Who is a real cyclist ?

On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 5:45:33 PM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 4:58:18 PM UTC-7, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:03:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 9/5/2018 9:31 AM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:

A friend of mine has a standard response- if
someone asks him "where's your helmet?" his
reply is "where are your manners?"

Err... how about "I left it in my other pants?"

I don't know if that happens in other
countries, but in the US [...]

Here, people use bikes to do almost anything,
often several times a day. Kids go to school,
young adults go to the university and to
parties thru the night, everyone else go to
work or to get food or to do sport or just
about anything. So no one riding a bike feels
he or she is part of a shunned minority, and
there is no reason to acknoledge or even notice
if someone else is "doing it" as well.

To illustrate the U.S., at least, some years ago:

Sometime in the 1980s, I rode my bike as usual to the bank where we did
business. That was back in the days when I wore a bike helmet.

I was always pleased that the bank had a bike rack at its door. That was
_extremely_ unusual. (And the rack has since been removed.) Anyway, I
finished my business at the bank and was retrieving my bike when an
older-middle-aged lady emerged from the bank.

She looked at me with obvious disgust, shook her head and said "Well, at
_least_ you're wearing a helmet." Clearly, she thought riding a bike a
couple blocks was absolutely foolhardy.

I think things have improved a bit, partly because I'm seen riding the
bike everywhere. But it's still considered very unusual. I was
interviewed in 1993 and in 2011 about my biking to work. Those were
almost full-page articles each time. I was also interviewed in the 1990s
about my summer project, to ride to each of the county's 18 library
branches and check out a book at every one.

If simply riding a bike is newsworthy, I'd say something is wrong with
society. :-(

It does seem rather strange as when I grew up practically every boy
had a bicycle and rode it everywhere. An "older - middle aged" person
in the 1980's would probably have been old enough to have some
recollection of those times.

You don't need to be that old. I was a kid in the '60s, and I rode a bike everywhere, including school. I think the '80s was the end of the free-range kid era.

It was unusual in the '60s for an adult to commute to work by bike -- or to ride a bike at all. I knew one adult who commuted to work by bike, and that was my fifth grade teacher. He was also the national road champion at the time. http://www.usbhof.org/inductee-by-year/88-bob-tetzlaff The bike boom and Earth Day and all that stuff hit in the '70s, and you started seeing more adults riding. https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/28/158...sign-bike-boom Even my WWII dad started riding -- for a while. I don't know if my mother could even ride a bike. The urbanites of that generation were more likely to be smoking and drinking Scotch than riding a bike.

-- Jay Beattie.

They may very well be returning. I presently live in San Leandro and my doctor neurologist is in Palo Alto. When I have an appointment it is invariably during commute hours. By car it takes 2 hours to go the 25 miles (The car route is really 30 miles). I can ride my bike to the Palo Alto Medical Center in an hour and a half.

On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 6:22:19 PM UTC-7, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 5 Sep 2018 17:39:12 -0700, "Mark J."
wrote:

On 9/5/2018 8:03 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/5/2018 9:31 AM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:

A friend of mine has a standard response- if
someone asks him "where's your helmet?" his
reply is "where are your manners?"

Err... how about "I left it in my other pants?"

I don't know if that happens in other
countries, but in the US [...]

Here, people use bikes to do almost anything,
often several times a day. Kids go to school,
young adults go to the university and to
parties thru the night, everyone else go to
work or to get food or to do sport or just
about anything. So no one riding a bike feels
he or she is part of a shunned minority, and
there is no reason to acknoledge or even notice
if someone else is "doing it" as well.

To illustrate the U.S., at least, some years ago:

Sometime in the 1980s, I rode my bike as usual to the bank where we did
business. That was back in the days when I wore a bike helmet.

I was always pleased that the bank had a bike rack at its door. That was
_extremely_ unusual. (And the rack has since been removed.) Anyway, I
finished my business at the bank and was retrieving my bike when an
older-middle-aged lady emerged from the bank.

She looked at me with obvious disgust, shook her head and said "Well, at
_least_ you're wearing a helmet." Clearly, she thought riding a bike a
couple blocks was absolutely foolhardy.

I think things have improved a bit, partly because I'm seen riding the
bike everywhere. But it's still considered very unusual. I was
interviewed in 1993 and in 2011 about my biking to work. Those were
almost full-page articles each time. I was also interviewed in the 1990s
about my summer project, to ride to each of the county's 18 library
branches and check out a book at every one.

