Cyclist hits granny in pavement crash in Brighton

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:11:50 -0000, "pk" said
in :

A cyclist was clearly at fault and injures pedestrian and the gist of the
thread is to defend cyclists.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

What actually happened was that a mission poster trolled the group,
causing some people (for perfectly good reasons) to become
defensive. The original case is a simple matter of the fallacy of
"false vividness" - one of a tiny number of cases picked up on by
those desperate to find a stick with which to beat cyclists, in
order to "prove" how dangerous pavement cycling is. In reality, of
course, pavement cycling is mainly dangerous to the cyclist - a fact
which is not known to change with the application of Magic White
Paint (TM).

The fact that you are at vastly greater risk from motor vehicles on
the footway than from cyclists *even though* it is asserted that
pavement cycling is a plague of epidemic proportions, is a perfect
indication that these few cases are essentially ignorable at the
public policy level. They are as rare as the falling boulder that
flattened some poor woman's shed last week. Do we run around crying
for action to end the shed boulder menace?

The leading cause of injury to pedestrians on the footway is trips
and falls, which account for half of all injury hospitalisations in
the UK; and the leading recorded cause of fatal injury to
pedestrians, be it on the footway or elsewhere, is motor traffic.
Other causes are orders of magnitude less numerous, despite the
assertion that pavement cycling is endemic. The level of fatalities
per mile travelled on the footway is surely many hundreds of times
greater in the case of motor traffic - and yes, motor vehicles do
habitually trespass on the footway, which is why so many places need
to install bollards to prevent this. A final piece of irony: those
trips and falls are usually caused by broken paving slabs, and guess
what is the leading cause of broken paving slabs? It seems to be
our old friend the motor vehicle. Usually goods vehicles.

That *does not* make pavement cycling right. It does not make it
risk-free, for us or for the pedestrians. It*does* mean that it is
not the huge problem that some people make it out to be, and that is
reflected in the prosecution guidelines, which also explicitly
acknowledge that pavement cycling is largely a response to the
perceived danger of motor traffic.

So we could make pedestrians safer from the major source of danger
(motor traffic) and the nearly insignificant source of danger
(cyclists) by controlling the source of major danger. Shared space
and other measures designed to drastically reduce motor traffic
danger in places where people live, walk and go about their
business, would have a double bonus value: it would remove the major
source of danger, and it would remove the perceived danger which is
the cause of the nearly insignificant danger.

I guess the mission posters will be looking for unequivocal
condemnation of the cyclist, in isolation. They can **** off. I am
reminded of the Israeli government demanding unequivocal
condemnation of attacks by Hamas - sure, Hamas should not launch
rockets at Israel, but there is a difference in character between
shooting home-made rockets knocked up in garden sheds at someone who
is occupying your country, and using some of the most advanced
weapons that modern industrialised warfare has to offer against
people who are struggling even to reach subsistence levels on the
land you have left them after stealing the bits you want.

Well, perhaps that is a contentious way of stating the example, but
I think you see what I mean. Anyone who comes to this group and
expects us to condemn pavement cycling, red light jumping or any of
the other transgressions of the cyclist, with absolutely no strings
attached, is basically trolling and should simply be ignored. Do we
support these things? Of course not. Should we stand together as
fellow-members of that "out group" and firmly reject being targeted?
Hell yes.

Is that "us" v "them"? Well, yes. Even if the "us" in question
does not cycle illegally on the footway (note illegally; it's quite
legal in a lot of places) and rather wishes others would not. And
we may well wish that "chav on a BMX" did not translate into
"cyclist" on the way between Planet Reality and the Daily Mail, and
believe me that one really does **** me off because most of those
types I would cheerfully consign to National Service at least until
they have learned to pull their ****ing trousers up, but it is
hardly a surprise to find that people who love cycling and consider
being a cyclist as some kind of defining characteristic become just
a /teensy/ bit defensive when someone comes to uk.rec.cycling, the
cycling newsgroup where cyclists talk about cycling and hope to get
away from the insane petrolhead-dominated nonsense that prevails in
most places, and try to make out that All Cyclist Are Evil because
This Bad Thing Happened QED IDT INDT.

You want people to condemn pavement cycling? I will happily condemn
it, and the councils that encourage it, and most especially the
drivers who scare people into doing it, and I will happily stand up
for measures that will plausibly fix the problem at source, provided
that they are sane and proportionate. And that should be good
enough, I would have thought.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound
GPG sig #3FA3BCDE http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/pgp-public-key.txt

"Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:11:50 -0000, "pk" said
in :

A cyclist was clearly at fault and injures pedestrian and the gist of the
thread is to defend cyclists.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.


Yawn!

Do you really think people have or take the time to read turgid reams of
guff like that?

If you can't make your point more succinctly, are you sure your point has
value?

slow down, distill to the essence and you may have more success.

pk

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:11:50 -0000, "pk" said
in :

A cyclist was clearly at fault and injures pedestrian and the gist of the
thread is to defend cyclists.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

What actually happened was that a mission poster trolled the group,
causing some people (for perfectly good reasons) to become
defensive. The original case is a simple matter of the fallacy of
"false vividness" - one of a tiny number of cases picked up on by
those desperate to find a stick with which to beat cyclists, in
order to "prove" how dangerous pavement cycling is. In reality, of
course, pavement cycling is mainly dangerous to the cyclist - a fact
which is not known to change with the application of Magic White
Paint (TM).

