Total number of cyclists in the UK is fewer than the number of uninsured drivers.

[Chris Malcolm]

Ian Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:18:49 +0100, Simon Brooke <[email protected]> wrote:
>> in message <[email protected]>, Adam Lea
>> ('[email protected]') wrote:
>>
>> > Please don't try to convince me that every single car journey made every
>> > day in the UK couldn't possibly be made feasibly by another method,
>> > because I won't believe you.
>>
>> Please don't tell me that /any/ given car journey couldn't be made by any
>> other means,

> Your wife unexpected goes into labour early, with fairly regular
> contractions immediately, at 2:30am when public transport is not
> available where you reside. You'd decide to cycle to the hospital,
> or maybe just email them to send a monitor?

It could be even worse. What if you were on a space station and the
shuttle wasn't due for another week?

--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

 

[Chris Malcolm]

Matt B <[email protected]> wrote:
> Geraint Jones wrote:
>> Ian Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
>> | Your wife unexpected goes into labour early, with fairly regular
>> | contractions immediately, at 2:30am when public transport is not
>> | available where you reside. You'd decide to cycle to the hospital,
>> | or maybe just email them to send a monitor?
>> |
>> | There are lots of car journeys that can't be made by other means.
>>
>> Are you arguing about "private car" journeys, or do you think our having
>> used a taxi in similar circumstances would make us essential car users?

> Taxi services, especially if they are "private hire", are essentially
> extremely inefficient uses of "private cars". There is much mileage
> done going to collect, or returning from dropping off passengers, which
> does not really happen with "normal" private car use. An interesting
> statistic would be the ratio of fare carrying mileage to total mileage
> for the nation's taxi fleet.

You must also factor in the amount of time the private car sits around
parked and rusting, and often an obstruction in the highway. Quite an
important factor in something as big, expensive, and rapidly aging as
a car.

--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

 

[Chris Malcolm]

Adam Lea <[email protected]> wrote:


--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

 

[Tony Raven]

Chris Malcolm wrote on 21/10/2006 08:49 +0100:
>
> It could be even worse. What if you were on a space station and the
> shuttle wasn't due for another week?
>

There was Jerri Nielsen who was trapped at the South Pole base when she
discovered she had breast cancer. She had to self administer a biopsy
and her own chemotherapy until she could be rescued 5 months later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerri_Nielsen

Women have been giving unassisted birth for millenia so while the risk
would certainly be higher, giving birth on the space station would not
be that different, apart from the consequences of the lack of gravity.
Not that you would be allowed to go in the first place if pregnant.


--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, Tony Raven
('[email protected]') wrote:

> Chris Malcolm wrote on 21/10/2006 08:49 +0100:
>>
>> It could be even worse. What if you were on a space station and the
>> shuttle wasn't due for another week?
>>
>
> There was Jerri Nielsen who was trapped at the South Pole base when she
> discovered she had breast cancer. She had to self administer a biopsy
> and her own chemotherapy until she could be rescued 5 months later.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerri_Nielsen
>
> Women have been giving unassisted birth for millenia so while the risk
> would certainly be higher, giving birth on the space station would not
> be that different, apart from the consequences of the lack of gravity.
> Not that you would be allowed to go in the first place if pregnant.

Cue jokes about what folk get up to in zero gravity...

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

Q: Whats a webmaster?
A: Like a spider, but nowhere near as intelligent.

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, Adam Lea
('[email protected]') wrote:

> "Simon Brooke" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> in message <[email protected]>, Ian Smith
>> ('[email protected]') wrote:
>>
>>> There are lots of car journeys that can't be made by other means.
>>
>> Name one.
>
> My bridge partner has two artificial knees, is registered disabled and
> cannot walk more than a few hundred yards. I would say most of his car
> journeys couldn't be made by another method, unless another method
> includes getting a lift from another motorist.