If simply riding a bike is newsworthy, I'd say something is wrong with
society.Â*Â* :-(

Heh. When I was newly married, many years ago, we stopped on a ride at
a store that was about to open. As we waited, a severely obese woman
drove up and came to the door, also waiting. She then announced to the
air, pointing at our (tandem) bike, "I think bike riding [or the riding
position, perhaps] is just unnatural," or some words to that effect. No
other words were spoken by anyone present, before or after. It was
pretty bizarre. I looked at her and just smiled.

Mark J.

I don't know how old you are but there was a period when doctors
blamed prostrate problems on riding a bicycle and in the early days
females straddling a bicycle seat were equated with a lowering in
morals.

My God you must be old!

On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 5:45:33 PM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 4:58:18 PM UTC-7, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:03:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 9/5/2018 9:31 AM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:

A friend of mine has a standard response- if
someone asks him "where's your helmet?" his
reply is "where are your manners?"

Err... how about "I left it in my other pants?"

I don't know if that happens in other
countries, but in the US [...]

Here, people use bikes to do almost anything,
often several times a day. Kids go to school,
young adults go to the university and to
parties thru the night, everyone else go to
work or to get food or to do sport or just
about anything. So no one riding a bike feels
he or she is part of a shunned minority, and
there is no reason to acknoledge or even notice
if someone else is "doing it" as well.

To illustrate the U.S., at least, some years ago:

Sometime in the 1980s, I rode my bike as usual to the bank where we did
business. That was back in the days when I wore a bike helmet.

I was always pleased that the bank had a bike rack at its door. That was
_extremely_ unusual. (And the rack has since been removed.) Anyway, I
finished my business at the bank and was retrieving my bike when an
older-middle-aged lady emerged from the bank.

She looked at me with obvious disgust, shook her head and said "Well, at
_least_ you're wearing a helmet." Clearly, she thought riding a bike a
couple blocks was absolutely foolhardy.

I think things have improved a bit, partly because I'm seen riding the
bike everywhere. But it's still considered very unusual. I was
interviewed in 1993 and in 2011 about my biking to work. Those were
almost full-page articles each time. I was also interviewed in the 1990s
about my summer project, to ride to each of the county's 18 library
branches and check out a book at every one.

If simply riding a bike is newsworthy, I'd say something is wrong with
society. :-(

It does seem rather strange as when I grew up practically every boy
had a bicycle and rode it everywhere. An "older - middle aged" person
in the 1980's would probably have been old enough to have some
recollection of those times.

You don't need to be that old. I was a kid in the '60s, and I rode a bike everywhere, including school. I think the '80s was the end of the free-range kid era.

It was unusual in the '60s for an adult to commute to work by bike -- or to ride a bike at all. I knew one adult who commuted to work by bike, and that was my fifth grade teacher. He was also the national road champion at the time. http://www.usbhof.org/inductee-by-year/88-bob-tetzlaff The bike boom and Earth Day and all that stuff hit in the '70s, and you started seeing more adults riding. https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/28/158...sign-bike-boom Even my WWII dad started riding -- for a while. I don't know if my mother could even ride a bike. The urbanites of that generation were more likely to be smoking and drinking Scotch than riding a bike.

-- Jay Beattie.

The Greatest Generation (the WW II age group) were all heavy drinkers. I think that originally it became a thing because of prohibition. But probably half of that generation died from the effects of alcoholism or smoking. My father was a weekend drunk that died from Emphysema. Both of his brother died from smoking and so did their sister's husband. There were people in the neighborhood whom you couldn't understand speaking because if they weren't working they were completely drunk.


Consequently I don't drink hard liquor at all. Beer and wine only and maybe too much wine. But only at home. I don't like the alcohol but I do love the taste of wine. I tried the non-alcoholic wines and they all taste like grape juice. Two beers is pretty much my limit and I only like Belgian dark ales.

On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 11:45:49 PM UTC+1, wrote:
On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 7:43:17 AM UTC-7, Andre Jute wrote:
On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 2:15:06 PM UTC+1, Emanuel Berg wrote:
Maybe one
should just stick with, "I'm sure glad I had my
helmet!" if that's the way one feels.

The problem with that reduction is that the usual anti-helmet zealots are then free to read whatever they want into your statement and put words into your mouth.

But actually I think that is what the original
statement amounts to.

See, you're doing it too.

