Hope survives!

There is hope yet...I saw no less than 6 bikes parked at a
school today. Kids are riding.
--
Rick Onanian

 

"Rick Onanian" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> There is hope yet...I saw no less than 6 bikes parked at a
> school today. Kids are riding.
> --
> Rick Onanian

You are the optimist. Six bikes at a school where there are
- presumably - hundreds of students? There are more than six
bikes in my garage.

Still, better than nothin'.

Dave

 

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 12:52:28 -0800, "Raoul Duke"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>"Rick Onanian" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> There is hope yet...I saw no less than 6 bikes parked at
>> a school today. Kids are riding.
>
>You are the optimist. Six bikes at a school where there are
>- presumably - hundreds of students? There are more than
>six bikes in my garage.

There are more than six bikes in my various places to stash
bikes, too. However, the school is only easily accessible
from one small neighborhood; it's on a corner with that
neighborhood's access street, and a highway which is a bit
of a tough road for cyclists, let alone children who don't
understand the rules of the road. I should have mentioned
that originally.

>Still, better than nothin'.

Absolutely.
--
Rick Onanian

 

Where do you live Rick? One nut case here told us that there
were still hundreds of childrenriding bikes to school in the
south San Francisco bay area. When I asked people that live
down there they told me he was nuts.

In the east bay there are essentially none.

Thank you local helmet ordinanaces. After all, the helmet
bill got thousands of children to stop riding bicycles and
saved almost 10 lives per year. Of course 100 times that
many now are suffering from overweigh and lack of exercise.
I just heard that my 20 year old nephew has diabetis caused
by being overweight and diet.

Ain't America great?

"Rick Onanian" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 12:52:28 -0800, "Raoul Duke"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >"Rick Onanian" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >> There is hope yet...I saw no less than 6 bikes parked
> >> at a school today. Kids are riding.
> >
> >You are the optimist. Six bikes at a school where
> >there are -
presumably -
> >hundreds of students? There are more than six bikes in my
> >garage.
>
> There are more than six bikes in my various places to
> stash bikes, too. However, the school is only easily
> accessible from one small neighborhood; it's on a corner
> with that neighborhood's access street, and a highway
> which is a bit of a tough road for cyclists, let alone
> children who don't understand the rules of the road. I
> should have mentioned that originally.
>
> >Still, better than nothin'.
>
> Absolutely.
> --
> Rick Onanian

 

Tom Kunich <[email protected]> wrote:

> Thank you local helmet ordinanaces. After all, the helmet
> bill got thousands of children to stop riding bicycles and
> saved almost 10 lives per year. Of course 100 times that
> many now are suffering from overweigh and lack of
> exercise. I just heard that my 20 year old nephew has
> diabetis caused by being overweight and diet.

Yup, they call it "early onset" type II Diabetes. My brother
got it at 28, which is precisely how old I am now. If I
hadn't worked for the last couple years on eating better and
getting more exercise I would have probably been diagnosed
with that shortly myself.

http://www.defeatdiabetes.org/Articles/kids030421.htm

--
Dane Jackson - z u v e m b i @ u n i x b i g o t s . o r g
"...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely,
and instead sit in front of your linux computer playing
with the all-new-and-improved linux kernel version." (By
Linus Torvalds)

 

"Tom Kunich" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> Where do you live Rick? One nut case here told us that
> there were still hundreds of childrenriding bikes to
> school in the south San Francisco bay area. When I asked
> people that live down there they told me he was nuts.
>
> In the east bay there are essentially none.

Not sure of the south bay, but there are hundreds in the
lower peninsula area - Palo Alto, Los Altos, Mountain View.
Pass them all the time, long lines of them trodding off to
school on their bikes in the mornings.

 

Tom Kunich wrote:

> Where do you live Rick? One nut case here told us that
> there were still hundreds of childrenriding bikes to
> school in the south San Francisco bay area. When I asked
> people that live down there they told me he was nuts.
>
> In the east bay there are essentially none.
>
> Thank you local helmet ordinanaces. After all, the helmet
> bill got thousands of children to stop riding bicycles and
> saved almost 10 lives per year.

Not sure where in the East Bay you checked Tom, but
'essentially none' sounds like an exageration. I just
checked the nearest schools to me in San Ramon and got the
following counts: elem. - 21; middle - 68; high - 38. Quite
a few kids riding on the bike trail as well. Most have
learned that the helmet law is only enforced at the school
and/or at home. So the helmets are almost all dangling from
their handlebars when they're actually riding.

