Re: Ontario Helmet Law being pushed through

Frank Krygowski wrote in part:

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R15757 wrote:

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Yes, that's what it seems to _me_.

Is anyone else impressed with that information source? ;-)

Oh poor Frank, you seem to have missed the point again.
My numbers are guesses, your numbers are guesses. But
you are trying to pass yours off as data.

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Right now you are claiming 72 million Americans
ride 40 hours per year.

What I am _actually_ doing is quoting the data that the National

Safety

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Council posts on its web page. They determine participation in

sports

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and activities by referring to national surveys, among other things.
They determine fatalities from the national Fatal Accident Reporting
System. They determine ER visits from the National Electronic Injury

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Surveillance System. These are the best numbers available in this

country.

Maybe you can post a link, because the only thing I can find on the
Safety Council's site is the claim that "an estimated 57 million
Americans ride bikes."[1] I guess you were looking at a different
"factsheet" than I saw. Man that really sucks when the same agency has
contradictory information on different "factsheets" on the same site! I
guess what we do there is choose the one we like the best, eh?

Quoted message said:

Once again, this data indicates that the number of ER visits due to
bicycling are only a little higher than the number due to beds and
bedclothes.

Have to take your word for it I guess, because I can find no mention of
this alleged comparison on that site or any other. A search for
"bedclothes" on the NSC site returned 0 results. Got a link?

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The data indicates that cycling causes far fewer ER visits
per hour than common, low risk activities, and that the risk of

fatality

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is even lower.

STOP RIGHT THERE. The DATA indicates no such thing about per-hour
injuries or fatalities or per-hour anything. Stop shoveling that sh**
around here.

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In other words, although you may hate to hear it, cycling is really

very

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safe!

I understand that your prejudice makes you detest this data. But at
this point, I'd say it's up to YOU to prove that the data collected

by

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these national experts - and by experts in other countires - is

faulty.

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So stop with the desparate protestation, Robert. And stop trying to

get

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_me_ to prove the National Safety Council's figures are wrong.

National Safety Council...Are you just going to forget now that you had
been shoveling that car fire chart and trying to pass it off as "data?"
Right down the memory hole with that, eh? Good, at least we're making
some progress.

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If you
want to show cycling is horribly dangerous, it's time _you_ came up

with

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some real numbers - some numbers that have been accepted by someone
other than a "lowly bicycle messenger," as you describe yourself.

I have the same data that you have. It does not indicate that cycling
"is really very safe." Sorry.

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And as you poetically put it, those numbers should be based on

something

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other than "jack squat."

Cycling is NOT very dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it is.

Riding in TRAFFIC is dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it isn't.

You should thank me Frank. I'm helping you make your little helmet
argument more coherent. Right now it fails because you took it down a
dead-end. You are dependent on a premise that can not be proved with
the statistics you provide, no matter how much you insist that it can.

Actually, not only is your premise unprovable, but it appears to be
false.

Robert

Quoted message said:

Frank Krygowski wrote in part:

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I understand that your prejudice makes you detest this data. But at
this point, I'd say it's up to YOU to prove that the data collected by
these national experts - and by experts in other countires - is faulty.

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So stop with the desparate protestation, Robert. And stop trying to get
_me_ to prove the National Safety Council's figures are wrong.

....

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Cycling is NOT very dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it is.

Riding in TRAFFIC is dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it isn't.

I'm sorry, Robert, but I've been giving data from various respected
sources. When I compare the numbers to similar numbers for other "safe"
activities, cycling looks very good indeed.

Re-read my paragraph quoted at the top of this post. You still have not
come up with anything significant to indicate a high degree of danger in
cycling.

Your personal riding, as a bike messenger, may indeed be dangerous.
That wouldn't surprise me. You may be quite afraid of traffic. That
would not be without precedent.

But it's a mistake to claim your dangers and your fears are applicable
to the rest of the world's cyclists. If you want to make such a claim,
it's up to you to do the legwork to prove it. Come up with some
appropriate numbers, citing sources that are at least as authoritative
as those I gave.