There's a greater danger than the nastiness of Krygowski et al. It is that the constant nastiness when anyone even mentions helmets will tend over time to interfere with the freedom of the rest of us to say whatever we please about helmets. You'd swear from the reaction to just the word "Helmets!" that someone proposed taking the popguns on which their masculinity depends away from the American AHZ.

The irony is that it is easier than anywhere else on earth to make a case for mandatory helmets in the States than anywhere else, simply because a really good set of statistics on the subject exists. Which is why the usual cowardly AHZ absolutely refuse to discuss the comprehensive study I used to do exactly that. I reprise the relevant article in a new thread. See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...ch/qOFCNhQ1428

Andre Jute
The power of knowledge

Anti-Helmet Zealot? Exactly what is that?

Look in the mirror. If the glass slipper fits you, wear it in good health.

I deliberately made the post you refer to in the rest of your message in another thread to avoid contaminating this thread with AHZ nastiness. If you want to ask you further question in that thread at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...ch/qOFCNhQ1428, I'll be happy to answer you.

Andre Jute

On 9/6/2018 5:57 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 5:45:33 PM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 4:58:18 PM UTC-7, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:03:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 9/5/2018 9:31 AM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:

A friend of mine has a standard response- if
someone asks him "where's your helmet?" his
reply is "where are your manners?"

Err... how about "I left it in my other pants?"

I don't know if that happens in other
countries, but in the US [...]

Here, people use bikes to do almost anything,
often several times a day. Kids go to school,
young adults go to the university and to
parties thru the night, everyone else go to
work or to get food or to do sport or just
about anything. So no one riding a bike feels
he or she is part of a shunned minority, and
there is no reason to acknoledge or even notice
if someone else is "doing it" as well.

To illustrate the U.S., at least, some years ago:

Sometime in the 1980s, I rode my bike as usual to the bank where we did
business. That was back in the days when I wore a bike helmet.

I was always pleased that the bank had a bike rack at its door. That was
_extremely_ unusual. (And the rack has since been removed.) Anyway, I
finished my business at the bank and was retrieving my bike when an
older-middle-aged lady emerged from the bank.

She looked at me with obvious disgust, shook her head and said "Well, at
_least_ you're wearing a helmet." Clearly, she thought riding a bike a
couple blocks was absolutely foolhardy.

I think things have improved a bit, partly because I'm seen riding the
bike everywhere. But it's still considered very unusual. I was
interviewed in 1993 and in 2011 about my biking to work. Those were
almost full-page articles each time. I was also interviewed in the 1990s
about my summer project, to ride to each of the county's 18 library
branches and check out a book at every one.

If simply riding a bike is newsworthy, I'd say something is wrong with
society. :-(

It does seem rather strange as when I grew up practically every boy
had a bicycle and rode it everywhere. An "older - middle aged" person
in the 1980's would probably have been old enough to have some
recollection of those times.

You don't need to be that old. I was a kid in the '60s, and I rode a bike everywhere, including school. I think the '80s was the end of the free-range kid era.

It was unusual in the '60s for an adult to commute to work by bike -- or to ride a bike at all. I knew one adult who commuted to work by bike, and that was my fifth grade teacher. He was also the national road champion at the time. http://www.usbhof.org/inductee-by-year/88-bob-tetzlaff The bike boom and Earth Day and all that stuff hit in the '70s, and you started seeing more adults riding. https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/28/158...sign-bike-boom Even my WWII dad started riding -- for a while. I don't know if my mother could even ride a bike. The urbanites of that generation were more likely to be smoking and drinking Scotch than riding a bike.

-- Jay Beattie.

They may very well be returning. I presently live in San Leandro and my doctor neurologist is in Palo Alto. When I have an appointment it is invariably during commute hours. By car it takes 2 hours to go the 25 miles (The car route is really 30 miles). I can ride my bike to the Palo Alto Medical Center in an hour and a half.


I think I can safely say that every contributor here has
that experience regularly. Not that it's trivial, and good
for you, but we all share it.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 9/6/2018 6:45 PM, wrote:

This would indicate that for every 7 Million miles traveled on bicycles some bicyclist is killed.

Other estimates are far better. Most estimates claim over 10 million
miles ridden per bike fatality.

On the surface that makes motor vehicles approximately 11 times safer than bicycles.

That's largely because of the tremendous number of miles driven on
freeways. The bike to car comparison is much closer on the sorts of
roads that both bikes and cars are allowed to use.

