Re: Ontario Helmet Law being pushed through



S

Steven M. Scharf

Guest
R15757 wrote:

>Cycling is probably not appreciably more dangerous
>than walking or driving in traffic, but it's good
>entertainment when folks try to prove with
>accident statistics that cycling is "not dangerous."
>But if Frank has some real numbers I'd love
>to see them.


I'm sure that he'd be happy to make some up for you. Of course there are
no such statistics, but that's a minor problem. Are you talking about
danger per mile, danger per hour, danger per capita, or what? Do you
want data for the U.S., China, New Zealand, or the moon.
 
Steven M. Scharf wrote:

> R15757 wrote:
>
> >Cycling is probably not appreciably more dangerous
> >than walking or driving in traffic, but it's good
> >entertainment when folks try to prove with
> >accident statistics that cycling is "not dangerous."
> >But if Frank has some real numbers I'd love
> >to see them.

>
> I'm sure that he'd be happy to make some up for you. Of course there are
> no such statistics...


Or, in other words: "I don't know any numbers; therefore there are no
numbers."

Seems the qualifications are pretty low to proclaim oneself "World's
Greatest Authority"!

Scharf is such a mix of ignorance and hubris!

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

>>But if Frank has some real numbers I'd love
> >to see them.

>
>I'm sure that he'd be happy to make some up for you. >Of course there are>
>no such statistics, but that's a minor problem. Are >you talking about
>danger per mile, danger per hour, danger per capita, >or what? Do you
>want data for the U.S., China, New Zealand, or the >moon.


The only good stat we have is the body count.
Everything else is a Shot In The Dark.

R
 
R15757 wrote:

> The only good stat we have is the body count.
> Everything else is a Shot In The Dark.


If all you have is the body count, what does the body count show?


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

>> The only good stat we have is the body count.
>> Everything else is a Shot In The Dark.

>
>If all you have is the body count, what does the body >count show?


The body count indicates that riding a bike
is highly unlikely to cause your demise.
It indicates a lot of things, actually, if you
want to look a bit closer. For instance,
it shows us we should not ride at night
with no lights on busy streets while drunk.
It also shows us that even the most thoughtful
and careful riders, like Ken Kiefer, can get
run over by a car and killed.

Robert
 
R15757 wrote:

> Frank K. wrote:
>
>
>>>The only good stat we have is the body count.
>>>Everything else is a Shot In The Dark.

>>
>>If all you have is the body count, what does the body >count show?

>
>
> The body count indicates that riding a bike
> is highly unlikely to cause your demise.


Great!

> It indicates a lot of things, actually, if you
> want to look a bit closer. For instance,
> it shows us we should not ride at night
> with no lights on busy streets while drunk.


Yes, good advice.

> It also shows us that even the most thoughtful
> and careful riders, like Ken Kiefer, can get
> run over by a car and killed.


Yep. True of the most careful motorists and the most careful
pedestrians, too. Cycling's not special that way.


--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
 
R15757 wrote:

> The only good stat we have is the body count.
> Everything else is a Shot In The Dark.


Body counts don't tell the whole story though.

Look at pedestrian/cyclist/motorcyclist/bicyclist deaths in San
Francisco and you'll conclude that bicycling is the safest mode of
presonal transportation, while walking is the most dangerous.

http://www.tf.org/tf/injuries/motov4.shtml

Of course it's not actually true, but it's the type of statistics that
people like Frank love to take out of context.

For commuting transportation, the meaningful statistic is injuries or
fatalities per mile, for each form of transportation. This of course
varies by area. Only in big cities are there enough people that commute
by foot for the statistics to be meaningful, and in these same cities,
few people commute by bicycle. Well we could always go back to the
Netherlands, if we want to use another irrelevant comparison.
 
Steven M. Scharf wrote:
> R15757 wrote:
>
>> The only good stat we have is the body count.
>> Everything else is a Shot In The Dark.