Until you do that, you're not contributing anything of value.

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

Quoted message said:

You should thank me Frank. I'm helping you make your little helmet
argument more coherent. Right now it fails because you took it down a
dead-end. You are dependent on a premise that can not be proved with
the statistics you provide, no matter how much you insist that it can.

Indeed, that has been the issue throughout this thread. Why do you think
that Frank, and others, have descended to this level, where no one takes
anything they write seriously? It's because of their inability to prove
their premises. They base their position wholly on unprovable premises,
then demand that others provide evidence to disprove the unprovable
premise (then throwing a hissy-fit when no one will play their game).

Steven M. Scharf said:

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You should thank me Frank. I'm helping you make your little helmet
argument more coherent. Right now it fails because you took it down a
dead-end. You are dependent on a premise that can not be proved with
the statistics you provide, no matter how much you insist that it can.

Indeed, that has been the issue throughout this thread. Why do you think
that Frank, and others, have descended to this level, where no one takes
anything they write seriously? It's because of their inability to prove
their premises. They base their position wholly on unprovable premises,
then demand that others provide evidence to disprove the unprovable
premise (then throwing a hissy-fit when no one will play their game).

I'm sorry, Steven, but I'm afraid you've got things precisely backwards.

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 06:23:36 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

You should thank me Frank. I'm helping you make your little helmet
argument more coherent. Right now it fails because you took it down a
dead-end. You are dependent on a premise that can not be proved with
the statistics you provide, no matter how much you insist that it can.

Quoted message said:

Indeed, that has been the issue throughout this thread. Why do you think
that Frank, and others, have descended to this level, where no one takes
anything they write seriously? It's because of their inability to prove
their premises.

As opposed to Scharf, who - er - flat refuses to prove his premises,
to the extent of killfiling those who ask him to do so.

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They base their position wholly on unprovable premises,
then demand that others provide evidence to disprove the unprovable
premise (then throwing a hissy-fit when no one will play their game).

Scharf once again reverses the burden of proof. How would it be if
governments were to mandate the use of aluminium foil deflector
beanies to protect against mind control rays, and the promoters of
same were to require sceptics to provide referenced sources to
disprove their efficacy?

I have yet to see any credible evidence that cycling is unusually
dangerous or unusually productive of head injuries, and I am still
waiting for any of those who dispute the sceptical position to cite a
single pro-helmet study which is immune from self-selection bias and
other confounding factors.

The most tiresome thing about helmet zealots is their inability to
differentiate between agnostics and atheists.

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

Quoted message said:

Frank Krygowski said:

I'm sorry, Robert, but I've been giving data from various respected
sources.

What "data" have you given? About the only thing you have posted that
could conceivably be called data in this debate (about the relative
danger of cycling) is the NSC number that there are 72 million
participants in the US, which you then plugged into the NEISS data to
get an injury-per-participant number. Notwithstanding the fact that the
72 million figure is another complete shot in the dark...

Or, to put it more honestly: You don't like the fact that biking checks
out to be quite safe, so you choose to disbelieve numbers that say
otherwise!

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Re-read my paragraph quoted at the top of this post. You still have not
come up with anything significant to indicate a high degree of danger in
cycling.

That is not my purpose. What I am trying to get across is that the
"data" you are using to "prove" the relative safety of cycling is
bogus, useless, or irrelevant.

.... or, at least, that you don't happen to like it! It's odd that you
continue to claim this without producing any evidence!

So you sound like an idiot when, in

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response to my criticism of your "statistics," you demand that I
produce more data to prove cycling is relatively dangerous, as if any
data had been introduced in the first place! Earth to Frank: THERE IS
NO DATA. Got it?

Absolutely false. I'm giving data. The fact that you choose not to
believe it is a separate problem!

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However, if I wanted to suggest that cycling is "not safe" or whatever
you want to say, by cherry-picking stats Krygowski-style, it would be
easier to do than to suggest with numbers that cycling is relatively
safe. There are plenty of stats if I wanted to go that route.