But even that looks at only part of the picture. There have been at
least five studies that evaluated the benefits vs. risk of cycling.
Because of the moderate exercise built into daily life from biking, the
lack of pollution, the lack of harm to others, etc. every study ever
done on the topic has found the benefits of bicycling _greatly_ outweigh
its tiny risks. Nobody has ever claimed that sitting on one's butt in a
car increases one's health, quality of life or longevity.

In other words, if you examine the big picture and include all causes of
death, riding a bike is actually safer than NOT riding a bike. You can't
say that for driving a car.

About your crap about head injuries causing the majority of deaths on bicycles - SO WHAT?

It goes beyond "so what." That factoid is absolutely false. Jute and
other helmeteers claim that 75% (or whatever percent) of bike fatalities
"involve a head injury." That's carefully phrased weasel wording. If
your chest is run over by a truck and you have a scratch on your
forehead, one could say that your death "involves a head injury." (And
let's remember that some helmet promotion studies literally counted cuts
to the ears as "head injuries.")

The real question is: What percentage of bicyclist deaths are _caused_
by head injury - or really, brain injury?

According to the best data I could find on the subject, 45% of the 800
or so annual U.S. bike deaths are due to brain injury. That total
includes both the helmeted and the unhelmeted fatalities.

For comparison, 40% of the 4000+ annual U.S. pedestrian deaths are due
to brain injury. The percentages are quite close; in other words,
bicycling is nothing special regarding TBI deaths. And in absolute
numbers, that means about 360 bicycling TBI deaths, vs. 1600 pedestrian
TBI deaths.

And John Pucher of Rutgers has published estimates that pedestrians are
at over three times higher risk of fatality PER MILE than bicyclists.

The risk of bicycling TBI fatalities (or even debilitating TBI injuries)
is highly exaggerated. It's not that it never happens; but it happens
far less than to pedestrians, or to people just walking around their homes.

The data's available. But the "Cycling is dangerous!" meme is now so
common and powerful that it's rare for anyone to actually look for the data.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thu, 06 Sep 2018 11:50:11 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:

snip

I agree wholeheartedly. In extreme temps I would say a helmet could be
worse for your head than none. once you get past 40c in the sun some
kind of floppy cotton hat is way more protective than an insulated oven
helmet.

People are basically going to do whatever they want though so meh.

... except there are always people who demand that others do what THEY
want them to do. Most of them know nothing beyond "Always wear a
helmet!!!" Dunning-Kruger at its finest.

The local groups have an evening ride on Tues and Thurs. More of a bimble
really. They all gather up and pootle off to a cafe somewhere for some
tea. They are very insistent on helmet wearing so I solved this problem
by just not going anywhere with the uptight *******s.
--
davethedave

On 9/7/2018 2:02 AM, dave wrote:
On Thu, 06 Sep 2018 11:50:11 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:

snip

I agree wholeheartedly. In extreme temps I would say a helmet could be
worse for your head than none. once you get past 40c in the sun some
kind of floppy cotton hat is way more protective than an insulated oven
helmet.

People are basically going to do whatever they want though so meh.

... except there are always people who demand that others do what THEY
want them to do. Most of them know nothing beyond "Always wear a
helmet!!!" Dunning-Kruger at its finest.

The local groups have an evening ride on Tues and Thurs. More of a bimble
really. They all gather up and pootle off to a cafe somewhere for some
tea. They are very insistent on helmet wearing so I solved this problem
by just not going anywhere with the uptight *******s.


+1

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:03:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

But it's still considered very unusual.

When I lived in New York State, my friends finally stopped freaking
out whenever I showed up on a bike -- and started freaking out
whenever I showed up in a car. Apparently, bike riding is such a
horrible experience that only religious conviction can make you do it.

Perhaps it was. When passing the grade school one day, I looked at
the bikes in the rack. I don't recall that any had properly adjusted
brakes, and some could be identified as non-functioning from ten feet
away. After moving here, I stopped by a school bike rack -- not as
easy here, where I don't live on the same road with both schools --
and was gratified that I would have had to touch the bikes to see
whether the brakes worked.

In New York, the only other bike rider in town was the village idiot,
who couldn't get an operator's license because he couldn't read.
Observation strongly suggested that his speech centers were all that
the fever burned out -- he managed quite well even though he had to
figure everything out by himself. The few people he could (with
difficulty) speak to . . . well, one of them complained to me that
that policeman ought not to have given her a ticket for doing fifty in
a school zone, after all, she had let up on the accelerator as soon as
she had passed the sign.