The numbers are certainly down from what they had been in
the '90s, but are not yet zero.

 

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 21:28:09 GMT, Peter <[email protected]> wrote:

>So the helmets are almost all dangling from their
>handlebars when they're actually riding.

Hell, in Maryland the helmet law doesn't apply to the bike
trails. You can occasionally see families ride up to the
trail in Severna Park on a wide shoulder and take off their
helmets together and ride the trail. While I'm not a fanatic
one way or the other, the B&A Trail has some pretty unsafe
crossings. Wonder if they put them back on for those
crossings...

Curtis L. Russell Odenton, MD (USA) Just someone on
two wheels...

 

Only six? I hope it was a small school!

Many mothers won't let their kids ride nowadays. it's
dangerous enough out there forn us adults (Esp, in the
bigger cities).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"May you have the wind at your back. And a really low gear
for the hills!"

Chris Zacho ~ "Your Friendly Neighborhood Wheelman"

Chris'Z Corner http://www.geocities.com/czcorner

 

Dr. Russell, you make my point a great deal better than I
do. The helmet can make the most common head injuries on
a bicycle marginally less serious. On the other hand
they ain't all that serious to begin with ad there
aren't that many of them. So how did helmets ever become
any sort of discussion point in the USA?

"Curtis L. Russell" <[email protected]> wrote in
message news:[email protected]...
> On 16 Mar 2004 20:15:45 GMT, [email protected] (Xbaycb)
> wrote:
>
> >
> >I have been hit by automobiles three times while bike
> >riding, each time
while
> >wearing a helmet. The first time my helmeted head
> >shattered the car's windshield, the second time my
> >helmeted head cracked the windshield while
the
> >car's fender broke my knee cap, the third time I was
> >thrown over my
handlebars
> >and my helmet cracked when I hit the ground head first.
> >
> >If it weren't for my helmets, I wouldn't be alive today
> >getting ready for
a
> >century ride next month.
>
> You're a statistical anomaly and either incredibly unlucky
> or incredibly inept. And you manage to have at least two
> accidents that don't follow the normal pattern of
> collision.
>
> I've seen two people shatter auto windows - one a rear,
> one a front. Both wouldn't have an idea of what happened
> to their helmet as they both ended up in an ambulance from
> the loss of blood. Both were well in excess of 25 mph,
> probably nearer to 35 in a sprint.
>
> The problem with the two sides of the argument is that it
> simply isn't that simple. OOH, just because a person gives
> up cycling doesn't mean that they give up exercise. I
> doubt many active people simply decide to sit down. OTOH,
> bicycling without a helmet IS a lot better long term than
> no exercise at all. OTOOH, bicycling with a helmet is
> probably marginally safer (and helmets are both cheaper,
> other than the latest models, and more accepted nowadays)
> than riding without one.
>
> I stopped worrying about people riding without helmets
> when I ran statistics on emergency rooms as part of my job
> for more than a year and found that, anecdotal 'evidence'
> from everyone from victims to emergency room professionals
> aside, bicycling accidents are not a driving force in
> serious long-term injury and disability or death. Totally
> insignificant on morbidity, minor on serious accidents.
> Period. If someone wants to ride without a helmet, I don't
> feel compelled to scream something about them paying their
> own way. I know that as far as at least five major
> insurance companies are concerned , it isn't an billing
> issue, not even a penny. So I'm not paying for their
> insurance because it isn't a factor. Isn't even a
> capitation factor.
>
> Basically - it means its their business until you solve
> issues like AIDS, diabetes, asthma, hypertension, auto
> accidents, drinking, well, the list goes on. These drive
> insurance costs, not the very occasional long-term care
> patient from bicycling.
>
> Curtis L. Russell Odenton, MD (USA) Just someone on
> two wheels... With a son that gave up cycling and took
> up skateboarding. Is it a requirement that they fall
> face first?

 

On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 03:06:03 GMT, "Tom Kunich" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Dr. Russell, you make my point a great deal better than
> I do.

Curtis L. Russell Odenton, MD (USA) Just someone on
two wheels...

 

On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 03:06:03 GMT, "Tom Kunich" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Dr. Russell, you make my point a great deal better than
> I do.

Not a doctor - just the CFO of a clinic group that was
capitated (paid on a fixed-fee per member basis, where
knowing your financial risk per patient is rather important
to survival) by one insurance company and reimbursed for the
most part by four others. Amazing what you can do with
Excel's pivot tables if you set it up right and have lots of
memory, and get the CDs from the companies.

