The Age: If you're male and you ride, beware

Read below for Age article regarding a study funded by the Amy Gillet
Foundation and the Monash University Accident Research Centre.

Is this a valid research option to pursue? Is the type of cycle
commuting is changing so rapidly that any potential conclusions from
inadvertently too narrow parameters could be potentially blame-shifting
and not accurately portraying road user interactions?

I'll agree there's very little known regarding hard data on actual
bicycle crashes, but that ongoing situation isn't helped one iota by
the police and authorities such as the TAC not taking incidents
seriously enough.

BTW - have a fiddle with VicRoads CrashStats, it's interesting to view,
but firefox has always hated those applets for some reason ..
http://tinyurl.com/ezyjr


**************

The Age: If you're male and you ride, beware - 2 October, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/edv6f

MALE cyclists aged 30 to 39 are at high risk of being killed or injured
in collisions with motor vehicles on weekdays from 4pm to 6pm.

Nine out of 10 collisions happen on a straight stretch of road with the
vehicle hitting the bike by turning or parking. Eighty per cent of crash
victims were men.

The facts are contained in a landmark study, jointly funded by Monash
University Accident Research Centre and the Amy Gillett Foundation,
which analysed 13,900 bicycle-vehicle crashes between 2000 and 2004.

The foundation — set up to honour cyclist Amy Gillett who was killed by
a car in Germany — aims to foster harmony between cyclists and
motorists.

The foundation will this week announce a $100,000, three-year
scholarship, jointly funded by the Monash centre, for a PhD student to
conduct in-depth research into bicycle-motor vehicle crashes.

The centre's director, Professor Ian Johnston, said the study had been
done because of a paucity of previous bicycle safety data.

"What people normally do is simply say, this is the number of deaths
and the number of injured is this. But what we tried to do is see if we
could tease out what are the different types of crashes, what are the
circumstances," he said. Much more needed to be done, Professor
Johnston said.

He said there was also an uncounted toll. "One of the things that is
very striking about bicycle safety is that unless there is a motor
vehicle involved, we know very little about all of the crashes," he
said.

Foundation general manager Melinda Jacobsen said: "We need to know more
about the circumstances under which cars and bicycles collide in order
to prevent a further rise in the road toll.

"So far this year, 11 Victorian cyclists have been killed on Victoria's
roads — more than double the toll for the same period last year."


--
cfsmtb

Wow.... I will ride safer knowing that..... geesh and I thought I was
completely safe riding my bike.

thats a little dis-appointing, First that terrible advertisement and
now this, I don't know why I expected anything else. At least I can be
safe in the knowledge that if I do get hit and killed by a car, a
researcher somewhere is getting paid to find out why it happened. One
sentence I believe can cover 90% of Vehicle/Cyclist accidents, I don't
know what the exact percentage is but from people I talk to who have
had accidents, it seems to be a very common theme.

Car driver, "I didn't see the cyclist, he just appeared"


--
MikeyOz

cfsmtb Wrote:


snip

Nine out of 10 collisions happen on a straight stretch of road with the
vehicle hitting the bike by turning or parking. Eighty per cent of crash
victims were men.

snip


i may be generalising here, but 9 out of 10 people i see commuting by
bicycle during those hours ARE MEN. this is only what ive observed on
my commute in brisbane... i rarely see a woman commuting on a bicycle.
i see lots on scooters and lots in cars, but rarely on a bicycle.
of course, its probably very different in other states, but i would
believe it if the study found that 9 out of 10 commuters injured were
men in brisbane.


--
asterope

cfsmtb wrote:

Snip
**************

The Age: If you're male and you ride, beware - 2 October, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/edv6f

MALE cyclists aged 30 to 39 are at high risk of being killed or injured
in collisions with motor vehicles on weekdays from 4pm to 6pm.
snip

Interesting. Steven and I have both noticed that we seemed
to encounter far more psychotic/useless drivers on the way
home from work/uni. After being hit by a taxi and thrown
into a bus yet somehow staying upright, Steven decided he'd
start taking the ferry home instead - the 20-minute ride
home seemed too high-risk. I still ride usually, because I
travel further and it's faster by bike. Why are people so
cranky when the work day is over and they get to relax?
Maybe they should ride bikes.

Tam

asterope Wrote:
i may be generalising here, but 9 out of 10 people i see commuting by
bicycle during those hours ARE MEN

Maybe a little less down in Melbourne from what I see, but would not be
far off the track..... thats just another reason why the research is
such a waste of time and money.


--
MikeyOz

MikeyOz Wrote:
Maybe a little less down in Melbourne from what I see, but would not be
far off the track..... thats just another reason why the research is
such a waste of time and money.

I was listening to ABC News Radio this morning and a rep from the Amy
Gillett Foundation was talking about this.

They've recognised that lack of information on cyclist fatalities and
have announced a PHD scholarship to do something about that.

Here's a link with details.

http://www.amygillett.org.au/index.php/news_awareness


--
jazmo

In aus.bicycle on Mon, 2 Oct 2006 09:29:33 +1000
MikeyOz wrote:

asterope Wrote:
i may be generalising here, but 9 out of 10 people i see commuting by
bicycle during those hours ARE MEN

Maybe a little less down in Melbourne from what I see, but would not be
far off the track..... thats just another reason why the research is
such a waste of time and money.

Only if they didn't do that count. Which you won't know unless you
read the paper rather than a journo's take on same.

Zebee

In aus.bicycle on Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:01:31 +1000
Tamyka Bell wrote:
home seemed too high-risk. I still ride usually, because I
travel further and it's faster by bike. Why are people so
cranky when the work day is over and they get to relax?
Maybe they should ride bikes.


Perhaps they are in a hurry to get home, whereas they aren't in a
hurry to get to work.

There's also a day of frustration behind them and an evening if
screaming kids

Zebee
- who usually has a better ride home than to work because the hill
distribution is different and she's had a day of eating instead of
12 hours fast and a bowl of weetbix.

I wouldn't judge the research by the journalism. They have just tried
to manufacture a headline so that people will read it.

Given that most of the accidents seem to happen to the group that is
strongest represented, it brings to mind that George Burns quote: once
you get to 100 you are fine, because hardly anyone dies aged over
100....

It's a potent combination: growing population of cars on roads that
won't fit on the roads, combined with a growing population of cyclists
who are inexperienced and take risks they shouldn't and in some cases
do crazy things.


MikeyOz wrote:
asterope Wrote:
i may be generalising here, but 9 out of 10 people i see commuting by
bicycle during those hours ARE MEN

Maybe a little less down in Melbourne from what I see, but would not be
far off the track..... thats just another reason why the research is
such a waste of time and money.


--
MikeyOz

asterope wrote:
cfsmtb Wrote:


snip

Nine out of 10 collisions happen on a straight stretch of road with the
vehicle hitting the bike by turning or parking. Eighty per cent of crash
victims were men.

snip


i may be generalising here, but 9 out of 10 people i see commuting by
bicycle during those hours ARE MEN. this is only what ive observed on
my commute in brisbane... i rarely see a woman commuting on a bicycle.
i see lots on scooters and lots in cars, but rarely on a bicycle.
of course, its probably very different in other states, but i would
believe it if the study found that 9 out of 10 commuters injured were
men in brisbane.


It's important to remember that correlation is not causation.
Statistics are one thing, what they mean is a totally different thing.