obviously, that's not what the statistics say. But unfortunately, there
are plenty of people who seriously engage in your logical fallacy. One
way it's been expressed is "Yes, there may be only one bike fatality per
ten million miles ridden. BUT WHAT IF THAT ONE IS _YOU_??"


What logical fallacy?


The same one that leads millions of people to waste billions of dollars
on lottery tickets. "It doesn't matter if the odds are hundreds of
millions to one against me. What if _I_ win?"

The same one that leads people to shun vaccinations for their kids. "The
scientists have numbers claiming vaccinations don't cause autism, but
what if they're wrong about _MY_ kid?"

It's the belief that every individual is totally unique, and that large
population data can say nothing about any person's chances of any
occurrence.

Who's on the other side of this debate? Medical science, for one - with
large medicine trials that confirm that medicine A is beneficial; and
with other trials that show that medicine B is no better than a placebo.
They do this by testing large numbers of patients; and the assumption is
that the next patient won't be miraculously different. He'll probably
respond about the same way.

Insurance companies are also on the side of statistics. They take in
billions of dollars betting against the idea that everyone is absolutely
unique. They know that there are individual differences; but they bet
heavily on aggregate data. Of course some individuals fall far enough
outside the norm to cost the insurance folks money; but the vast
majority of their customers meet their predictions well enough to ensure
healthy profits.

Your statistics are so blunt, its like saying that a man has a one in 1,000 chance of getting ovarian cancer because that is the national statistic.


Of course, you have to choose the applicable data for the proper cohort.
(Although, weirdly enough, we're now in an age where gender is
purportedly a matter of opinion!)


And regarding large population studies: It's true that every large
population has its probability distribution, usually a bell curve. And
there are certainly individuals out on each tail end of each bell curve
- the good end and the bad end.

But that does not mean the studies say "little or nothing" about
individual risks. Unless the individual is riding his bike off the roof
of a skyscraper, his individual values are best thought of as
modifications of the mean value. One individual will very likely be
within two standard deviations of the mean. He's very unlikely to be
more than three standard deviations away from the mean. Or in other
words, almost everybody is almost average.


My lifetime mileage is approaching 300,000 miles which is a multiple of standard deviations above the norm and yet you would put me in the same cohort as the once-a-year beach-bike cruiser at the local resort.


Somewhere upthread, we were talking about your individual crashes or
injuries, which you proclaimed to be many.

Your lifetime mileage is extremely impressive. It would be interesting
to take your personal injury count, divide by your lifetime mileage, and
see how far you lie outside the available averages - recognizing that
the "average" data is very rough.

Frankly, what I'd expect is that you (and most other super-dedicated
riders) would have much lower per-mile crash rates than average. FWIW,
Forester claimed this in one of his books.

But it depends. Danny MacAskill also has tons of mileage; but I'm sure
he has tons of crashes. (He actually does ride his bike off rooftops.)
And I've known avid riders who gave it up because they had too many
crashes. Extreme risk takers and extremely clumsy people must be a big
part of the "bad" tail of the bell curve.

Above all, if a person chooses situations and behaviors that are well
within his skills and capabilities, he can place himself further on the
"good" side of that bell curve. If he takes excessive risks, he places
himself further toward the "bad" side.

An individual with a large number of crashes almost certainly didn't get
those because statistics failed. It's because one way or other, his
choices were bad.


Thank god you're not a doctor -- you'd ignore family history, work exposure and every other relevant factor in predicting whether a particular patient was at risk for a specific disease.

All the world is not the same, and everyone in the world is not exposed to the same risks. For example, most of the pedestrian deaths in Portland happened on a handful of roads. You are at risk crossing those roads -- more so than crossing any other roads in Portland. You're crazy to ignore the specific circumstances under which others ride, walk, sleep, garden, etc.


I'm not ignoring them. But I'm saying almost everyone is almost average.
That's true within any properly selected cohort.

If someone's experience falls far outside the norm for his cohort, then
something very strange is happening; or perhaps there's been some
mis-measurement.

Here's a specific example: The best data available (from several
sources) estimates that there are about ten million miles ridden in the
U.S. between bike deaths. (Actually more, but that round number will
suffice.) And the best data I could find said about 45% of those were
actually caused by TBI. Some others claim a higher TBI percentage,
although the "75%" claim seems imaginary.

So, again using very round numbers, there are probably at least 15
million miles ridden between bicycling TBI deaths. Yet I've recently
read a claim "My helmets saved my life three times!"

What's the most rational conclusion? Seems to me one possibility is that
person is an ASTONISHINGLY bad rider, way out beyond the 99.9999th
percentile. Or much more likely, that person is flat out wrong - that
none of the three head impacts would have killed him, despite his
heartfelt belief.

IOW, I don't think the people who make that claim or very similar claims
are really that far outside the norm.

And - "Completely separate issue" warning! - I think it's still true
that in most incidents when a bicyclist falls, he (or she) made a
mistake. They could have avoided it if they had done things differently,
including shunning a risk that was outside their capability at the moment.


--
- Frank Krygowski
 




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