GMTB story: help wanted

Apparently the CTC has had some success in persuading GMTV to correct the grosser falsehoods quoted
by BeHIT, but they need more details about the fatality discussed. Does anybody know the name of the
child and / or date of the crash? I'm guessing it was Daniel Wise, but that is only a guess.

Thanks

--
Guy
===

WARNING: may contain traces of irony. Contents may settle after posting.
http://chapmancentral.demon.co.uk

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

> Apparently the CTC has had some success in persuading GMTV to correct the grosser falsehoods
> quoted by BeHIT, but they need more details about the fatality discussed. Does anybody know the
> name of the child and / or date of the crash? I'm guessing it was Daniel Wise, but that is only
> a guess.

No, I don't think it was.

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 15:28:09 -0000, Just zis Guy, you know?
<outlook.bugs@microsoft.com> wrote:

> Apparently the CTC has had some success in persuading GMTV to correct the grosser falsehoods
> quoted by BeHIT,

Some of the "Scary Stats" seem to have changed since I looked this morning, though the editing has
now left them repititious.

One says,

"Around three quarters of cyclists killed have major head injuries"

while another says,

"Around 70% of the cyclists killed on the road have major head injuries and over half of cyclists
injured have head injuries"

and yet another says,

"Head injuries, ranging from fatal skull fractures and brain damage to minor concussion and cuts,
are very common injuries to cyclists."

Colin
--

Colin Blackburn wrote:

> Some of the "Scary Stats" seem to have changed since I looked this morning, though the editing has
> now left them repititious.
>
> One says,
>
> "Around three quarters of cyclists killed have major head injuries"

Well, duh. Not many people die of a broken leg.

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 18:15:38 -0000, Colin Blackburn
<colin.blackburn@durham.ac.uk> wrote:

>Some of the "Scary Stats" seem to have changed since I looked this morning, though the editing has
>now left them repititious.

I sent a second follow-up:

"I note that some changes have been made to the cycle helmets page. But you've still left some
howlers in!

Before I start, may I ask you to see this web page <http://chapmancentral.demon.co.uk/We...ocuments/me-n-
u2> - it has a couple of pictures of me with my children on the school run. Looking at it you might
see why I am passionate about the idea of reducing danger at source rather than sticking-plaster
solutions which don't work.

You say: "The group most at risk from accidents, 11-15 year olds, would be forced to wear helmets
... If not, they could be arrested for breaking the law."

The problem here is that 90% of child cyclist injuries happen in offroad play. Unless the
legislation covers riding on private land - the equivalent of forcing use of hard hats and steel
toecap boots while doing DIY - the legislation will not address this, even if compulsory helmet
wearing did make a difference to injury rates.

Now here are some really scary stats:

- Road traffic crashes are the leading cause of death in children aged 4-16 in the UK (only a tiny
proportion of these deaths are cycling related).
- Research has shown that in crashes where drivers hit child pedestrians, the child pedestrian was
four times more likely to have taken avoiding action than the driver.
- Over 3,000 people are killed on the roads every year, 36,000 were seriously injured in 2002, and
police estimates put 90% of road traffic crashes down to driver error.

The source of danger to cyclists is not failure to wear helmets, it's careless drivers. Most drivers
overestimate their own skill, and most drivers drive according to their perception of risk to
themselves. In a modern car you are very well protected and the perceived risk of speeding, for
example, is very low. But as a former Transport Minister once put it: crashes are caused not by the
taking of large risks, but by the taking of small risks very large numbers of times.

The "scary stats" you quote also suggest logical fallacies.

The fact that 25 children died in 2001 (this is under a fifth, not a quarter by the way) is a
tragedy for all involved, but largely irrelevant to the issue of cycle helmets. Why? Independent
medical investigation recently showed that of 19 cyclists where cause of death was recorded as head
injury, 16 had other mortal injuries as well. The cases included helmeted and unhelmeted cyclists.
And this is not a surprise: the human skull is incredibly tough, substantially tougher than a 3/4"
thick bar of expanded polystyrene. It is also the perfect shape for resisting impact.