For those who think that it's elitist to advocate vehicular riding:
the village idiot did it -- and he'd never heard the term, and he'd
never spoken to anybody who knew how to ride.

Here, everything in the village is in walking distance, so the only
acquaintance who notices how I get around is the one who sometimes
mentions that she saw me ride by her house.

Since I live in a tourist town, on the street that leads to the Old
Chicago Boys' Club Mountain-Bike Trails, I see lots of ride-in-circles
bikes -- the mountain bikes are usually on the backs of cars, but
people come as far as from Indianapolis to ride in circles here;
apparently there aren't a lot of well-maintained bike trails with
acres to roam around in. But I *have* seen transportation cyclists,
usually in Warsaw, and spoke to one who bragged to me about how kind
her friends were to buy her a department-store bike. A
department-store bike is a very, very good bike for someone who
formerly had to depend on KABS to go anywhere.

But I almost never arrive somewhere and find that my favorite parking
space is taken. I usually see other bikes at the library, sometimes
in both racks. I *always* lock up there, even if I've only come to
refill my water bottle at the fountain in the entrance hall.

--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.





---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com

On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 6:28:53 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/6/2018 6:45 PM, wrote:

This would indicate that for every 7 Million miles traveled on bicycles some bicyclist is killed.

Other estimates are far better. Most estimates claim over 10 million
miles ridden per bike fatality.

On the surface that makes motor vehicles approximately 11 times safer than bicycles.

That's largely because of the tremendous number of miles driven on
freeways. The bike to car comparison is much closer on the sorts of
roads that both bikes and cars are allowed to use.

But even that looks at only part of the picture. There have been at
least five studies that evaluated the benefits vs. risk of cycling.
Because of the moderate exercise built into daily life from biking, the
lack of pollution, the lack of harm to others, etc. every study ever
done on the topic has found the benefits of bicycling _greatly_ outweigh
its tiny risks. Nobody has ever claimed that sitting on one's butt in a
car increases one's health, quality of life or longevity.

In other words, if you examine the big picture and include all causes of
death, riding a bike is actually safer than NOT riding a bike. You can't
say that for driving a car.

About your crap about head injuries causing the majority of deaths on bicycles - SO WHAT?

It goes beyond "so what." That factoid is absolutely false. Jute and
other helmeteers claim that 75% (or whatever percent) of bike fatalities
"involve a head injury." That's carefully phrased weasel wording. If
your chest is run over by a truck and you have a scratch on your
forehead, one could say that your death "involves a head injury." (And
let's remember that some helmet promotion studies literally counted cuts
to the ears as "head injuries.")

The real question is: What percentage of bicyclist deaths are _caused_
by head injury - or really, brain injury?

According to the best data I could find on the subject, 45% of the 800
or so annual U.S. bike deaths are due to brain injury. That total
includes both the helmeted and the unhelmeted fatalities.

For comparison, 40% of the 4000+ annual U.S. pedestrian deaths are due
to brain injury. The percentages are quite close; in other words,
bicycling is nothing special regarding TBI deaths. And in absolute
numbers, that means about 360 bicycling TBI deaths, vs. 1600 pedestrian
TBI deaths.

And John Pucher of Rutgers has published estimates that pedestrians are
at over three times higher risk of fatality PER MILE than bicyclists.

The risk of bicycling TBI fatalities (or even debilitating TBI injuries)
is highly exaggerated. It's not that it never happens; but it happens
far less than to pedestrians, or to people just walking around their homes.

The data's available. But the "Cycling is dangerous!" meme is now so
common and powerful that it's rare for anyone to actually look for the data.

Actually no Frank. Cause of death is CLEARLY written on a post mortem exam and car fatalities are ALWAYS given a post mortem.

So when they attribute deaths to head injuries that is exactly what it is.

But like I said - the same percentage of auto fatalities are caused by head injuries. What's more multiple force trauma from auto collisions by bicycles would kill you as surely as the head injuries but most autopsies only give a single cause of death.

So we can agree that most bicycle fatalities are caused by head trauma but again - it has not the slightest bearing on the matter. Most especially since the bicycle helmet cannot help 99.999% of bicycle head trauma deaths and they CAN reduce the head trauma deaths to motorists significantly.

Let's see them TRY to pass mandatory auto helmet laws!