On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 21:00:08 +0100, "Tumbleweed"
<
[email protected]> wrote in message
<
[email protected]>:
>To say 'driving causes danger' is meaningless. So does cycling (even if
>there were no cars, cycling would be more dangerous than walking).
Motor traffic results in 10% of hospitalisations (i.e. other things
are dangerous too), but 50% of fatalities (i.e. the other things are
much less dangerous than motor traffic). Seems clear enough to me.
>Are you
>proposing to ban driving? If not, then want we need is safer driving *and*
>safer cycling, without some paranoid fantasy that all drivers are bad.
The point I'm making, and I thnk it is pretty clear, is that focusing
on injury mitigaiton for a small subset of injuries of a small subset
of victims is a poor way of reducing injury, when a reduction at
source would impact on all injuries of a much wider set of victims.
Offroad cycling seems not to be extraordinarily dangerous, barely on
the radar as a source of risk; the serious accidents mostly seem to
happen on road, and almost all of the fatal ones involve motor
traffic. The number of people killed and injured by cyclists is tiny,
even though a lot of cyclists use pedestrian facilities which are not
designed for them. In the Netherlands cyclists are appallingly
undisciplined and the same remains true. The danger arrives with the
first motor vehicle.
Of course we make compromises, like restricting pedestrians to
footways and requiring traffic to act in a more or less homogeneous
way. Stunt riding on the road is selfish. It also involves no higher
risk than doing the same thing on a hard play area /unless there is a
motor vehicle around/. The compromises are almost all made for the
benefit of motorised traffic. Restricting pedestrians to footways,
blaming them for thier own misfortune if they are off the footway,
requiring them to defer to motor traffic before venturing off the
footway to get to the other side of the road - that is not for their
benefit. It's to allow the drivers to proceed at more than walking
pace without killing too many people.
>Like it or not, roads are for cars as well as bikes, so the kamikaze kids
>(who by the way are also a danger to you and I and little old ladies when
>they cycle like that on the pavements) have to do their bit as well.
Of course - they're kids, behaving like kids. Look at the fatality
rate of young male drivers and motorcyclists! It's hardly a surprise
to find risk-taking behaviour exhibited by young males.
You want me to dilute and possibly lose the point I'm trying to make
in order to draw in a minority case which I haven't even observed.
No, thanks. Most of the dead cyclists are adults, and most of them
are not to blame for their own downfall. It is safe to say that fewer
cycliusts would be killed and injured if driver behaviour was
modified, and if cyclists helped the drivers modify their behaviour by
riding according to the principles we know and love. Both these
points I make. Suggesting that childrens' injuries could be reduced
if children stopped behaving like children adds nothing to that
argument.
>Why
>should my driving be *unreasonably* restricted because the parents and
>schools dont teach safe cycling, or perhaps more importantly dont monitor it
>afterwards.
Amazing, isn't, it how any restriction of driving is *unreasonable?*
Ahat's *unreasonable* here? Wanting to drive around an area where
kids play at a speed higher than will allow you to cope with kids
playing?
>I stick to the speed limit on that road (in fact its almost
>impossible not to) so the issue isnt speed unless you propose everyone do
>5mph, its the lunatic kids. In other areas, its the lunatic drivers, hence
>my point about both drivers and cyclists needing to drive more
>carefully..that encompasses speed but much more.
>Certainly we should reduce the danger we pose, but the danger can only be
>reduced to a certain level.
That is the appeaser's cry. The danger can only be reduced to a
certain level, with the implication that the level is not much lower
than the current level. But the vast majority of illegal acts by
drivers are never challenged or punished. Most acts of careless
driving go unpunished, so we are incensed when the only ones which do
get punished are those which end in death - and are still treated as
the technical offence rather than as a violent crime.
>Simply equating danger with speed is facile, re
>your comments about needing to slow down when you dont know the people you
>are talking about and how fast and in what way they drive.
>They may be like
>that old guy in the US (seen on video a year or so ago) who ploughed into a
>crowded pedestianised area and kept on going. He was driving quite slowly
>(so apparently satisfied your criteria to drive slower) unfortunately he
>didnt stop or take action to move out of the way of the people.
You are reading far, far too much into one sentence. The comment is:
if you really care about children's safety, slow down and drive more
carefully. That is a very short sentence. If you wnt me to expand it
into a treatise on the relationship between speed, fataality,careless
driving, child behaviour - well, you're not going to get it.
Your example fails because the sentence also contains "and drive more
carefully".
But what you are actually trying to say, unless I'm much mistaken, is
that "speed doesn't kill". And that's not going in either. Excessive
speed (mitigated by "slow down") is responsible for a third of crashes
and is a necessary subsidiary cause of many more. The probability of
fatality rises with the fourth power of speed. There is no possible
doubt that, all other things being equal, if everybody drove slower
there would be fewer deaths on the roads.
All of which is very interesting but tangential to the point, which is
that safety is not a matter of making the victims wear protective
equipment, it's a matter of everybody working to minimise danger,
particularly those who are bringing the most danger in the first
place.
Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University