This goes to the heart of a fundamental flaw in many pro-compulsion arguments: the idea that
everybody who died while not wearing a helmet would have lived had they been wearing one, and that
everybody who survives while wearing a helmet would have died otherwise. This is simply
unsupportable. Anecdotal evidence is worthless (and shroud-waving highly distasteful) but consider
the following two cases: two experienced cyclists, both in their early seventies, both had crashes
where they went over the handlebars having hit a pothole, in neither case was a motor vehicle
involved. One died, the other survived with trivial injuries. The one who died was wearing a
helmet, the one who survived was not. Is this a reason for not wearing a helmet? And if not, then
why should anecdotes the other way round be treated as a reason not just to wear one, but to force
people to wear one?

There is a second fundamental flaw in pro-compulsion arguments. They are predicated on the idea that
the probability of crashing is unaffected by helmet use, which ignores the idea of risk
compensation. Indeed, most helmet compulsion campaigners repudiate the idea of risk compensation
despite the substantial body of evidence to support its existence - and small wonder, as it
undermines the very bedrock of their case. Risk compensation is the subconscious mechanism whereby
someone responds to a perceived improvement in their safety by increasing their propensity to risk-
taking. For example, taxi drivers in Germany in a fleet with a mixture of ABS and non-ABS equipped
cars were observed to drive faster and follow closer in the ABS equipped cars, with the result that
their crash rate was actually slightly higher than in the non-ABS cars. Similarly compulsory seat
belt wearing in the UK led to significant increases in pedestrian, cyclist and rear-seat passenger
injury rates. There are many other examples.

This is one possible reason why, in countries where helmet compulsion has been tried, the rate of
cyclist injuries per mile travelled never falls. The numbers cycling, however, always falls sharply.
Australia still has not reached its pre-law levels of cycling over a decade later, despite increases
in population. In New Zealand, doctors are campaigning for the repeal of the helmet laws because
they have had no measurable effect on injury rates but have drastically reduced cycling at a time of
sharply rising obesity and inactivity.

Finally, your "scary stats" appear to show the construction of a logical fallacy:

- Children account for about a third of the thousands injured, but this is meaningless without some
measure of exposure to risk or comparison with other risks.
- Around three quarters of cyclists killed have major head injuries, but this ignores the fact that
most also have other mortal injuries, and there is in any case no proof that helmets make the
difference between fatal and non-fatal injuries.
- Cycling accidents increase as children grow older and peak at around 16 years, again, meaningless
without a measure of exposure to risk - they could just be cycling more.
- Most cycling accidents happen in urban areas where most cycling takes place, from the annals of
the blindingly obvious, I suspect!
- For child cyclists, 90% of their accidents occur during the day, ignores the fact that 90% occur
off-road, which is a lot more relevant.
- Dangerous hours for cyclists are 3.00-6pm and 8-9am on weekdays, which is when people are cycling
to school or work and commuters and school-runners are tryign to shave precious seconds off their
congestion-infested journeys - can you imagine why this might have an effect?
- Head injuries, ranging from fatal skull fractures and brain damage to minor concussion and cuts,
are very common injuries to cyclists, is a gross misrepresentation suggesting as it does that
brain damage and concussion are the most likely rather than the least likely to occur; most of
thee injuries are in fact trivial - and a goodly number of these "head injuries" are to parts of
the head which are not covered by helmets, notably the jaw. Landing chin-first is definitely not
unheard-of. In any case "very common" is a gross exaggeration - the CTC has calculated that their
members ride for an average three and a half thousand years between serious crashes.
- Around 70% of the cyclists killed on the road have major head injuries and over half of cyclists
injured have head injuries, but no evidence is either offered or indeed available to prove that
helmets affect these proportions in any way.

The above all seems to be smoke-and-mirrors designed to give two messages: first that cycling is
dangerous, and second that helmets make it safe.

Neither is true.

The BMA says a regular cyclist will live around a decade longer than average, counting mortality
from all causes. Put another way, the benefits of cycling outweight the risks by at least 20:1.

And plotting the proportion of cyclist injuries which were head injuries in New Zealand, covering
the period when their helmet law was passed, it is not possible to see the year in which helmet
wearing rose from 43% to over 95%.

Helmet laws have only one repeatable effect: they deter cycling. Everywhere helmet laws have been
tried the numbers cycling have declined by between a quarter and a third. The major cause of risk to
cyclists, and to children in general, is careless driving. Another substantial cause of risk is
diseases connected with inactivity.