>
>
> Body counts don't tell the whole story though.
>
> Look at pedestrian/cyclist/motorcyclist/bicyclist deaths in San
> Francisco and you'll conclude that bicycling is the safest mode of
> presonal transportation, while walking is the most dangerous.
>
> http://www.tf.org/tf/injuries/motov4.shtml
>
> Of course it's not actually true...


:) Oh, of course! If the data doesn't agree with Scharf, the data's
wrong!


, but it's the type of statistics that
> people like Frank love to take out of context.
>
> For commuting transportation, the meaningful statistic is injuries or
> fatalities per mile, for each form of transportation. This of course
> varies by area. Only in big cities are there enough people that commute
> by foot for the statistics to be meaningful, and in these same cities,
> few people commute by bicycle. Well we could always go back to the
> Netherlands, if we want to use another irrelevant comparison.
>


"Of course, it's not actually true." But of course, Scharf has not data
to indicate it's false. So of course, he waves his arms and waffles
until he's satisfied he's justified his ideas.

What nonsense!

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]
 
On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:36:50 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Look at pedestrian/cyclist/motorcyclist/bicyclist deaths in San
>Francisco and you'll conclude that bicycling is the safest mode of
>presonal transportation, while walking is the most dangerous.


How wrong could you be? Walking is the safest to others, driving the
most dangerous to others. Walking is more dangerous to participants
than cycling. Pretending that cycling is unusually dangerous fails on
either interpretation, of course.

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 CHS, Puget Sound
 
On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:36:50 +0000, Steven M. Scharf wrote:

> R15757 wrote:
>
>> The only good stat we have is the body count.
>> Everything else is a Shot In The Dark.

>
> Body counts don't tell the whole story though.
>
> Look at pedestrian/cyclist/motorcyclist/bicyclist deaths in San
> Francisco and you'll conclude that bicycling is the safest mode of
> presonal transportation, while walking is the most dangerous.
>
> http://www.tf.org/tf/injuries/motov4.shtml
>
> Of course it's not actually true, but it's the type of statistics that
> people like Frank love to take out of context.


How do you know it is not actually true? What is the context?
 
Frank Krygowski said:
...."Of course, it's not actually true." But of course, Scharf has not data
to indicate it's false. So of course, he waves his arms and waffles
until he's satisfied he's justified his ideas.

What nonsense!

Both Steven M. (for Mythomaniac?) Scharf and backwards Bill have repeatedly shown us their tendency to confabulate...

Here's an interesting book that might throw some light on their condition:

Brain Fiction: Self-Deception and the Riddle of Confabulation by William Hirstein.
The phenomenon of confabulation -- the tendency to construct plausible-sounding but false answers and believe that they are true -- and what it can tell us about the human mind and human nature.

From the Inside Flap
"The most comprehensive treatment of the subject of confabulation ever written, Hirstein's *Brain Fiction* represents a pathbreaking and bold synthesis of philosophy and neuroscience. I expect it will prove to be a major resource for scholars and students of this fascinating and important subject for years to come."
--Todd E. Feinberg, M. D., Professor of Clincal Psychiatry and Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, author of *Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self*

Some neurological patients exhibit a striking tendency to confabulate -- to construct false answers to a question while genuinely believing that they are telling the truth. A stroke victim, for example, will describe in detail a conference he attended over the weekend when in fact he has not left the hospital. Normal people, too, sometimes have a tendency to confabulate; rather than admitting "I don't know," some people will make up an answer or an explanation and express it with complete conviction. In Brain Fiction, William Hirstein examines confabulation and argues that its causes are not merely technical issues in neurology or cognitive science but deeply revealing about the structure of the human intellect.

Hirstein describes confabulation as the failure of a normal checking or censoring process in the brain -- the failure to recognize that a false answer is fantasy, not reality. Thus, he argues, the creative ability to construct a plausible-sounding response and some ability to check that response are separate in the human brain. Hirstein sees the dialectic between the creative and checking processes -- "the inner dialogue" -- as an important part of our mental life. In constructing a theory of confabulation, Hirstein integrates perspectives from different fields, including philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology to achieve a natural mix of conceptual issues usually treated by philosophers with purely empirical issues; information about the distribution of certain blood vessels in the prefrontal lobes of the brain, for example, or the behavior of split-brain patients can shed light on the classic questions of philosophy of mind, including questions about the function of consciousness. This first book-length study of confabulation breaks ground in both philosophy and cognitive science.
 