:-) You can't prove that without going that route! However, I'm
_really_ puzzled by your dedication to "proving" that cycling is
dangerous. This is very odd behavior in someone who claims to like
cycling. Is it a way of "proving" that you're unusually macho - that
you're man enough to do really, really risky things?

I would

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start with the NEISS (one million injured cyclists seeking medical
attention each year);

The paper in front of me says 586,808 instead. National Safety Council
Accident Facts, 1997 edition, page 118. Who has the misprint?

add Forester's claim that beginning cyclists are

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5 times as likely to wreck and hurt themselves as experienced riders;

I think you'd better give a real citation for that, and make clear
whether that's John's rough guess, or something that's actually derived
from reliable data!

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and throw in Kifer's finding that cyclists are 33 times more likely to
get injured (on a per-mile basis) than drivers of cars.[2] 33 times!
How does that jibe with your "cycling is about as safe as driving" act?

:-) Actually, I worked with Ken on the design of that survey, as did
several other folks. But please don't skip the statements he gives that
give the proper context! For example: "This is a very small number of
people for a survey of this kind, and it is by no means a random survey.
Therefore, the data should not be considered to represent the entire
population of cyclists."

Also "As you can see next, many of these people were just skinned
up...Note that 2/3rds of the cyclists did not have any injury at all.
Only 13 claimed injuries as severe as a puncture wound, broken bone,
concussion, or multiple injuries. There would be 40,000 miles, 64,000
kilometers, 2,800 hours, and 17.5 years between those kinds of injuries."

To clarify: I don't think anyone claims you're not likely to skin a knee
eventually, if you ride a bike enough. (I'll admit, I did once skin my
knee. Once. In the last 30-odd years of adult cycling.)

So if you're afraid of skinned knees, don't cycle. And if that's your
message, we're in agreement!

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... I
think you are doing BEGINNING city riders a grave disservice with the
suggestion that riding in the city is not dangerous. It is, plenty
dangerous, especially for beginners, especially in traffic.

Perhaps this is the heart of our dispute: You seem to think that
beginners are underestimating the danger of cycling. I think they are
overestimating the danger. I've heard too many people say, regarding my
bike commuting, "Oh, isn't that dangerous??"

You seem to be concentrating on cycling in traffic. Personally, I think
most raw beginners do relatively little cycling in traffic. What I've
seen is a natural, logical progression, where most beginners seek out
quieter surroundings, and gradually learn to handle more traffic.

I find traffic cycling to be an easily learnable skill, _especially_ for
those who already know the rules of the road. You seem to view it as
some semi-mystical art, where rules are nearly useless and telepathy
counts more than traffic lights.

Trouble is, I'm the guy with the data!

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Your personal riding, as a bike messenger, may indeed be dangerous.

Compared to touring the countryside, sure. But compared to experienced
"club cyclists," my accident rate is apparently many many times LOWER
than theirs even with their most optimistic estimates. Why?

Assuming that is, in fact, true, there could be many reasons.

I think any individual's cycling safety is likely influenced by some
comparison between his behavior and the environment in which he chooses
to ride. Speaking loosely, if you ride in an environment twice as
dangerous (however that would be measured) as a typical "club cyclist"
but use three times the skill (ditto) you'd actually be ahead. And, to
give you a compliment, that may well be the case.

But, as is mentioned in the paper "Stepping Stones..." by Malcolm
Wardlaw http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/SteppingStones.htm
just because one activity (or style of cycling) is more dangerous than
another, it doesn't mean it carries significant danger in any absolute
sense. For the numerically literate: Doubling an infinitesmal still
yields an infinitesmal.

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That wouldn't surprise me. You may be quite afraid of traffic.

You're an idiot. If I was afraid of traffic I wouldn't be able to get
out of bed in the morning. What I have is a RESPECT for the dangers of
traffic, which you apparently lack. Not only do you seem to lack
respect for traffic and its dangers, you are hell bent on passing this
lack of respect on to your students.

Really, there _are_ people who engage in behavior that frightens them.
Some do it professionally. You may be one of those.

