| | Re: logic speeding away
frkrygow@gmail.com wrote:
> > > I think a major component of your problem is that you filter things
> > > through the eyes of a bike messenger.
> >
> > You can continue to believe that, if it makes you feel better.
>
> I'm just looking for some plausible explanation for your attitude that
> rules of the road are not important ("worthless ****," I think you
> said)...
You are definitely not going to win any awards
for reading comprehension. For a third
time:
> > I'll just repeat this part. A person can ride (1) without
> > awareness and not according to the rules of the road,
> > (2) without awareness and according to the rules of the
> > road, (3) with awareness and not according to the rules
> > of the road, or (4) with awareness and according to the
> > rules of the road. I know that 4 is safer than 3 which is
> > safer than 2 which is safer than 1.
Now do you think 3 safer than 2 or is 2 safer than 3?
> > And second, messengers spend a substantial portion of
> > their time riding in a completely lawful, conservative fashion
> > anyway.
>
> Yet their injury rates are quite high. See
> http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ergonomics/bike/
'Their injury rates are quite high,' Frank says. That's
really interesting that you should say that, because
that rate (injury/mile) for the messengers of Boston,
according to this survey and reasonable assumptions
about how many miles a Boston messenger would
ride in a year, seems about the same or
better than the rate found for experienced LAB
members in the Moritz study. That's the rate
you consistently cite as evidence that cycling is
incredibly safe.
For a full-time messenger, getting into an injury-causing
wreck every 30,000 miles or so (the rate in the Moritz study
which you consistently cite) means getting hurt about
..5 times per year, which is near the rate in the Harvard
study. To you, this rate magically seems 'quite high'
when applied to messengers and amazingly low when
applied to LAB members. To me, it's an
unworkable rate. But you've got to remember that
among those counted were a large number of
abject rookies, many of whom would have very little
experience riding in traffic, much less as messengers,
and dabblers who would not last through the month.
This tells us that the veteran messengers of Boston,
even though they experience thousands of interactions
each day, must havean injury-per-mile rate that is far
lower than that recordedby Moritz for LAB members.
Indeed, among the hundreds of messengers I've
known quite well, the injury rates of the veterans
tend to be at least 2-3 times better than the rate
in the Moritz survey, and better still than the rates
suffered by their hapless rookie compatriots, who I have
compared to the guys on Star Trek with the red shirts.
If a veteran messenger does get hit, it is far more likely
to occur under a green light than a red one. That's
a key bit of knowledge I picked up over the years;
you will now choose to ignore it, I imagine.
> > About 6 hours per day on the bike in a
> > typical 9-10 hour day. 250 days per year. About
> > 15000 miles and 1500 hours per year in
> > moderate-heavy traffic. And you expect veteran
> > messengers to defer to you and your ilk as
> > the acknowledged experts on traffic cycling?
> > Sorry, Charlie.
>
> :-) As I pointed out, a messenger's priority set and perspective is
> far different from a normal cyclist.
>
> Yes, if I wanted advice on how to run red lights and survive, I'd
> consult with a bike messenger. In fact, I promise to write to you
> first!
>
> But if I want to move through traffic at a reasonable pace, with low
> risk of injury, while obeying laws, I think I'll pay more attention to
> the 50 to 100 experts who have made the most significant contributions
> to the understanding and teaching of Vehicular Cycling. And as far as
> I know, there's not much overlap between those groups.
If you want to know how to run lights, ask the person
who does it all day long every day. That would be a messenger.
If you want to 'move through traffic at a reasonable pace, with low
risk of injury, while obeying laws' ask the person who does that all
day long every day. That would also be a messenger.
As I said, a messenger in just a few years -- in addition to running
tens of thousands of lights -- will accomplish more
law-abiding and 'predictable' cycling than many of your '50-100
experts' will manage in their entire lives. It is right to
wonder then who the real experts might be.
> > Dear Mr. Fantasy, the 'adrenalin junkies' of which you
> > speak have accident rates that are far lower than any
> > accident rate you have ever cited on this newsgroup
> > as evidence that cycling is massively safe.
>
> Really? Odd, the results of the survey at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/
> ergonomics/bike/
> seem to dispute your claims.
No, they don't.
> > No, it was 11 years avg. between 'serious'
> > crashes, at their paltry ~2500 miles per year.
>
> <sigh> Unfortunately, in Moritz's survey of bike commuters, ...
It wasn't a survey of bike commuters, it was a study
of LAB members. Although many of them were
commuters, most of the mileage reported in the survey
was in fact recreational.
> he defined $50 damage to equipment as "serious." So if you're walking
> your bike, drop it and bend an STI shifter, that gets reported as a
> "serious crash." IMO, it was a flaw in the survey methodology.
It seems you have to draw the line somewhere.
This is a vast improvement over the Kaplan survey
where respondents were left to draw their own line.
Where would you draw it?
>"Note that this most-serious injury includes injuries less severe than
> those in question 18. Also note that I said the injury must be a
> problem the next day. 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. " [Kifer]
Kifer's survey of touring cyclists jibes very well with the
Moritz survey of LAB members (who averaged over 14
years cycling experience). In both surveys we find
that about 1/3 of respondents had experienced at
least some sort of minor cycling injury in the previous
year; and about 10% had experienced some more
substantial injury in the previous year, while averaging
just a few thousand miles per year. Remember,
this is among populations who do most of their
riding for recreation, and much of the reported mileage
would be on lonely roads.
Tell me again: how do these surveys help prove that
cycling is 'extremely safe?'
Let's get real. These surveys record similar
accident rates to the one that gives the Boston
messenger population its off-the-charts occupational
hazard.
Robert
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