OK, I'm inclined to grant you that one.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; better than your average performing pineapple

 

[Stevie D]

Matt B wrote:

> Given that motor vehicles do about 125 times as many vehicle
> kilometres as bikes do (RCGB), that suggests that bikes injure 25%
> more pedestrians per vehicle kilometre than motor vehicles do.

Which may not be a fair comparison. A high proportion of motor mileage
is done on motorways, where pedestrians are banned, or on interurban
trunk routes, where pedestrians are very rare. Most cycling, on the
other hand, is done in towns and cities, on routes where there are a
lot of pedestrians - so with the same level of actual risk, you would
expect to see a higher injury figure for cyclists.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

 

[Stevie D]

Adam Lea wrote:

> Or because they are too bone idle to look for an alternative.
>
> Please don't try to convince me that every single car journey made
> every day in the UK couldn't possibly be made feasibly by another
> method, because I won't believe you.

Would you be happier if the point was that there was no alternative
*route* for the motorists to take?

Unlike what David Hansen seems to think, motorists will avoid town
centres and urban streets if they can do, and would far rather use a
bypass or motorway to get where they are going. Building roads
suitable for long-distance and inter-urban traffic means that roads
through towns will be quieter for those of us on two wheels.

Most authorities are now reasonably enlightened when it comes to
planning new developments, and design the roads in a far more
appropriate way to the estates built up until the 1970s - streets on
new developments with residential access are rarely thoroughfares,
with through traffic confined to a small number of higher standard
roads.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

 

[Stevie D]

Ian Smith wrote:

> Your wife unexpected goes into labour early, with fairly regular
> contractions immediately, at 2:30am when public transport is not
> available where you reside. You'd decide to cycle to the hospital,
> or maybe just email them to send a monitor?

I can honestly say that that will never be a concern of mine!

For the majority of people, it will occur no more than 2 or 3 times
during their lives - hardly statistically significant.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

 

[Stevie D]

[email protected] wrote:

> So taking the kids to school and then driving back empty, then driving
> back to the school to fetch the kids doesn't involve 50% unnecessary
> journeys (assuming the rest is necessary)

By and large, yes.

> Or driving to the supermarket is "necessary" because you need the car
> to get the shopping home but cycling/walking to the supermarket and
> then getting a taxi home involves unnecessary taxi mileage.

If you are walking one way and getting a taxi the other, that is
pretty much equivalent to driving there and back yourself. But if you
get a taxi there and a taxi home again, that can cause considerably
more mileage than if you had just driven there and back on your own.

> And around my house at least we could put in two six foot wide
> mandatory cycle lanes on nearly every road with no inconvenience to
> motorists if all the people with "efficient" private cars used
> "inefficient" taxis

And where would all these taxis park? If people did that, there would
need to be a huge increase in the number of minicabbers, who would all
need to park their cars somewhere - probably a fair few of them would
live on your street. There would be considerable inconvenience for
most people, having to book ahead and wait for every journey. The
average mileage driven for any one journey would rise dramatically,
because of the need for double mileage.

Taxis are *not* an efficient way of using the roads.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

 

[Tony Raven]

Stevie D wrote on 21/10/2006 12:11 +0100:
> Matt B wrote:
>
>> Given that motor vehicles do about 125 times as many vehicle
>> kilometres as bikes do (RCGB), that suggests that bikes injure 25%
>> more pedestrians per vehicle kilometre than motor vehicles do.
>
> Which may not be a fair comparison. A high proportion of motor mileage
> is done on motorways, where pedestrians are banned, or on interurban
> trunk routes, where pedestrians are very rare. Most cycling, on the
> other hand, is done in towns and cities, on routes where there are a
> lot of pedestrians - so with the same level of actual risk, you would
> expect to see a higher injury figure for cyclists.
>

