Cycling UK Forum

Good cycling infra has very high BCR, it does not need to be paid for via taxes/rates, it pays for itself via increased returns from higher productivity as well as health savings.

Carlton green wrote: ↑12 Jul 2024, 3:30pm The likes of HS2 are, I believe, a bonkers use of money because what’s really needed (by the vast majority of travellers) is good local transport to enable folk to go about their day to day business. What’s local transport (?); well certainly cycling facilities but also bus services, local train services and park and ride.

How are you fitting in additional local train services, let alone re-opening branch lines or adding stations when there are no free train paths on the major mainlines that can carry those services?

HS2 and NPR are an absolute necessity to expand rail capacity. Major problem of people not listening to experts here.

Jdsk wrote: ↑12 Aug 2024, 6:17pm
And the first assertion is loaded. I don't think that's the relevant question when I go out for a ride. It's more like "What effect will wearing a helmet on this ride have on my safety?".
Jonathan

Is it? From an H&S perspective that's not a particularly great way to go about it. You don't go in assuming a given mitigation, then work out if it's needed. You identify the potential hazards and assess their likelihood. Then for those considered unacceptably high you work through possible mitigations considering the hierarchy of controls.

Some sort of risk assessment must have subconsciously happened for the question of whether a helmet would help ride safety arose in the first place? It's perfectly reasonable to query that initial assumption, particularly in light of alternative activities where that subconscious risk assessment for 99% of people concludes 'no problem' even though we have reasonably robust data on causality rates that show people are far from rational in those subconscious assessments

mattheus wrote: ↑6 Aug 2024, 10:04am

deeferdonk wrote: ↑29 Jul 2024, 9:35am Quite a lot of mentioning here that you are more likely to get a head injury in a car than on a bike. Is that actually true? Or is there just more car related head injuries because there's a lot more people in cars in the first place? Is it still true per person/per mile etc?

Generally, yes it's true.
Of course if you never drive, it's less true. If you never cycle, it's very true!

It's definitely true that a measure to reduce CAR occupant deaths-by-head-injury by x% would save more lives than one for cyclists.

Accounting for distance or time travelled or trips taken though then no, car travel is safer at least here in Britain. A screen grab from a study suggesting otherwise does go around Twitter occasionally but those stats are from the US where the motor fatality rate is quite a lot worse.


That said, it's less than an order of magnitude safer, particularly by time travelled/per trip and walking places actually has a higher fatality rate by distance in Britain. The point of the question therefore remains valid. Why the disproportionate focus on cycling helmets?

Given how recent the PCSC 2022 and Public Order 2023 Acts are it seems quite a valid point to raise clearly out of proportion sentencing (particularly compared to historic disruptive non violent protests, eg 2000 fuel protest, orders of magnitude more disruptive for which the instigators weren't even charged). It's clearly long term a bad idea as well, as was pointed out by some in the legal professions during those bills passages, if peaceful protest is going to end up with the same/greater sentencing as actual damage/violence, it'll just encourage extremists down the latter path.

Even aside from that, these sentences seem light compared to those handed out to those involved in the Bristol riot that formed after the first protest against the pcsc bill. There's teenage/early 20s first time offenders from that with longer sentences than the repeat offenders trying to eg torch a police van this weekend.

I'm slightly curious as to how 14 years of dire from the tories should somehow mean we have lower standards now. Labour were elected promising change, Reeves has, to date, largely talked as if she's immediately been infected by peak 'treasury brain'. This may have been fine to win the election as the swing voters that have so much (far too much) power under FPTP are largely very sold up to the stupid myth that country finances = household budgets. But the election is won, labour have a stonking majority for 5 years and the same swing voters that don't understand basic economics also want the NHS working, roads without potholes, trains to function, stuff to be clean and generally to feel better off. And whilst they might also not like more taxes or borrowing they are certainly going to be far more disgruntled should everything still being broken in 5 years.

Her perversion of Keynes in her speech is particularly troubling.

The blunt reality that most mainstream economists are largely in agreement with is that growth is not just going to magically turn up and save labour's bacon and that capital investment needs to not be mixed up with day to day revenue spend in any fiscal rules. They're also clear that taxes will need to rise and have been for months.

We'll see what the autumn statement holds but initial noises are not exactly positive, if labour aren't willing to break their silly manifesto commitments not to touch most taxes and retain a needlessly restrictive fiscal rules on capital investment then they better hope the tories are still out in the wilderness in 5 years. If they really want to pretend not to break promises their best hope is to continue the 'mess the tories left us' line and use that as an excuse for a fairly radical overhaul of the tax system. Scrap NI entirely and merge it with an changed income tax, simplify bandings and universalise a number of benefits/allowances to flatten out the UK's utterly bonkers marginal tax rate vs earnings function.

Also I don't see her following any Resolution Foundation path particularly, they'd be far more bullish about tax+spend & borrowing for investment.

PDQ Mobile wrote: ↑25 Jul 2024, 7:31pm I understand savings on a larger scale, don't like some of the consequences though and not just in computing.