But the idea that I have no respect for traffic is a fiction. Ditto the
idea that I teach others to disrespect traffic. Those ideas are flat
wrong. Sorry.

Quoted message said:

1. "An estimated 57 million Americans ride bikes..."
www.nsc.org/library/facts/bicycle.htm. I was unable to locate Frank's
"data" that there are 72 million cyclists in the US on the NSC site,
and Frank has refused to provide a link.

National Safety Council, Accident Facts, 1997 edition, page 118:
Bicycle riding, 72,500,000 participants. More than twice as many as
basketball (30,100,000), but with fewer injuries. And to be counted as
a "participant" in cycling, they required _more_ cycling than they did
for basketball playing. If anything, it sounds like they underestimated
the number of cyclists.

And again, the number of recorded cyclist injuries (586,808) sounds
high, and perhaps it is, in a way. For example, it's higher than the
number of injuries caused by beds (466,464) or by tables (311,208).

But if your house has both a bed and a table, watch out! You may be
safer out riding your bike! ;-)

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Frank Krygowski said:

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So you sound like an idiot when, in response to my criticism of your
"statistics," you demand that I produce more data to prove cycling is
relatively dangerous, as if any data had been introduced in the first
place! Earth to Frank: THERE IS NO DATA. Got it?

Absolutely false. I'm giving data. The fact that you choose not to
believe it is a separate problem!

To be fair, if you're talking about the "Failure Associates" data, I'm not
really a big fan of that table either, which gives absolutely no sources or
methodology.

--
Benjamin Lewis

Evelyn the dog, having undergone further modification, pondered the
significance of short-person behavior in pedal-depressed panchromatic
resonance and other highly ambient domains... "Arf", she said.

rec.bicycles.misc
Re: Ontario Helmet Law being pushed through

[email hidden] wrote:

<snip>

Quoted message said:

response to my criticism of your "statistics," you demand that I
produce more data to prove cycling is relatively dangerous, as if any
data had been introduced in the first place! Earth to Frank: THERE IS
NO DATA. Got it?

This is one of the most amusing aspects of this thread, the creation of
false premises, from questionable or non-existent data and statistics,
then the demands for citations to disprove the premises. It's all
bass-ackwards, yet Frank wonders why no one believes him.

<snip>

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5 times as likely to wreck and hurt themselves as experienced riders;
and throw in Kifer's finding that cyclists are 33 times more likely

to

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get injured (on a per-mile basis) than drivers of cars.[2] 33 times!

At least all of these statistics are actually true, though they can be
misleading.

<snip>

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respect for traffic and its dangers, you are hell bent on passing

this

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lack of respect on to your students.

This is what I don't like. It's one thing for someone to ignore all the
statistics and studies, and willingly take risks on his own; there is
nothing wrong with this. It's another thing entirely to try to mislead
others into adopting the same behavior.

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Uh, hold on a sec there Frank, you were the one making claims, and

it's

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up to YOU to prove them, which you most certainly have not.

It's like a very religious person demanding proof from an atheist that
god doesn't exist, when it's really up to the religous person to supply
the proof that god does exist.

I should point out that the original 72 million number came from Time
Magazine, and was for 1983. In 1991, they stated 93 million
recreational cyclists.

I think that one good thing that has come out of all this is the
elimination of the "driving helmet" argument, since all the statistics
show cycling far more dangerous than driving, on a per mile basis.

Benjamin Lewis said:

To be fair, if you're talking about the "Failure Associates" data, I'm not
really a big fan of that table either, which gives absolutely no sources or
methodology.

You're right, they don't give sources or methodology. The table was
actually in an article about fires in cars, and it was meant to show
that risk in context of other various risks.

Since "FAA" is a commercial enterprise, we'd probably have to pay to
find out what their methods and sources were. However, while I wouldn't
claim it's bulletproof, I see no more reason to doubt their "bicycling"
figure than I see to doubt their "swimming" figure. And this specialty
risk assessment firm would have to off by a factor of four before
bicycling were shown to be as dangerous as swimming.

