CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

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mjr
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by mjr »

fluffybunnyuk wrote:No i'm saying the biggest risk to a cyclist of an incident regardless of the magnitude is human error, followed by equipment malfunction.

Incident of what? Danger is defined by some as "the condition of being susceptible to harm or injury" (source: wordnet) so can we restrict this to injurious incidents?

We really need to stop with the paranoia about being hit by a car. Cycling is a relatively safe activity.

Yes, it's relatively safe and has many benefits. However, the impact of being hit by a car can be so much higher (far more than your 25 times the impact of making an incorrect decision and 8-9 times of having an equipment failure) that what you're insulting as paranoia seems like a reasonable risk assessment to me! That sort of thing is why I sometimes yield at junctions where I should have priority, when I decide that a motorist about to make a conflicting movement probably hasn't seen me.

... However just to check this I will record tomorrow on a cycle into london, and back how many cases of human error i see by a cyclist, how many of equipment malfunction, and how many cyclists i see being hit by a car. If the posts on here by others are to be believed I should see carnage on the road with cars hitting cyclists more than every 10minutes. I think that scenario unlikely, but good data being the source of all hypothesis means I should check anyway.

Recording that will give you estimates of the relative probabilities, not contributions to risk. Who here is saying you should see cars hitting cyclists more than every 10minutes? I think most people seem to be saying it's very improbable but can be high impact.

I'm quite sure that your human error estimate will be at least 90% of what you see, but in most cases, they will be harmless and in most of the rest, they will have little impact.

That brings me to the probability problem with that risk calculation earlier: just because you observed no cars hitting you in a year, you evaluated it as if it were impossible (zero probability), which it obviously isn't.

I hesitate to mention this, but I did get a first class degree in this sort of stuff, did postgraduate study, taught it in a uni and a college and still have some textbooks handy. I mess up sometimes but I did know it once...
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by Vorpal »

Even if the examples aren't exactly transferable to a population, I think fluffybunny has a good point. And of course the probability of occurrence for being hit by a car is a small, but non-zero number for a population of cyclists. But I was kind of amused by the way she illustrated her point.

I don't think that anyone on here really thinks that cyclists are their own worst danger (I might be wrong!), but many people overestimate the risks.
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by fluffybunnyuk »

I think its also that people underestimate risk. I know I do when im thinking of tucking into an aero position on a tourer going downhill....
Getting back to the OP and the original person who made the comment, I think they approached it from a risk management perspective, and it was lost in translation a bit as to what they meant, and came out a bit insensitively. I think any debate which leads people to honestly re-appraise their bike skills can only be a good thing. If only car drivers did that....
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by mjr »

I think it was Sir John Armitt who made the comment this time. Armitt is an engineer, currently chairman of National Express and with a long history with railways and John Laing. Basically, he's been partly responsible for building the inadequate killer activity-discouraging infrastructure of the last few decades and failing to adopt Vision Zero. So I don't share your confidence that it was a risk management statement rather than a political one.
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danhopgood
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by danhopgood »

John Armitt was also Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority and probably the one with the most influence on the successful delivery of the infrastructure for the London Olympic games. The safety record of that project is one of the best of any project any time. It also left a legacy of transport infrastructure that certainly doesn't fit the description of "inadequate killer activity-discouraging".

http://learninglegacy.independent.gov.uk/themes/transport/index.php
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by honesty »

That'll be the same authority that created a notorious junction where a cyclist got ran over and killed by an Olympic bus wouldn't it?

Come on. His comments are laughable, especially as a few minutes later they were presented with news that one of his buses had close passed and hit a cyclist. It was a crass attempt to push the focus off buses and back onto the cyclists, probably because they are annoyed that their going to lose bus parking space on the embankment because of this. He was basically saying, sod paying money on this lot they dont deserve it because some cyclists are bad. I know lets not build new motorways because some drivers use their mobile phones. Lets not fund the NHS because some people are fat. Lets not prosecute rapists because some women wear short skirts...
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by mjr »

Is the Olympic-delivered infrastructure any good? The official legacy website doesn't seem like the most independent view, despite the domain name.