On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 14:04:35 +1100, RogerDodger
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
> Frank Krygowski Wrote:
>>

>
> Both Steven M. (for Mythomaniac?) Scharf and backwards Bill have
> repeatedly shown us their tendency to confabulate...
>
> Here's an interesting book that might throw some light on their
> condition:
>
> Some neurological patients exhibit a striking tendency to confabulate
> -- to construct false answers to a question while genuinely believing
> that they are telling the truth. A stroke victim, for example, will
> describe in detail a conference he attended over the weekend when in
> fact he has not left the hospital. Normal people, too, sometimes have a
> tendency to confabulate; rather than admitting "I don't know," some
> people will make up an answer or an explanation and express it with
> complete conviction. In Brain Fiction, William Hirstein examines
> confabulation and argues that its causes are not merely technical
> issues in neurology or cognitive science but deeply revealing about the
> structure of the human intellect.
>

Geesh,
I am trying to watch television for once, instruct my sister on how to
use the newsgroups, download stuff, deal with my wife and
idiot stepdaughter (source of grandchildren) and you guys expect
every post to be researched like I am writing a book.
No way, not sorry.
As to the Mustang, and the Kawi, you would have had to be there,
so I could care less what you believe.
On to other stuff, any other.


--
Bill (?) Ba__ka
 
Bill Baka wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 14:04:35 +1100, RogerDodger
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>> Frank Krygowski Wrote:
>>>

>>
>> Both Steven M. (for Mythomaniac?) Scharf and backwards Bill have
>> repeatedly shown us their tendency to confabulate...
>>
>> Here's an interesting book that might throw some light on their
>> condition:
>>
>> Some neurological patients exhibit a striking tendency to confabulate
>> -- to construct false answers to a question while genuinely believing
>> that they are telling the truth. A stroke victim, for example, will
>> describe in detail a conference he attended over the weekend when in
>> fact he has not left the hospital. Normal people, too, sometimes
>> have a tendency to confabulate; rather than admitting "I don't
>> know," some people will make up an answer or an explanation and
>> express it with complete conviction. In Brain Fiction, William
>> Hirstein examines confabulation and argues that its causes are not
>> merely technical issues in neurology or cognitive science but deeply
>> revealing about the structure of the human intellect.
>>

> Geesh,
> I am trying to watch television for once, instruct my sister on how to
> use the newsgroups, download stuff, deal with my wife and
> idiot stepdaughter (source of grandchildren) and you guys expect
> every post to be researched like I am writing a book.
> No way, not sorry.
> As to the Mustang, and the Kawi, you would have had to be there,
> so I could care less what you believe.
> On to other stuff, any other.


Bill, for the SECOND time he was talking about Bill Zaumen, not you.

Sigh.
 
Erik Freitag wrote:

>>Of course it's not actually true, but it's the type of statistics that
>>people like Frank love to take out of context.

>
>
>How do you know it is not actually true? What is the context?


The context is that in terms of both mileage and sheer numbers, in San
Francisco pedestrians are orders of magnitude greater than cyclists.
Those statistics are absolute statistics, not adjusted for relative
numbers of people using each form of transport. They don’t prove that
bicycling is safe, and they don’t prove that walking is dangerous. But
you could easily use them out of context to claim exactly that.

ER studies that look solely at the number of injuries incurred by each
of several activities are also not weighted to reflect the total number
of participants doing the activity.

The relevant ER study in terms of bicycling and helmets is the relative
severity of head injuries incurred by helmet versus non-helmet wearing
cyclists, though the results are skewed in favor of the non-helmet
wearing riders, since many of the helmet wearers don’t show up in the ER
in the first place.

Again, critical thinking skills are essential when evaluating statistics.

I enjoy bicycling in San Francisco, but only in the middle of the night
(with good lights of course).