Furthermore, even if the FAA numbers were off by a factor of four, we're
still talking about very low risk. For more on this, see
http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/SteppingStones.htm

Also, I've seen data from other countries that were at least somewhat in
line with that FAA data. Australian data claimed about 0.41 cyclist
fatalities per million hours use. Worse than FAA, but still better than
either Australian or American data for motoring, per hour; still much
better than Australian data for pedestrians; and still, very low in any
absolute sense!

There's more discussion of all of this at De Clarke's site
http://www.ucolick.org/~de/AltTrans/roadsafety.html

Overall, I agree that data on cycling's per-hour risk of serious injury
or death are not likely to be precisely known; yet, I've never seen
_any_ data that shows the risk to be high compared with very tame
activities.

We can quibble over the numbers, and how solid they are. But quibbling
aside, cycling is NOT very dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it is.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

On 17 Jan 2005 15:29:49 -0800, "[email hidden]"
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

This is one of the most amusing aspects of this thread, the creation of
false premises, from questionable or non-existent data and statistics,
then the demands for citations to disprove the premises. It's all
bass-ackwards, yet Frank wonders why no one believes him.

There you go again - you describe the fundamental flaws in the
pro-helmet lobby's argument, and then ascribe them to the sceptics.
To those, in fact, who are doing no more than asking precisely the
same question of the zealots, who after all must bear the burden of
proof, being those proposing intervention. But in the strange world
of Scharf this counts for nothing...

Quoted message said:

This is what I don't like. It's one thing for someone to ignore all the
statistics and studies, and willingly take risks on his own; there is
nothing wrong with this. It's another thing entirely to try to mislead
others into adopting the same behavior.

Yet you seem to find much less problem with the helmet lobby
haranguing those whose review of the evidence leads them to conclude
that the benefit is marginal at best. I wonder why?

And what of the studies showing helmeted cyclists as more likely to
die? Of course, they count for nothing: this is ScharfWorld[tm] after
all, and the burden of proof is reversed so the sceptics have to
disprove the zealots' case, rather than the zealots having to prove
it.

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It's like a very religious person demanding proof from an atheist that
god doesn't exist, when it's really up to the religous person to supply
the proof that god does exist.

Precisely. And your fundamental problem is that you have the
identities of the religious person and the atheist mixed up. Me, I'm
a devout agnostic on this (as anyone who sees me riding around will
surely know).

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

Frank Krygowski wrote in part:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

So you sound like an idiot when, in
response to my criticism of your "statistics," you demand that I
produce more data to prove cycling is relatively dangerous, as if

any

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

data had been introduced in the first place! Earth to Frank: THERE

IS

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NO DATA. Got it?

Absolutely false. I'm giving data. The fact that you choose not to

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believe it is a separate problem!

OK. I'm going to give you some data now. 42. 15 trillion. 8-point-1.
This clearly shows that cycling is 428.3 times more deadly per hour
than driving.
What?? You don't believe my data??? Well, that's your problem I guess!!

Quoted message said:

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However, if I wanted to suggest that cycling is "not safe" or

whatever

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you want to say, by cherry-picking stats Krygowski-style, it would

be

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easier to do than to suggest with numbers that cycling is

relatively

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safe. There are plenty of stats if I wanted to go that route.

:-) You can't prove that without going that route! However, I'm
_really_ puzzled by your dedication to "proving" that cycling is
dangerous. This is very odd behavior in someone who claims to like
cycling. Is it a way of "proving" that you're unusually macho - that

Quoted message said:

you're man enough to do really, really risky things?

I would

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start with the NEISS (one million injured cyclists seeking medical
attention each year);

The paper in front of me says 586,808 instead. National Safety

Council

Quoted message said:

Accident Facts, 1997 edition, page 118. Who has the misprint?

I said "seeking medical attention." The NEISS estimates
a half million seeking outpatient treatment in addition to the half
million ER visits.

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add Forester's claim that beginning cyclists are

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5 times as likely to wreck and hurt themselves as experienced

riders;

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I think you'd better give a real citation for that, and make clear
whether that's John's rough guess, or something that's actually

derived

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from reliable data!