Curtis L. Russell Odenton, MD (USA) Just someone on
two wheels...

 

Rick Onanian wrote:
> There is hope yet...I saw no less than 6 bikes parked at a
> school today. Kids are riding.

My son once attended a school with 5 or 6 bikes in a rack
outside. All of them were clearly abandoned, because the
chains were rusted, tires flat, etc.

He didn't ride because we were so close it was faster to
walk than get out the bike, ride it 75 feet, and then
lock it up.

Austin

 

Chris Zacho "The Wheelman" wrote:

> Only six? I hope it was a small school!
>
> Many mothers won't let their kids ride nowadays. it's
> dangerous enough out there forn us adults (Esp, in the
> bigger cities).

In what way? Both traffic accidents and crime rates are
lower now than in the 70s -- when everyone I knew rode to
school, from about the third grade up. There's no more
danger, just paranoia.

Matt O.

 

"Curtis L. Russell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 03:06:03 GMT, "Tom Kunich"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >Dr. Russell, you make my point a great deal better than I
> > do.
>
> Not a doctor - just the CFO of a clinic group that was
> capitated (paid on a fixed-fee per member basis, where
> knowing your financial risk per patient is rather
> important to survival) by one insurance company and
> reimbursed for the most part by four others. Amazing what
> you can do with Excel's pivot tables if you set it up
> right and have lots of memory, and get the CDs from the
> companies.
>
> Curtis L. Russell Odenton, MD (USA) Just someone on two
> wheels...

Whoops, that MD was Maryland. That's the trouble with being
farsighted and wearing dirty glasses.

And that's just as well. I don't suppose someone who has
had a moderate concussion would think of it as a "minor
injury" even if he has full recovery and no after effects.
However, I do believe that I've estimated (from the data
I've been able to dig up here and there) that serious head
injuries in bike accidents (defined as having to stay at
least one night in the hospital) are somewhere in the
neighborhood of 1,250 per year for the entire USA with the
vast majority on the very low end of the scale and not very
many of the truly serious head injuries. Fatal accidents
almost always have multiple fatal injuries but EM room
physicians have told me that they generally sign the most
immediate cause of death as the cause of death. Which means
that a man with a broken skull, a crushed heart and mashed
spine with have a single cause of death of "head injury" in
most of the cases despite the fact that the records are
meant to be more complete than that.

BTW, that number was derived from hospital data that claims
that there are approximately 4-5 times the numbers of
serious injuries as fatalities in vehicular accidents. And
other data which said that "only" 40% of these injuries
included head injuries. Since there are some 500 fatalities
per year times 5 * 500 = 2500 * 50% = 1250

Since I've also seen data that claims that there are some
30,000 emergency rooms across the USA (this one seems a bit
tenuous but I've seen it in THREE places so I'll use it)
that would seem to indicate that on the average each
emergency room would see a fatality or a serious injury to a
cyclist about once every 10 years.

In practice they see about 50 times that many because of the
prevalance of minor injuries in minor bicycle accidents.

However, it is likely that country emergency rooms will
never see a seroius bicycle accident in their lifetimes
since fatal and serious accidents seem to be grouped around
large cities.

The real message here is that bicycle accidents of magnitude
are so rare that wearing a helmet for them is sort of like
wearing suspenders in case your belt breaks. Far better to
learn to ride more observant and safely that to wear a
helmet. The effects are a hell of a lot more varifiable.

 

Tom Kunich wrote:

> ... So how did helmets ever become any sort of discussion
> point in the USA?...

There was a pressing need for a topic that would produce
long and annoying discussion on Usenet cycling groups.

--
Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)

 

"Tom Kunich" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Where do you live Rick? One nut case here told us that
> there were still hundreds of childrenriding bikes to
> school in the south San Francisco bay area. When I asked
> people that live down there they told me he was nuts.
>
> In the east bay there are essentially none.
>
> Thank you local helmet ordinanaces. After all, the helmet
> bill got
thousands
> of children to stop riding bicycles and saved almost 10
> lives per year. Of course 100 times that many now are
> suffering from overweigh and lack of exercise. I just
> heard that my 20 year old nephew has diabetis caused by
> being overweight and diet.
>
> Ain't America great?

"Hundreds" is a pretty safe bet for the peninsula and south
bay. I see kids riding their bikes to my kid's elementary
school, probably only about ten kids. Lots of kids walk to
school. Too many are driven.

Blaming the helmet laws for this is ridiculous. Where did
you get the idea that helmet laws got thousands of kids to
stop riding bicycles to school, or otherwise? The factors
are really the inflated fear of abductions, the general
decline in the quality of drivers, and both parents working
and the kid going to after school care.

