Maelochs

Dude, you are lousy at math.

"Once bitten, shy."

Once he was bitten ... he gave up riding his bike and took to the pulpit in the Church of Two-Wheeled Fatality, trying to convince others to fear along with him.

He was never shy twice. It was not shy/shy.

I suppose if he had ridden his bike to his job as a snake handler he would never have been bitten ... because he would have been hit while riding.

See---getting hit while riding is actually a safety measure.

Daniel4

Depends on the number of cars per mile.



And motorist deaths: 30,000 per year

Just to clarify: hit by a car. Nobody quits because he was hit by a pedestrian or a bicycle.

JoeyBike

Venomous. Just FYI.

livedarklions

Statistical quibble--"per distance traveled" is a measure that makes bikes and pedestrians look less safe than cars just because cars cover distance faster. The fairer comparison is probably per hour of the activity.

JoeyBike

From what I see around here, walking stairs and showering are as dangerous as playing in high speed traffic. Some here do not see danger as incremental based on the risks taken.

If they handle snakes long enough, every single one of them gets bitten. Do some research. Risk is not the same across the board. You can mitigate risk. Or not. I don't care. Very unlikely these folks will be hit by a car at this very moment of the photo anyway. And notice.....no one is playing with their phone! A rattlesnake preacher who can't focus won't have to worry about grey hair, that's fo sho!

I-Like-To-Bike

In order to free up this list from all the anti-motorist Drama, why not a new new stickie place in Foo or P&R to aggregate all the rants and hyperbolic despair posted on A&S, LCF, and elsewhere on BF about the evils of motor vehicles and/or motorists?

The stickie thread or new list should include all reminiscing about the good old days before the invention of the internal combustion engine and daydreaming about the future paradise that would be ours if only cars would go away.

JoeyBike

I'm not so worried about dying as being disabled.

In 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000 crashes, 30,296 of with fatalities, killing 32,999, and injuring 2,239,000 (Source)

5.5 MILLION accidents in one year! Cars and trucks are slamming into things right and left. And how bad of a collision with a multi-ton slab of steel does it take to ruin a cyclist permanently? That little polystyrene hat won't protect from you the neck down fellas. But don't worry, it won't happen to you.

GamblerGORD53

^^^^^ Look at these busted tinker-toy bikes, none are steel. The only wheel still round is the one with 28 normally spaced spokes. All the others are weenies with 20 or 24 spokes with oddball patterns. There are no guarantees, but your margin might go from slim survival to NONE. Almost all group ride crashes look like this too.
This year in NW US/ Canada I went 3,900 miles and saw NO accidents. In 2014/5 in SE Asia, I went 4,200 miles and saw or heard 2 dozen. I avoided one by stopping and letting 2 buses go by on a narrow street then 2 motor cycles following each bus pulled out to pass and crashed head-on. In Chengdu, 2006 I saw a taxi ram the back of a rickshaw and 2 ladies got thrown out the back.
I have been in 7 cars having a fender bender, NONE with a seat belt on and I didn't even budge.

Saying NO cyclists cause their own accidents is LAUGHABLE. NOT riding FRAP is what is DANGEROUS. Pretending you are a CAR is STUPID nonsense.
Riding like a jerk gets you treated like a jerk, GUARANTEED. There wasn't 1 vehicle in 1000 that wasn't courteous around my riding, EVER.
Icy surfaces, dirt trails and MUPs are more troublesome by far. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. LOL Helmets are for clowns.

JoeyBike

Riders weren't made from steel either. Five dead in that incident with one pickup truck.

Daniel4

I make a lot of references to fatalities simply because the data is so much easier to obtain.

For example:
Pedestrian to pedestrian collision- probably occurs every day too but who collects this data? Meanwhile, there's probably no debate if one claims that pedestrian to pedestrian collisions resulting from a fatality is zero.

Same with bicycle to pedestrian or bicycle to bicycle collisions. Fatality data would be around one every five years but one would have to really dig around to find out where in North America they had occurred.

Meanwhile collisions involving cars occur all the time and do get reported simply because the smallest bump results in $500 to $1000 in car body damage even if there is no human injury.

And yes, even with car-to-bicycle collisions being under reported the year-end results in Toronto is an average of only two bicycle fatalities.

Meanwhile, of the 60 to 70 road fatalities in Toronto, motor vehicle deaths are 33% to 43% of that total.

But again, one can't state in a simple sentence that cycling is dangerous. It's the presence of the car that makes everything dangerous. They jump curbs and put occupants inside buildings at risk too.

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3564461​​​​​​

Let's put it another way. Just recently, in Toronto's York University area, women have been sexually assaulted.

Would the decision be for women to quit walking outside or the sexual offender be caught and stopped?

Maelochs

Those pedestrians fatally struck by brakeless fixie riders in London quit everything instantly.

However ... methinks you might be taking things a bit ... seriously?

Nobody rides venomous snakes, so the number of collisions between venomous snake riders and cyclists is very low ... or is it just that such collisions go unreported?

I-Like-To-Bike

What exactly is the point of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth? What exactly are the pusillanimous posters advocating? Enough is enough!

JoeyBike

No one has made that simple statement. Some of us argue that there is a spectrum of danger while cycling. One end of the spectrum is a cyclist falling off his/her bike in the driveway while learning to use clipless pedals. The opposite end of the spectrum is a cyclist riding a recumbent tricycle on a 70mph back road with rumble strips, no shoulders, on a foggy day with the sun in the motorists eyes while looking at their phone and in possession of worn out windshield wipers.