Forester, Bicycle Transportation. pp. 41-46 has this discussion if I
remember correctly. It is "John's rough guess" based on the best data
available, which is not very good, very outdated and suspect as usual,
although the effect of experience is obvious in the numbers as well as
real life.

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...To clarify: I don't think anyone claims you're not likely to skin

a knee

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eventually, if you ride a bike enough. (I'll admit, I did once skin

my

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knee. Once. In the last 30-odd years of adult cycling.)

So if you're afraid of skinned knees, don't cycle. And if that's

your

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message, we're in agreement!

Skinned knees. That's not the language of respect. I'm talking about
getting bludgeoned by a car.

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... I
think you are doing BEGINNING city riders a grave disservice with

the

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suggestion that riding in the city is not dangerous. It is, plenty
dangerous, especially for beginners, especially in traffic.

Perhaps this is the heart of our dispute: You seem to think that
beginners are underestimating the danger of cycling. I think they

are

Quoted message said:

overestimating the danger. I've heard too many people say, regarding

my

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bike commuting, "Oh, isn't that dangerous??"

You seem to be concentrating on cycling in traffic. Personally, I

think

Quoted message said:

most raw beginners do relatively little cycling in traffic. What

I've

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seen is a natural, logical progression, where most beginners seek out

Quoted message said:

quieter surroundings, and gradually learn to handle more traffic.

I find traffic cycling to be an easily learnable skill, _especially_

for

Quoted message said:

those who already know the rules of the road. You seem to view it as

Quoted message said:

some semi-mystical art, where rules are nearly useless and telepathy
counts more than traffic lights.

The heart of our dispute is that I know that following rules and
principles of traffic is just the tip of the iceberg. But you are under
the impression that it is pretty much the whole iceberg.

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Trouble is, I'm the guy with the data!

Oh, nobody's buying that anymore.

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Your personal riding, as a bike messenger, may indeed be dangerous.

Compared to touring the countryside, sure. But compared to

experienced

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"club cyclists," my accident rate is apparently many many times

LOWER

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than theirs even with their most optimistic estimates. Why?

Assuming that is, in fact, true, there could be many reasons.

I think any individual's cycling safety is likely influenced by some
comparison between his behavior and the environment in which he

chooses

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to ride. Speaking loosely, if you ride in an environment twice as
dangerous (however that would be measured) as a typical "club

cyclist"

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but use three times the skill (ditto) you'd actually be ahead. And,

to

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give you a compliment, that may well be the case.

It's not about skill level. It's an attitude of respect for the dangers
of traffic derived from experience that gets me through day after day.

Quoted message said:

But, as is mentioned in the paper "Stepping Stones..." by Malcolm
Wardlaw http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/SteppingStones.htm
just because one activity (or style of cycling) is more dangerous

than

Quoted message said:

another, it doesn't mean it carries significant danger in any

absolute

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sense. For the numerically literate: Doubling an infinitesmal still
yields an infinitesmal.

As I've said before: If you don't take care of the .01 you can forget
about the 99.99. That's the big problem with cycling in traffic--only
takes one time getting bludgeoned by a car to ruin your whole life.
Must respect this reality.

Quoted message said:

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That wouldn't surprise me. You may be quite afraid of traffic.

You're an idiot. If I was afraid of traffic I wouldn't be able to

get

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out of bed in the morning. What I have is a RESPECT for the dangers

of

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traffic, which you apparently lack. Not only do you seem to lack
respect for traffic and its dangers, you are hell bent on passing

this

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lack of respect on to your students.

Really, there _are_ people who engage in behavior that frightens

them.

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Some do it professionally. You may be one of those.

But the idea that I have no respect for traffic is a fiction. Ditto

the

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idea that I teach others to disrespect traffic. Those ideas are flat

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wrong. Sorry.

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1. "An estimated 57 million Americans ride bikes..."
www.nsc.org/library/facts/bicycle.htm. I was unable to locate

Frank's

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"data" that there are 72 million cyclists in the US on the NSC

site,

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and Frank has refused to provide a link.