The helmet laws have nothing to do with suburban kids no
longer riding their bikes to school.

 

Steven M. Scharf wrote

> "Tom Kunich" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:-
> [email protected]
> >
> > Thank you local helmet ordinanaces. After all, the
> > helmet bill got
> thousands
> > of children to stop riding bicycles and saved almost 10
> > lives per year.
Of
> > course 100 times that many now are suffering from
> > overweigh and lack of exercise. I just heard that my 20
> > year old nephew has diabetis caused by being overweight
> > and diet.
> >
> > Ain't America great?
>

<snip>

>
> Blaming the helmet laws for this is ridiculous. Where did
> you get the idea that helmet laws got thousands of kids to
> stop riding bicycles to school,
or
> otherwise? The factors are really the inflated fear of
> abductions, the general decline in the quality of drivers,
> and both parents working and
the
> kid going to after school care.
>
> The helmet laws have nothing to do with suburban kids no
> longer riding
their
> bikes to school.

Helmet laws convinced parents that cycling was dangerous.
That was how they were enacted in the first place, convince
enough people that cycling is dangerous, and that you will
most certainly die without our helmet.

Parents who saw through that, got their kids helmets, and
made them wear them (for legal reasons), soon had kids who
didn't want to ride because they didn't want to wear that
stupid thing on their heads.

IMHO, MHL's are the single biggest factor in kids not riding
bikes, to school or otherwise.

Austin

 

In article <[email protected]
news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, [email protected] says...

...

> Helmet laws convinced parents that cycling was dangerous.
> That was how they were enacted in the first place,
> convince enough people that cycling is dangerous, and that
> you will most certainly die without our helmet.
>
> Parents who saw through that, got their kids helmets, and
> made them wear them (for legal reasons), soon had kids who
> didn't want to ride because they didn't want to wear that
> stupid thing on their heads.
>
> IMHO, MHL's are the single biggest factor in kids not
> riding bikes, to school or otherwise.

It may have been at one time, but people are used to
seeing them now, and kids don't think they look (as)
stupid any more.

--
Remove the ns_ from if replying by e-mail (but keep posts in
the newsgroups if possible).

 

On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 07:50:25 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Blaming the helmet laws for this is ridiculous. Where did
>you get the idea that helmet laws got thousands of kids to
>stop riding bicycles to school, or otherwise? The factors
>are really the inflated fear of abductions, the general
>decline in the quality of drivers, and both parents working
>and the kid going to after school care.

The inflated fear of abductions is definitely a factor. No
parent watching the surveillance tape of that Bruscia girl
taken in Florida is really going to be that willing to leave
their kids alone, even if for a second.

In my area, fiscal calculations have led to a consolidation
of elementary schools; where kids used to walk or cycle to
school, they now are driven, or take the bus, since the
schools themselves are (for most of them) much further away
than they used to.

Distance compounds all the fears and problems associated
with letting your kids out of sight and off to school.

Some can't cover the distance on foot or on the bicycle
at all. (This is the time an oldtimer will chime in that
they walked five miles in three foot snow to go to a one-
room schoolhouse. Kids and parents don't do that sort of
thing now.)

The distance will expose them to heavy-traffic suburban
arterials full of road-raging automobile commuter traffic,
anxious to shave a precious ten seconds on their sixty-
minute commute.

Other public resources--police and crossing-guards--can only
be deployed within a reasonably small radius around the
school (funding, again!), so that abduction fear comes into
play again as kids are meant to cross unsurveilled
territory.

I don't think parents are scared to have their kids riding
bicycles at all; that would reflect itself in sales figures.
More scared parents, fewer bikes for kids. And, in
neighborhood streets, you can still see kids on their bikes
doing regular kids-on-bikes stuff: tricks, races, etc.

What's really at work here is the mind-set that kids on toys
(bicycles) should not be on the road, that bicycles are not
really a way of getting from point A to point B, and that
the roads are far too dangerous--the same perceptions that
prevent anyone from cycling for transport.

We all know, of course, that the question of traffic safety
is a question of governance on the one hand--better, more
visible, more exemplary enforcement--and self-governance--
more disciplined and less-aggressive driving-- on the other.
But since the motorist is extremely put-out when subject to
the former and too put-upon (from his perspective) to
practice the latter, we stagnate in the same cycle of fear.

-Luigi

>
>The helmet laws have nothing to do with suburban kids no
>longer riding their bikes to school.