The fact that you are at vastly greater risk from motor vehicles on
the footway than from cyclists *even though* it is asserted that
pavement cycling is a plague of epidemic proportions, is a perfect
indication that these few cases are essentially ignorable at the
public policy level. They are as rare as the falling boulder that
flattened some poor woman's shed last week. Do we run around crying
for action to end the shed boulder menace?

The leading cause of injury to pedestrians on the footway is trips
and falls, which account for half of all injury hospitalisations in
the UK; and the leading recorded cause of fatal injury to
pedestrians, be it on the footway or elsewhere, is motor traffic.
Other causes are orders of magnitude less numerous, despite the
assertion that pavement cycling is endemic. The level of fatalities
per mile travelled on the footway is surely many hundreds of times
greater in the case of motor traffic - and yes, motor vehicles do
habitually trespass on the footway, which is why so many places need
to install bollards to prevent this. A final piece of irony: those
trips and falls are usually caused by broken paving slabs, and guess
what is the leading cause of broken paving slabs? It seems to be
our old friend the motor vehicle. Usually goods vehicles.

That *does not* make pavement cycling right. It does not make it
risk-free, for us or for the pedestrians. It*does* mean that it is
not the huge problem that some people make it out to be, and that is
reflected in the prosecution guidelines, which also explicitly
acknowledge that pavement cycling is largely a response to the
perceived danger of motor traffic.

So we could make pedestrians safer from the major source of danger
(motor traffic) and the nearly insignificant source of danger
(cyclists) by controlling the source of major danger. Shared space
and other measures designed to drastically reduce motor traffic
danger in places where people live, walk and go about their
business, would have a double bonus value: it would remove the major
source of danger, and it would remove the perceived danger which is
the cause of the nearly insignificant danger.

I guess the mission posters will be looking for unequivocal
condemnation of the cyclist, in isolation. They can **** off. I am
reminded of the Israeli government demanding unequivocal
condemnation of attacks by Hamas - sure, Hamas should not launch
rockets at Israel, but there is a difference in character between
shooting home-made rockets knocked up in garden sheds at someone who
is occupying your country, and using some of the most advanced
weapons that modern industrialised warfare has to offer against
people who are struggling even to reach subsistence levels on the
land you have left them after stealing the bits you want.

Well, perhaps that is a contentious way of stating the example, but
I think you see what I mean. Anyone who comes to this group and
expects us to condemn pavement cycling, red light jumping or any of
the other transgressions of the cyclist, with absolutely no strings
attached, is basically trolling and should simply be ignored. Do we
support these things? Of course not. Should we stand together as
fellow-members of that "out group" and firmly reject being targeted?
Hell yes.

Is that "us" v "them"? Well, yes. Even if the "us" in question
does not cycle illegally on the footway (note illegally; it's quite
legal in a lot of places) and rather wishes others would not. And
we may well wish that "chav on a BMX" did not translate into
"cyclist" on the way between Planet Reality and the Daily Mail, and
believe me that one really does **** me off because most of those
types I would cheerfully consign to National Service at least until
they have learned to pull their ****ing trousers up, but it is
hardly a surprise to find that people who love cycling and consider
being a cyclist as some kind of defining characteristic become just
a /teensy/ bit defensive when someone comes to uk.rec.cycling, the
cycling newsgroup where cyclists talk about cycling and hope to get
away from the insane petrolhead-dominated nonsense that prevails in
most places, and try to make out that All Cyclist Are Evil because
This Bad Thing Happened QED IDT INDT.

You want people to condemn pavement cycling? I will happily condemn
it, and the councils that encourage it, and most especially the
drivers who scare people into doing it, and I will happily stand up
for measures that will plausibly fix the problem at source, provided
that they are sane and proportionate. And that should be good
enough, I would have thought.

Guy

Well I got bored reading all this.
Allthough you will call this anecdotal, I have not had to dodge out of
the way of motorist driving on the pavement for as long as I can remember.
But I often have to dodge a pavement cyclist & just before Christmas my
daughter was knocked over by a pavement cyclist.

Therefore to me pavement cyclists are a greater danger than pavement
motorists.




--
Tony the Dragon

"pk" wrote in message
...
"Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:11:50 -0000, "pk" said
in :

A cyclist was clearly at fault and injures pedestrian and the gist of the
thread is to defend cyclists.

Up to a point, Lord Copper.


Yawn!

Do you really think people have or take the time to read turgid reams of
guff like that?

What, a whole minute?

If you can't make your point more succinctly, are you sure your point has
value?

slow down, distill to the essence and you may have more success.

I thought it wasn't that bad a post. Bit ranty, but it covered the important
points well. Read it (well, skip the paragraph about the middle east if you
like, it's not that relevant), and you'll discover it does answer your
implied questions.