National Safety Council, Accident Facts, 1997 edition, page 118:
Bicycle riding, 72,500,000 participants. More than twice as many as
basketball (30,100,000), but with fewer injuries. And to be counted

as

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a "participant" in cycling, they required _more_ cycling than they

did

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for basketball playing. If anything, it sounds like they

underestimated

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the number of cyclists.

And again, the number of recorded cyclist injuries (586,808) sounds
high, and perhaps it is, in a way. For example, it's higher than the

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number of injuries caused by beds (466,464) or by tables (311,208).

But if your house has both a bed and a table, watch out! You may be
safer out riding your bike! ;-)

Frank you should be totally ashamed of yourself for peddling these
ridiculous per-participant numbers. Even if they were correct, which
they almost certainly are not, they would be completely useless for our
purposes.
Right??? You're either being dishonest, hoping nobody will notice that
your "data" is irrelevant, or you're quite stupid.

So, what do you think the PER-HOUR injury rate for "bedclothes" is? And
how does it compare to cycling?

Robert

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Frank Krygowski wrote in part:
I'm giving data. The fact that you choose not to

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believe it is a separate problem!

OK. I'm going to give you some data now. 42. 15 trillion. 8-point-1.
This clearly shows that cycling is 428.3 times more deadly per hour
than driving.
What?? You don't believe my data??? Well, that's your problem I

guess!!

:-) So, I guess we're dealing with someone who _seriously_ believes
that the numbers he invents, or gives with no explanation or citation,
are just as good as numbers from places like the National Safety
Council, the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, etc.!

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I think you'd better give a real citation for that, and make clear
whether that's John's rough guess, or something that's actually

derived

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from reliable data!

Forester, Bicycle Transportation. pp. 41-46 has this discussion if I
remember correctly. It is "John's rough guess" based on the best data
available, which is not very good...

If it's John's rough guess, then while admittedly better than your
rough guess, it may not be correct. And five times an infinitesmal is
_still_ an infinitesmal, after all!

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Frank you should be totally ashamed of yourself for peddling these
ridiculous per-participant numbers. Even if they were correct, which
they almost certainly are not, they would be completely useless for

our

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purposes.

Robert, I'm just giving the numbers I've found, as measured by usually
reliable sources. I don't doubt there's uncertainty and error in them.
But if they are so grossly in error as you pretend, you certainly
should be capable of finding evidence of that, as well as better
numbers. And I mean _real_ evidence and numbers, not numbers you pull
out of your... paranoia.

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Right??? You're either being dishonest, hoping nobody will notice

that

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your "data" is irrelevant, or you're quite stupid.

My quotations are perfectly honest. The data is the best I've been
able to find. I've given detailed citations. And I'll let others
judge for themselves where the stupidity lies.

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So, what do you think the PER-HOUR injury rate for "bedclothes" is?

And

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how does it compare to cycling?

:-) Why don't you use that as _your_ turn? Give us the number, with a
proper citation for its source.
Perhaps you can succeed in making bedclothes sound scary, too!

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Right??? You're either being dishonest, hoping nobody will notice

that

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your "data" is irrelevant, or you're quite stupid.

Frank has a very long history of both being dishonest, and of
presenting incorrect, irrelevant data.

I do not believe he is stupid. He believes that he will persuade people
to his point of view by using such data. For the most part he has been
unsuccessful, as most people in rec.bicycles.misc are well aware of
what he does. However there are people that lack the ability to think
critically, and things like the furniture injuries, etc., do have an
effect on such people. There are also newcomers that don't realize his
pattern of lies and distortions.

Fortunately, there are those of us that stick around to make others
well aware of the facts.

[email hidden said:

"]
Frank has a very long history of both being dishonest, and of
presenting incorrect, irrelevant data.

Scharf has a history of making baseless assertions and then, purely because he has made them, believes in their veracity.

