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What do you do?
I am in a discussion on a Cycling Campaign list at the moment and when I
said that cycling was not dangerous one of the members responded: "This is the mistake of taking casualty figures as a measure of danger (that Mayer Hillman is always criticising). It's like the situation of the road crossing for pedestrians that is so dangerous, no-one ever goes there, so there are no casualties. It is apparently safe, because it is so dangerous. This is exactly the situation with cycling for the social groups who are almost unrepresented amongst cyclists. They make a correct judgement of the high level of danger that cycling on the roads presents to them, therefore they don't do it, therefore they don't add to the casualty figures. It's fairly safe for most of the people who do it, because people can judge their own capabilities. But this situation limits cycling, like skydiving or mountaineering, to a small subset of the population. This is serious because cycling is so socially and economically useful, unlike those other activities." What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling? -- Tony "...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate..." Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
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#2
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#3
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What do you do?
On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 09:31:12 +0000, Tony Raven wrote:
I am in a discussion on a Cycling Campaign list at the moment and when I said that cycling was not dangerous one of the members responded: "This is the mistake of taking casualty figures as a measure of danger (that Mayer Hillman is always criticising). It's like the situation of the road crossing for pedestrians that is so dangerous, no-one ever goes there, so there are no casualties. It is apparently safe, because it is so dangerous. This is exactly the situation with cycling for the social groups who are almost unrepresented amongst cyclists. They make a correct judgement of the high level of danger that cycling on the roads presents to them, therefore they don't do it, therefore they don't add to the casualty figures. It's fairly safe for most of the people who do it, because people can judge their own capabilities. But this situation limits cycling, like skydiving or mountaineering, to a small subset of the population. This is serious because cycling is so socially and economically useful, unlike those other activities." What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling? Well, you'd need to come up with a convincing counter-hypothesis. To some degree he must be correct. There are some people who are so unobservant/distracted/uncoordinated that they are not safe to cycle and realise that (probably at some subconscious level)*. Thus they don't cycle and thus they don't add to cycling casualties. The important question is: Is the size of that group statistically significant? I suspect not, but you can't just point to what he says and deny it without some evidence. *Just as there are a lot of car drivers similarly challenged that don't realise it |
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Tony Raven typed
What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling? Don't worry; I live with the bloke! He doesn't go to cycle campaign meetings as they clash with something else! My views are different... -- Helen D. Vecht: Edgware. |
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Helen Deborah Vecht wrote on 03/02/2007 14:31 +0100:
Tony Raven typed What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling? Don't worry; I live with the bloke! He doesn't go to cycle campaign meetings as they clash with something else! My views are different... I'd better be careful not to interfere in domestic harmony by enquiring further. -- Tony "...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate..." Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
#8
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What do you do?
"Tony Raven" wrote in message ... I am in a discussion on a Cycling Campaign list at the moment and when I said that cycling was not dangerous one of the members responded: [snip] It's fairly safe for most of the people who do it, because people can judge their own capabilities. But this situation limits cycling, like skydiving or mountaineering, to a small subset of the population. This is serious because cycling is so socially and economically useful, unlike those other activities." What do you do when shroud wavers like this are campaigning for cycling? Well Yiddish has a word for someone who is generically accident prone - a klutz. Klutzes are probably at risk riding a bike, but then, they leave a trail of accidents whatever they are doing I don't think your dangerizers are thinking about the generic klutzes, though. Let's invent a new acronym, SAK -specific activity klutzes - which in this case means people who only become klutzes when they get on a bike. It's the hypothesis of the dangerizers that eh SAKs can recognize their SAKhood before they ever got on a bike. I think the SAK hypothesis goes with believing that there is nothing that can, or perhaps even should, be taught or learned about riding a bike. If you don't actually fall off your bike too often, you "know how to ride a bike". Demanding more knowledge, or more skill, is "elitist" and therefore evil. We obviously need a word that's the opposite of elitist here. I will use "stupidist", until somebody coins a better word (There surely must be a better word) People who teach bike courses think that makes their graduates safer. I think that almost every eight year old should and could learn up to level 2 of the new British standards, and every eleven year old could and should learn up to level three. I think that would increase the amount of cycling course graduates do, would greatly reduce the likelihood of course graduates having accidents, and that this would show up in accident rate statistics. I think that those who disagree with me should be prepared to say what proportion of the population can or can't learn the skills on the list for each cycling standard, what effect on safety the knowledge of each of the skills has, and whether other skills should also be on the least, teachable or unreachable John Forester thinks experience and training teach cyclists to avoid accidents - at least four out of five accidents are avoidable, he thinks. He discusses this in Effective Cycling (6th ed, p 271) and Bicycle Transportation (1977 ed, p60) Somewhere I've seen the statistic that for cyclists who ride over 1000 miles per year the annual risk of accidents is a bout the same, no matter what their mileage. In other words, after the thousandth mile, each extra mile carries no extra risk whatsoever. If anyone can give me a reference for this I would appreciate it. Jeremy parker |
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Jeremy Parker wrote on 03/02/2007 15:09 +0100:
John Forester thinks experience and training teach cyclists to avoid accidents - at least four out of five accidents are avoidable, he thinks. He discusses this in Effective Cycling (6th ed, p 271) and Bicycle Transportation (1977 ed, p60) Somewhere I've seen the statistic that for cyclists who ride over 1000 miles per year the annual risk of accidents is a bout the same, no matter what their mileage. In other words, after the thousandth mile, each extra mile carries no extra risk whatsoever. If anyone can give me a reference for this I would appreciate it. To support that Kaplan (and Moritz) found that CTC members had one eighth the accident rate of the general college level adult population. So perhaps the best thing the Government could do to cut cyclist accidents is to give everyone CTC membership ;-^) -- Tony "...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate..." Douglas Adams; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
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