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:31:23 +0000, Tony Dragon
said in
:

Allthough you will call this anecdotal, I have not had to dodge out of
the way of motorist driving on the pavement for as long as I can remember.
But I often have to dodge a pavement cyclist & just before Christmas my
daughter was knocked over by a pavement cyclist.

And as the figures show, you are many times more likely to be killed
or injured on the footway by a motor vehicle than by a cyclist. So
yes, your anecdote indicates another outlier. Or perhaps people are
so obsessed by pavement cycling that they go out of their way to
remember it.

At the public policy level it is ignorable.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound
GPG sig #3FA3BCDE http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/pgp-public-key.txt

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:23:28 -0000, "pk" said
in :

Do you really think people have or take the time to read turgid reams of
guff like that?

Seems to me that attempts to render complex situations into
soundbytes don't actually illuminate the subject in any meaningful
way and tend to favour the zealots not those who would explore the
issue in depth, but then I grew up reading Tolkein so anything on
Usenet looks short to me.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound
GPG sig #3FA3BCDE http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/pgp-public-key.txt

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:31:23 +0000, Tony Dragon
said in
:

Allthough you will call this anecdotal, I have not had to dodge out of
the way of motorist driving on the pavement for as long as I can remember.
But I often have to dodge a pavement cyclist & just before Christmas my
daughter was knocked over by a pavement cyclist.

And as the figures show, you are many times more likely to be killed
or injured on the footway by a motor vehicle than by a cyclist. So
yes, your anecdote indicates another outlier. Or perhaps people are
so obsessed by pavement cycling that they go out of their way to
remember it.

At the public policy level it is ignorable.

Guy

It is difficult not to obsessed by something when you are driving to the
hospital to pick up your daughter from A & E.

--
Tony the Dragon

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:31:23 +0000, Tony Dragon
said in
:

Allthough you will call this anecdotal, I have not had to dodge out of
the way of motorist driving on the pavement for as long as I can remember.
But I often have to dodge a pavement cyclist & just before Christmas my
daughter was knocked over by a pavement cyclist.

And as the figures show, you are many times more likely to be killed
or injured on the footway by a motor vehicle than by a cyclist.

What figures? I hope you are not "jumping to conclusions" from the
pedestrian casualty figures by collision location in RCGB 2007 (table
32), which does NOT distinguish between "footway" and "verge".

--
Matt B

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:49:18 +0000, "Just zis Guy, you know?"
wrote:

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:23:28 -0000, "pk" said
in :

Do you really think people have or take the time to read turgid reams of
guff like that?

Seems to me that attempts to render complex situations into
soundbytes don't actually illuminate the subject in any meaningful
way and tend to favour the zealots not those who would explore the
issue in depth, but then I grew up reading Tolkein so anything on
Usenet looks short to me.

Guy


and of course - I believe I am right in saying that you are considered
a thought-leader on usenet etc? Care to explain to those who don't
know?

judith

--

Many of the facts below in an article seem, on the face of it, to
suggest that helmets are not worthwhile. This could not be further
from the truth; helmets are an excellent idea. Children in particular
should wear them every time they get on a bike. The point is, although
there is no guarantee that a helmet will save your life if you come
off, it's 100% certain that your helmet won't save your life if you're
not wearing it. - Guy Chapman

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:44:21 +0000, "Just zis Guy, you know?"
wrote:

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:31:23 +0000, Tony Dragon
said in
:

Allthough you will call this anecdotal, I have not had to dodge out of
the way of motorist driving on the pavement for as long as I can remember.
But I often have to dodge a pavement cyclist & just before Christmas my
daughter was knocked over by a pavement cyclist.

And as the figures show, you are many times more likely to be killed
or injured on the footway by a motor vehicle than by a cyclist. So
yes, your anecdote indicates another outlier. Or perhaps people are
so obsessed by pavement cycling that they go out of their way to
remember it.

At the public policy level it is ignorable.

Guy

Any chance of an answer to these question - Guy?

How often do you see vehicles being driven along pavements where there
is a danger of them hitting a pedestrian?

How often do you see bikes riding along pavements where there is a
danger of hitting a pedestrian?

Do you think for the average pedestrian walking on a footpath - they
are more likely to be hit by a bike than by a vehicle?

Your problem is that you will only present or acknowledge "facts"
which back up your assertions.

You know very well that cyclists ride on pavements intentionally and
sometimes hit pedestrians. The figures which the DfT use for motor
vehicles hitting/killing pedestrians include those where a driver
loses control and then hits someone on the pavement *and* the verge.

You are not comparing like with like.

You will not acknowledge this case - and you insist that you are more
likely to be hit by a car on the pavement than by a bike.

Of course if I have misunderstood your position, and you would answer
the questions above then I am more than happy to accept that I am
wrong in what I have said about you.

As it is - you continue to come over as someone who is very
deceitful.

judith

--

Cyclists have been known to ride on the pavement and this occasionally
brings them into conflict with pedestrians. This conflict has been
known to cause injury and even, in very rare cases, death. (Guy
Chapman)