And which begs the question, who is "the user"?

Me and the rest of the members, or only the CTC?
I pay nothing (and my posts are worth nothing?).

If the CTC pays what's in it for them?

Ps.
And maybe not so amusing for those who dislike much of what computing has brought to society?

CTC/CyclingUK need a and pay for a website host, any sort of vaguely non niche amateur website has been hosted with a server provider for 30 odd years and this is a charity with thousands of members. Hosting from a domestic PC is fairly inconvenient given dynamic IP addresses, limited upload bandwidth and possible T&Cs issues along with the other issues Jonathan mentions.

CyclingUK will already paying for a given amount of server space/processing power/bandwidth. The marginal increase of hosting this forum along with the rest of the site is likely negligible. Forum administration & modding is I think largely/entirely done voluntarily? Obviously its up to them on whether they think hosting the forum is worth it, they either maintain it because they think it's nice to do so or because they think there is some increase in membership attraction as a result.

The forum software itself was an open source project from the start, like a lot of more established open source software it probably started as a hobby and ended up getting some degree of funded development time through alternate revenue streams (sales of support to commercial users, associated hosting etc) than conventional sold software.

Henrys are decently bomb proof and also good if a significant amount of dusty DIY is being done. Rather than run fully bagged you can clamp a square of the bag material between the top and bottom halves (below the filter) and that sort of setup tends to do about as well as it gets when there's a lot of fine dust about. Dysons (and similarly centrifugal bagless designs) tend to clog quicker in those conditions, not just from the volume of stuff but also because a fair bit of the fine dust is sufficiently fine that it's not getting spun out anyway, even by dyson's cyclone setup so it tends to come down to filter area and the henry has far more.

For general day to day stuff though the henrys are rather less effective and tend to do less well in various tests.

Nearholmer wrote: ↑16 Jul 2024, 10:36am Do we know whether or not it has even a 5% “off-putting” effect though? I suspect not.

Promotions campaigns aren't that well studied, CyclingUK's PFD has a few references on the point which do lean in the 'more than you might think' direction but it's only a few. Though note that 5% is assuming cycle helmets protect all possible cycling injuries, not just the head, so is a big overestimate. Around half (46% in a 2012 study that looked at hospital records) of GB cycling fatalities are 'head only' and helmets can perhaps mitigate half of those, so 1-2% is probably more realistic, 5% is just the bounding.

In areas with higher cycling rates I really don't see even 5% being hard to achieve though. Areas with higher rates are those with greater utility cycling (e.g. parts of Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge, certain London boroughs like Hackney) and those are the sort of people and trips you're far more likely to put off by adding inconvenience. Those people don't cycle because they particularly like bikes or cycling, they're on a basic bike in mostly 'normal' clothes, they're probably running <20psi in the back tyre half the time and use the LBS (or bribe with snack/beer and/or rely on goodwill of more 'cyclist' friends) for basic maintenance tasks including punctures. These people are far more sensitive to the perceived safety and convenience factors, which is why you only see them in limited locations.

Ultimately, as I said above, I think there's a real problem with the direction of burden of proof here. It shouldn't be up to people to demonstrate all the issues with a proposed mitigation measure. It should be up to cycle helmet advocates to build the case for them.

The first step is to demonstrate there is a risk that actually requires intervention - given the relative rates of head injuries for walking and car travel, let alone other every day activities this strikes me as a hurdle that has not yet been overcome.

The second step is then to demonstrate a net health benefit, not just a 'in the event of a crash' benefit and that side effects do not outweigh the proposed intervention.

This pretty basic stuff in doing H&S risk assessments properly, but has been completely bypassed when it comes to cycle helmets.

Nearholmer wrote: ↑13 Jul 2024, 2:23pm
Does recommending helmet wearing yield a change in the number or severity of head injuries to cyclists overall, or change the individual probability or severity of head injury? We don’t seem to know.

Does recommending helmet wearing cause an overall negative effect to population-wide health by putting people off cycling, and thereby reducing exercise levels? We don’t seem to know.

Does mandating helmet wearing yield a change in the number or severity of head injuries to cyclists overall, or change the individual probability or severity of head injury? We don’t seem to know.

Does mandating helmet wearing cause a negative effect to population-wide health by putting people off cycling, and thereby reducing exercise levels? There are some strong indicators that it probably does.

Is either recommending or mandating helmet wearing the overall best value for money way of improving the safety of cyclists? We don’t know. It’s very cheap, but as above we don’t really know how beneficial it is or isn’t, so it’s hard to compare with other options.

Is either recommending of mandating helmet wearing net positive or net negative in value for money terms overall, taking into account costs of injuries prevented/reduced and any health did dis-benefits from any discouragement of cycling that it entrains? We don’t know for sure, but mandating is probably negative because it probably puts people off cycling sufficiently to cause worsened health outcomes that exceed any reduction in injury costs.

Whilst you might not be able to get precise answers with these you can put bounds on the potential benefits and what the discouragement % would need to be to eliminate these as with e.g. de Jong's assessment that Cycling UK reference in their briefings on the matter.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10. ... 11.01785.x

Where even if you assume helmet use prevents 100% of all cycling injuries, you only need around a 5% drop in cycling to lose that through health disbenefits.