A misleading comparison as one might expect from TrollB. The figures
spindrift gave are for London and in London the level of cycling is far
higher than the national average figures quoted by TrollB. TfL data is
that the ratio of cycle to car journeys is 1:30 not 1:125. Allowing for
the average car journey in London being twice the distance of the
average cycle journey, its still strongly in favour of the cyclist for
"all injuries" and better still for ksi.
Source: London Travel Report 2005, TfL

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

 

[Adam Lea]

"Matt B" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> [email protected] wrote:
>> Matt B wrote:
>>> Taxi services, especially if they are "private hire", are essentially
>>> extremely inefficient uses of "private cars". There is much mileage
>>> done going to collect, or returning from dropping off passengers, which
>>> does not really happen with "normal" private car use.
>>>
>>
>> So taking the kids to school and then driving back empty, then driving
>> back to the school to fetch the kids doesn't involve 50% unnecessary
>> journeys (assuming the rest is necessary)
>
> Like I said, taxi services are inefficient.
>
>> Or driving to the supermarket is "necessary" because you need the car
>> to get the shopping home but cycling/walking to the supermarket and
>> then getting a taxi home involves unnecessary taxi mileage.
>
> What's the difference? The taxi would probably travel there empty too. It
> /is/ inefficient do do a two-way motor journey when only one-way is
> productive.
>
>> And around my house at least we could put in two six foot wide
>> mandatory cycle lanes on nearly every road with no inconvenience to
>> motorists if all the people with "efficient" private cars used
>> "inefficient" taxis
>
> That's a different issue. Roads are not being used efficiently if they
> are being used for vehicle storage. It doesn't alter the efficiency of
> taxis either, they /are/ inefficient.
>
>> (and it would be possible for people to get past
>> them while they were unloaded rather than the current situation where
>> cars just stop in the middle of the road and then desparately try to
>> unload them as quickly as possible before going to find a parking space
>> that can be half as far away[1] as the nearest supermarket is.
>
> Vehicle storage, yes, it's a crazy way to use roads, I agree.
>
>> And you
>> wouldn't get the 5-10 car long queue at 06:15 that has been stuck
>> behind the dustbin lorry where there is literally nowhere on the entire
>> length of the road where a car can get past)
>
> The thing is, councils have too much incentive to encourage this waste of
> road space, so they do.
>
> --
> Matt B

Maybe there is a case for introducing a rule that you are not allowed to own
a car unless you can prove that you have off road parking space for it.

 

[Tony Raven]

Adam Lea wrote on 21/10/2006 13:32 +0100:
>
> Maybe there is a case for introducing a rule that you are not allowed to own
> a car unless you can prove that you have off road parking space for it.
>

That's the case in Japan. We had to have our parking space inspected
and a certificate issued before the car could be registered.

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

 

[Ambrose Nankivell]

Stevie D wrote:
> Adam Lea wrote:
>
>> Or because they are too bone idle to look for an alternative.
>>
>> Please don't try to convince me that every single car journey made
>> every day in the UK couldn't possibly be made feasibly by another
>> method, because I won't believe you.
>
> Would you be happier if the point was that there was no alternative
> *route* for the motorists to take?
>
> Unlike what David Hansen seems to think, motorists will avoid town
> centres and urban streets if they can do, and would far rather use a
> bypass or motorway to get where they are going. Building roads
> suitable for long-distance and inter-urban traffic means that roads
> through towns will be quieter for those of us on two wheels.

Hmm, but funnily enough, everyone I know needs to be pretty near forced not
to turn off the motorway when traffic slows up mildly.

In a case which is pertinent to me, it is *never* quicker to turn off the M6
at junction 10 and drive through Walsall to junction 9. Is this the main
cause of traffic congestion in Walsall? Yes.

It took me ten minutes to drive up the slip road to the roundabout next to
where I work the other day. There's normally no queue at all. (A500-A34 (the
northern junction of the two))

The reason? The M6 was briefly shut 20 miles away, and there were some
queues. There was a worse hold up on the M6 on Friday, and indeed, it took
20 minutes to drive an unavoidable mile on the A34 northbound.