I've not yet been there, but the Olympic Park seems frequently criticised for its crap infrastructure. Random example http://hackneycyclist.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... -park.html which claims that they actually ripped up some good-looking unopened cycling infrastructure while building it, so they could build something worse instead!

So I still think Sir John Armitt looks like an engineer responsible for discouraging healthy travellers.
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by stewartpratt »

I have seen nothing but criticism and condemnation for the Olympic Park's "provision" for cycling, and from all the pictures I've seen it's wholly justified.

You're actually—as far as I can recall—the first person I've heard praise any aspect of it in a cycling context, and you're certainly the first I've seen cite it in defence of Armitt.
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by bovlomov »

danhopgood wrote:John Armitt was also Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority and probably the one with the most influence on the successful delivery of the infrastructure for the London Olympic games. The safety record of that project is one of the best of any project any time. It also left a legacy of transport infrastructure that certainly doesn't fit the description of "inadequate killer activity-discouraging".

http://learninglegacy.independent.gov.uk/themes/transport/index.php


The Olympic legacy = £8.77 billion spent

That's the headline costs for the project. Does this include the social costs ( displaced residents and businesses, disruption to the same, loss of civil liberties etc), security costs (ground to air missiles, repressive policing done on overtime) and indirect losses (for example, the marked decrease in tourism during the period, and widespread travel disruption - not least to cyclists)?

Then there's the £100 million syphoned off into elite sports, at the expense of regular participation sports. The short term effects of that have already been noticed, but the long term effects are incalculable.

How about the costs - to health and pocket - of all that extra crap food and drink bought as a result of the prime time advertising?

But then, the extra dead cyclists and the ill health of millions is a small price to pay for a few silver discs plated with 6g of pure gold.
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by danhopgood »

You miserable lot....
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by kwackers »

bovlomov wrote:and the ill health of millions is a small price to pay for a few silver discs plated with 6g of pure gold.

To be fair you can't move for joggers/runners since the Olympics. Used to be I'd run for a couple of hours on a Sunday and see another 2 perhaps 3, but since then it's like the M6 in rush hour!

See a lot more cyclists too although I'm less sure it's got anything to do with the Olympics. Numbers have been slowly rising for years and there didn't seem to be a post-Olympic jump in them.
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by honesty »

bovlomov wrote:
Then there's the £100 million syphoned off into elite sports, at the expense of regular participation sports. The short term effects of that have already been noticed, but the long term effects are incalculable.


This was the bit that actually annoyed me the most about the Olympics. The powers that be decided to pull sponsorship from sports that didn't do well and focus on those sports where we got medals. As if the focus of the Olympics is solely the total number of medals obtained rather than the lasting legacy of supporting all sports. It's also so counter productive, Britain is never going to be up there with other countries in weight lifting for example, if we stop funding weightlifting because we're not currently up there with other countries. It's circular logic and it's just wrong.
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by bovlomov »

kwackers wrote:
bovlomov wrote:and the ill health of millions is a small price to pay for a few silver discs plated with 6g of pure gold.

To be fair you can't move for joggers/runners since the Olympics. Used to be I'd run for a couple of hours on a Sunday and see another 2 perhaps 3, but since then it's like the M6 in rush hour!

See a lot more cyclists too although I'm less sure it's got anything to do with the Olympics. Numbers have been slowly rising for years and there didn't seem to be a post-Olympic jump in them.

There were reports of a widespread dip in sports participation following the London Olympics. I'm not sure how that was measured, and there were probably other factors - insurance, CRB etc. But I don't think there can be much doubt that a few of those billions, wisely spent, could have made an immediate and long term improvement to sports facilities (for everyone rather than a few athletes) and improvements to cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, for utility.

Like all host countries, Great Britain bought its medals - and will be paying for them long after we are all dead (from heart disease).
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by bovlomov »

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but here's a story about the 'Olympic Legacy'.
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Re: CYCLISTS ARE OWN BIGGEST DANGER

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Valbrona wrote:Money badly spent. I have never believed in segregation. Would have been better spent on enforcing road traffic laws.

Enforcing traffic law should not cost money, it should be a Profit Centre
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