Given how slim that is I'd suggest that the onus for even promoting helmets is on those doing the promoting to provide the evidence to suggest they're not doing any net harm.

Jdsk wrote: ↑7 Jul 2024, 1:58pm
Any guesses for the list of improvements to relations that stop short of that?

SPS deal possible and some other stuff. Some of the people who work in trade on twitter have long pointed out what could be done better.

That said, and as most of them stress, it's pretty small beer in the grand scheme of things. Labour's 'make brexit work' is really just more double cakism and it's a pity the political classes are still pretending that brexit's consequences are fixable. It's also quite baffling given the polling on the matter, both at the headline level and at the detail of the underlying age distribution. Most people don't really want to hear about brexit as an issue as they don't see it as a priority, but I doubt more than about 20%-30% would care much if Labour just quietly got on with minimum SM/CU re-entries.

Voting to remove something without regard to what it is replaced by is inherently a negative choice, rather amazed to see that even trying to be a point for debate, it's just basic semantics.

Under proportional systems the vast majority have the option to vote for a party because that party is their first choice. If that choice is also not the current ruling party then that choice is also to remove the current governing party, but critically they do not have to make a suboptimal tactical vote because their first choice (and possibly second/third etc) choices have no chance.

Jdsk wrote: ↑8 Jul 2024, 3:27pm Deliberately avoiding authoritarian national populism isn't a "negative", and many fewer people would have died in Europe if some other countries had done just that.

FPTP/majoritarian voting systems (of which france is also) does not provide for that in a way that proportional ones do not.

Jdsk wrote: ↑8 Jul 2024, 10:15am

pwa wrote: ↑8 Jul 2024, 6:18am One interesting aspect of the result in France is that it throws up a tricky situation that, for all its faults, our FPTP electoral system tends to avoid: what happens when potential power is divided across several parties who can't stand the sight of each other. And the resulting coalition is likely to be one that nobody likes much, and nobody voted for. It may do some things that most people are against, simply to get a smaller grouping onboard for other parts of its programme. This chimera won't be what people voted for, but the consequence of people not concentrating their votes coherently. All democracies take the purity of individual votes and distort that, in one way or another, to create something that only a minority will be truly satisfied with. The only question is which point the distortion occurs. At the start (as with FPTP) or a step or two later with the dirty dealing done behind closed doors as parties trade the power their portions of the vote have given them. We in the UK can now sit back and watch another imperfect system in operation.
...

I agree about the analysis of where coalitions take place: within parties, between parties before elections, between parties after elections...

But I don't see any purity in any system of individual votes. Because, as with turtles, it's compromises all the way down. And in England and France we've just seen that with rejection of an undesired alternative being more important than the ostensible purpose of electing a local representative.

Jonathan

But that entire view is the problem wtih FPTP in a nutshell. A huge number of people just voted against something. The did not vote for anything. Indeed this is nicely demonstrated in this polling by yougov:

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/ ... ing-labour

It's a negative system that produces negative politics.

Jdsk wrote: ↑1 Jul 2024, 11:46am

Bmblbzzz wrote: ↑1 Jul 2024, 11:44am Or something like ISA (Intelligent Speed Assist).

As mandated for new sales in the EU.

Jonathan

But easily switched off/overridden, much like most collision avoidance systems also don't function in the case of an accelerator pedal pressed to the floor as may be the case in a medical incident and/or wrong pedal panic.

Cugel wrote: ↑30 Jun 2024, 9:28am

pete75 wrote: ↑30 Jun 2024, 1:55am
An MP is meant to represent all his constituents but not all their views. They will (mostly) be representing the views of their political party and, presumably, of those who voted for them as a representative of that party. It's called democracy aka the tyranny of the 51%..

That's a shallow view of the duties of an MP, although probably representative (!) of how things are. In fact, its worse than how you describe it as what a lot of MPs are representing are the often highly damaging (to the nation and most of its citizens) interests of a tiny clique of bung-givers, media barons and others who pull the MP-puppet's strings. The voter who thought they were voting for policies in a manifesto or as printed in some campaign leaflet was, basically, lied to .... again.

One of the reasons I'm fairly sold on STV being one of the best voting systems. The FPTP myth of local representation simply doesn't hold up to reality because of the reasons discussed. It's often not even 51% as it's a plurality voting system.

Multi member seats means that it's far more likely at least one of them will have sympathies for a constituent's concern* and it's also about the best system for removing safe seats. No lists and multi-member constituencies means even in 'safe' areas a party candidate will still be competing against others from his/her own party, can't see the rees-moggs of the world surviving long in that sort of setup.


*of course there is the wider constitutional question of whether MPs really should be doing this sort of surgery stuff or whether their role is better focused on being actual legislators. It's perhaps a reflection of the overcentralised nature of particularly England that MPs waffle on in a national parliament about a matter that is being dealt with, or should be being dealt with at a local or regional level.