Steve
http://bicyclelighting.com

--------------------------------------------------
"If you can't answer a man's argument, all
is not lost; you can still call him vile
names."
Elbert Hubbard
--------------------------------------------------
 
Steven M. Scharf said:
The relevant ER study in terms of bicycling and helmets is the relative
severity of head injuries incurred by helmet versus non-helmet wearing
cyclists, though the results are skewed in favor of the non-helmet
wearing riders, since many of the helmet wearers don’t show up in the ER
in the first place.

Again, critical thinking skills are essential when evaluating statistics.

Perhaps Steven is in dire need of some critical thinking skills?

A case in point is the (mis) use of "all" or "some" or in this case "many" - as in when Steven writes "...since many of the helmet wearers don’t show up in the ER in the first place."

I'm sure that we can equally say "since many of the non-helmet wearers don’t show up in the ER in the first place."

Yes indeed, a person equipped with critical thinking skills would recognise that the sneaking in of illicit auxilary claims, like the one Steven tries here, aren't illustrative of critical thinking.

Futhermore Steven yet again makes an assertion without any effort to provide any evidence or argument to support the claim.

"...since many of the helmet wearers don’t show up in the ER in the first place." - well how would you know that Steven?

You don't know that - it is merely a baseless claim that fits in with protecting your precious prejudice. You are making it up - confabulating.

Obviously critical thinking skills are what Steven M. Scharf is lacking.

Roger
 
On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 04:42:27 +0000, Steven M. Scharf wrote:

> Again, critical thinking skills are essential when evaluating statistics.


Thanks for clarifying that. I guess those of us without those skills will
have to depend on you to tell us what to think.

--------------------------------------------------
"If you can't answer
a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names."
Elbert Hubbard
--------------------------------------------------
 
Erik Freitag wrote:

> Thanks for clarifying that. I guess those of us without those skills will
> have to depend on you to tell us what to think.


Yes, that is probably the best idea.

Steve
http://bicyclelighting.com

--------------------------------------------------
"If you can't answer a man's argument, all
is not lost; you can still call him vile
names."
Elbert Hubbard
--------------------------------------------------
 
On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 22:08:58 -0800, Erik Freitag
<[email protected]> wrote in message
<[email protected]>:

>> Again, critical thinking skills are essential when evaluating statistics.


>Thanks for clarifying that. I guess those of us without those skills will
>have to depend on you to tell us what to think.


LOL! Sadly he probably agrees - I think he believes his own claim to
be one of Earth's leading experts on bicycle helmets, al;though there
is precious little evidence that he has read or understood more than a
tiny fraction of the literature on the subject. Scharf's leading
source is the American Journal of Because I Said So ;-)

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
 
Steven M. Scharf wrote:
> Erik Freitag wrote:
>
> >>Of course it's not actually true, but it's the type of statistics that
> >>people like Frank love to take out of context.

> >
> >
> >How do you know it is not actually true? What is the context?

>
> The context is that in terms of both mileage and sheer numbers, in San
> Francisco pedestrians are orders of magnitude greater than cyclists.


Sorry to follow up on my own post, but I found numbers for various types
of transit in San Francisco.

http://rideshare.511.org/research/pdfs/cp_sanfrancisco_cp03.pdf

Looking at walking versus cycling, 10% walk to work, 2% bicycle. But
even this 5x difference doesn't tell the whole story, because even
people that drive, or take public transit, are pedestrians for at a few
blocks, and typically in the most dangerous areas for pedestrians. When
you factor this in, it's about 95% of commuters that have walking as
part of their commute, versus 2% of people that bicycle.

Steve
http://bicyclelighting.com

--------------------------------------------------
"If you can't answer a man's argument, all
is not lost; you can still call him vile
names."
Elbert Hubbard
--------------------------------------------------
 
On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 16:20:10 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
<[email protected]> wrote in message
<[email protected]>:

> When
>you factor this in, it's about 95% of commuters that have walking as
>part of their commute, versus 2% of people that bicycle.


And if you can't see the problem with counting walking from the car to
the office door the same as walking all the way to work, there is
probably no hope for you.

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
 

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