"Think of the children" means get on your bike, or if you won't do that, drive carefully. Guy
===
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://chapmancentral.demon.co.uk

"Just zis Guy, you know?" <outlook.bugs@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:b9tovvcr4lqg350466pht8vt3c9gep0vka@4ax.com...

> "I note that some changes have been made to the cycle helmets page. But you've still left some
> howlers in!

I have found, that if you want to see the more bizarre BHIT claims on line, this one still has all
sorts of claims, including the "22,500" head injuries claim. What was the actual number of children
injured in cycling accidents?

http://www.ridetotherace.com/bhit_leaflet.pdf

Perhaps you'd like to save it for future reference.

Zog The Undeniable wrote:

> Well, duh. Not many people die of a broken leg.

This very same thing came up in "Touching The Void" wot we went to see in the electric-type cinema
only last night. AT which point I felt like shouting "Ronnie Peterson did", but feared the rest of
the audience would have kicked me to deth, so refrained.

--

Dave Larrington - http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk/
===========================================================
Editor - British Human Power Club Newsletter
http://www.bhpc.org.uk/
===========================================================

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 10:10:49 +0000 (UTC), W K <hyagillot@tesco.net> wrote:

> I have found, that if you want to see the more bizarre BHIT claims on line, this one still has all
> sorts of claims, including the "22,500" head injuries claim. What was the actual number of
> children injured in cycling accidents?

According to the 2001 road accident casualty figure for child cyclists:

Killed: 25 KSI: 674 All severities: 5451

> http://www.ridetotherace.com/bhit_leaflet.pdf

Which also claims 50 child cyclist deaths per annum.

Colin
--

Dave Larrington wrote:
> Zog The Undeniable wrote:
>
>> Well, duh. Not many people die of a broken leg.
>
> This very same thing came up in "Touching The Void" wot we went to see in the electric-type cinema
> only last night.

The book and film made great play of "break your leg up there and you are dead" which I believed
until you look into it and find that quite a few people have broken their legs on some of the major
Himalayan peaks and made it down OK with partners' help, so its clearly not as terminal as Mr
Simpson would have us believe.

Tony

Tony Raven <junk@raven-family.com> wrote:

: The book and film made great play of "break your leg up there and you are dead" which I believed
: until you look into it and find that quite a few people have broken their legs on some of the
: major Himalayan peaks and made it down OK with partners' help, so its clearly not as terminal as
: Mr Simpson would have us believe.

True, but breaking you leg while in a crevice in a glacier when you partner has left you because he
thinks you are dead does tend to be fatal.

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org "Technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

Colin Blackburn <colin.blackburn@durham.ac.uk> wrote in message news:<opr1gcjqukm7pzdf@nntphost.dur.ac.uk>...

> According to the 2001 road accident casualty figure for child cyclists:
>
> Killed: 25 KSI: 674 All severities: 5451
>
> > http://www.ridetotherace.com/bhit_leaflet.pdf
>
> Which also claims 50 child cyclist deaths per annum.

Any idea where B**** get their figures, other than thin air?

--
Dave...

W K wrote:

> http://www.ridetotherace.com/bhit_leaflet.pdf

I would still *love* to ride some of that wearing one of my cotton caps, or even better, au naturel.
Feel the wind in your hair!

"Dave Kahn" <dkahn400@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:57db8bde.0401080742.34c0ca8f@posting.google.com...

> Any idea where B**** get their figures, other than thin air?

Thick people....

--
Guy
===

WARNING: may contain traces of irony. Contents may settle after posting.
http://chapmancentral.demon.co.uk

On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 18:08:55 +0000, Zog The Undeniable <ggg@hhh.net>
wrote:

>I would still *love* to ride some of that wearing one of my cotton caps, or even better, au
>naturel. Feel the wind in your hair!

It's been suggested that we have a urc ride which just purely by coincidence happens to run along
the route of the BeHIT ride...

Guy
===
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://chapmancentral.demon.co.uk

Arthur Clune wrote:
>
> True, but breaking you leg while in a crevice in a glacier when you partner has left you because
> he thinks you are dead does tend to be fatal.
>

<pedant>

He broke his leg well before the crevace incident. Its a good story but also at the end of the day
we have to take their word that that's what happened. When I first read the book, have
mountaineered many years ago, the thing that surprised me was that they both survived long enough
to have the accident.

As an aside one of the gems of climbing black humour is another group subsequently climbed another
route on the mountain which they named "Avoiding the Touch"

Tony