There is a continuum of danger, all of which is more dangerous than staying in bed (except for the clogged up artery issue, or maybe a meteorite strike).

Is riding a bicycle inherently dangerous on a flat bike path with no other humans present? Negligible. Bombing a mountain down a virtical scree slope at 55 mph after being dropped off by a helicopter? Yeah, even without other humans around, the risk is extreme for the average person, not so extreme for a pro rider who does this for a living. But still, everything is under the control of the rider in these examples (minus mechanical issues). Now throw a bunch of speeding, distracted, non-professional, phone watching opioid addicts piloting two-ton battering rams into the mix and most intelligent people would agree that the risk is greater than cycling on that flat MUP trail through the pine woods.

The choice we make is where on that spectrum do we say "Uncle".

There are solutions available to men and women who find themselves in danger from other humans. It is a banned topic here, but there are viable, legal solutions that would lower the risk of assailants having success in their attempts to harm others. Won't help you in the case of getting steam-rolled by an F150 from behind though.

Maelochs

Which means that all your arguments are meaningless.

That is like saying, "I googled it and this is the first response." All that means is a lot of people clicked on that link, not that it is accurate.

People who say "I researched this and here are the facts" who later admit, "Well, I barely researched this, and those are a tiny bit of the facts" are at least honest enough to admit that they didn't bother to really get the facts.

But maybe they should have stated that up front?

Anyway ... I haven't been Seriously involved in this ridiculous debate for a long time. When people started Seriously comparing snake-handling with cycling .... boy howdy, can some people see the obvious and still not see what they are seeing.

Thanks all, for the entertainment.

On another hand ... the inability of most adults to think critically is the chief cause of most of the ills in the world. Sometimes the urge to Win the Internet is a rush into ignorance and self-destruction.

Be careful riding those snakes, and if you must handle either venomous or poisonous snakes while riding, wear your seat belt and FRAP. And if you don't get hit or bit ... remember which snakes were which. The poisonous ones are not safe to eat.

Here is the kicker---snakes don't ride or walk---but they still get hit by cars. But we will never know the real facts because no one tabulates that information.

Woe is us.

Daniel4

"No one has made that simple statement. "

Somebody did. It's in the thread title.

"Which means that all your arguments are meaningless."

Uh, oh. Here we go.

JoeyBike

Haha! Good one. You made me look up the definition of a word! I shall add that to my thesaurus immediately.

I-Like-To-Bike

If following the A&S model, women should post screeds online about how all their problems would vanish if they avoided walking anywhere near a man, since men the cause of any and every negative incident.

JoeyBike

Thread title was facetious. No where outside of the title of this "tongue in cheek" thread will you find anybody making that blanket statement. Thread was meant to garner reaction, not present fact or even a serious proclamation from the OP. But you could ask him yourself.

I do believe he was half interested in starting a sticky on this topic, but more recent post lead me to believe it was mostly a gag.

Maelochs

Really? You cannot see anywhere in what you posted where a person might say, "Hmmm ... perhaps in some folks' minds, but ... "?

First, prove the existence of a deity ... then prove that men cannot see that deity with women present. No room for debate? Have you been living on Earth?

And as for using the actions of religious groups to justify any sort of actions ... there is a major religion which believes it is the will of the ultimate deity that men should own slaves and beat their wives and their slaves ... but judiciously. (It even specifies beating them with the stick used to clean camels' teeth, I hear.)

Care to defend those positions too?

Stick with snake-handling. (By the way, if you examine that photo of the snake-handlers you will see an honest-to-goodness female there handling snakes right next the the man. Apparently he is not so distracted as to be unable to manage the potentially lethal reptile he is holding ... but then, those guys claim it is totally faith in the divine which keeps them safe ... so if the mere presence of a female in the room were enough to keep a man from the divine ... that is a photo of a guy about to get bit, right?)

I guess "ridiculous" was the hot Christmas gift this season ... everybody seems to have extra to share.

I don't support the commercialization of days of faith. I make my own ridiculous .... but I am awed by how generous some folks here can be.

Thank you all for this humbling spiritual lesson.

(Now let's take a sharp turn before this ends up in P&R, eh?)

AlmostTrick

Good news! Instead of giving up cycling I decided to be better prepared for the inevitable.

JoeyBike

That might just get you 3 feet! But a child seat will do the same.

GamblerGORD53

In 2003 I drove to Galveston and then back thru the plains. In South Dakota, there were rattle snakes every 5 or 10 miles on the road.
Most were already squished I guess. Wouldn't want to be riding over one of them. ha
Skating and skiing are more dangerous for injuries, IMO.

Standing on a train platform is a risk these days with psychos waiting to push somebody off to the tracks. There was a sucker punch sicko fad for a while.
One night I was leaving the carnival here on my bike and thru a dark park. 1 of 3 guys gave me a shoulder bump for fun and said to his friends, oh that hurt a bit. I was almost expecting it from these guys.
I feel a whole lot SAFER riding my bike.

JoeyBike

What on Earth?....I am not superstitious in the least so you picked the wrong guy to argue such subjects. I'm a science major. I am not into astrology, the occult, or any of that stuff. I am well educated so I do know some things outside of my belief system but you are way off base with this post.

MoAlpha

KraneXL

Men take more risks than women. That's the only provable takeaway here.Is that your analysis of the scientific model? And people wonder why I laugh at the notions of a jury of your peers. And to think people find me negative when I tell them our criminal justice system is a joke. At least I lived long enough to verify my hypothesis there to be true.