[email hidden said:

"]
I do not believe he is stupid. He believes that he will persuade people
to his point of view by using such data. For the most part he has been
unsuccessful, as most people in rec.bicycles.misc are well aware of
what he does. However there are people that lack the ability to think
critically, and things like the furniture injuries, etc., do have an
effect on such people. There are also newcomers that don't realize his
pattern of lies and distortions.

Fortunately, there are those of us that stick around to make others
well aware of the facts.

I think that the writer (Scharf) is totaly deluded and is suffering from delusions of grandeur - he claims to have a superior ability for critical thinking whilst all the while what he writes shows the opposite. He has a narcissistic personality disorder.

On 21 Jan 2005 18:12:22 -0800, "[email hidden]"
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

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Frank has a very long history of both being dishonest, and of
presenting incorrect, irrelevant data.

Evidence? Or is this just the usual Scharf "Frank disagrees with me
therefore Frank is a liar" [censored]?

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

I think Steven has given up any attempt at posting facts. He's tried
from time to time, but his success rate has been quite low. He keeps
getting things wrong.

This explains, I think, why he's taken to posting only vague,
unsustainable opinions.

I think Steven has given up any attempt at posting facts. He's tried
from time to time, but his success rate has been quite low. He keeps
getting things wrong.

This explains, I think, why he's taken to posting only vague,
unsustainable opinions.

[email hidden said:

"]I think Steven has given up any attempt at posting facts. He's tried
from time to time, but his success rate has been quite low. He keeps
getting things wrong.

This explains, I think, why he's taken to posting only vague,
unsustainable opinions.

What's that Frank? Steven has "given up any attempt at posting facts."
I'd suggest that, from what I've seen, Steven hasn't even started with any attempt at the facts - so how can he have given up what he hasn't even started?

What I've noticed in many of Steven's posts is a certain dishonest rhetorical device - he will make a few statements (which are not contentious) and these statements seem designed to seek and gain agreement from the reader. The result of these fairly uncontentious statements is that the reader will likely agree with these statements , or at least not find any reasons to fault or disagree and following a string of such statements the reader inevitably lowers his guard. At this point a statement which would, if stated right at the start, be rejected or treated with a healthy dose of cautious skepticism, is more likely to fly in undetected, under the radar.

As a example of this device in action is in apparent in Stevens attempt to dismiss the emphasis and promotion of helmets. He made the statement "It's in one ear and out the other" as if to suggest that all the emphasis and promotion of helmets doesn't make one iota of difference. Leading up to that wild sweeping conclusion (a non sequiter - as it turns out) he made a few few statments to the effect that there had been a large effort and attention given to helmet promotion - Steven opened with a string of statements which undoubtedly would find agreement with many readers and then leapt to the conclusion that all this promotional effort and attention regarding helmets, would not register or influence anyone!

This rhetoric device can be used intentionally in order to deceive, but it's inveterate use also springs from the existence of sloppy thinking in the first place. The latter fits for Steven, rather than the former?

Roger

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Right??? You're either being dishonest, hoping nobody will notice

that

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your "data" is irrelevant, or you're quite stupid.

Frank has a very long history of both being dishonest, and of
presenting incorrect, irrelevant data.

Assertion without proof. Do you call everyone you disagree with, or don't
like dishonest?

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I do not believe he is stupid. He believes that he will persuade people
to his point of view by using such data.

Persuasion through use of data? Sinister indeed.

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For the most part he has been
unsuccessful, as most people in rec.bicycles.misc are well aware of what
he does.

Based on independently verified surveys, no doubt.

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However there are people that lack the ability to think
critically

Alas, I'm apparently one of them, according to Mr. Scharf.

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and things like the furniture injuries, etc., do have an
effect on such people.

Those of us without critical thinking skills believe furniture injuries
have an effect on everyone who has one. Furthermore, we think that the
risk of furniture injuries, or pedestrian injuries, and our response to
that risk, might have something to say about the risk of bicycle injuries
and our response to those.

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There are also newcomers that don't realize his
pattern of lies and distortions.

Poor newcomers - they might read what he writes, instead of what you
believe.

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Fortunately, there are those of us that stick around to make others well
aware of the facts.

Difficult to do without actually detailing any facts.