Originally Posted by
Daniel4
"Working with county staff, students marked ½-mile routes and riding positions on six types of roadways with different types of bicycle facilities. "
So, I'm assuming this means lane positions were established for every type of road regardless of the rider's gender.
"the students used the handle-bar-mounted radar to measure passing distances"So no bias there. Observation was done by instrumentation.
The bias could have been in the behavior of the riders. This is a feature of all studies based on trained participants. However, for all of that, I suspect that as with most preliminary studies in the social sciences, the effect diminishes upon replication and better experimental design. They could still take the conscious actions of the riders out of the picture by using video footage of actual riders.
I'm certainly not trying to downplay the way that female riders are treated by drivers, something that seems credible based on talking to friends who ride. But I've learned to be skeptical of studies --
especially when they confirm my opinions.
