I-Like-To-Bike

You don't need to wait for practical beacons or autonomously driven cars to be fielded.

You could take a taxi/Uber today and everyday to drive you for all your commuting needs and you could spend the time today and everyday playing games with your kids or reading/relaxing.

Oneder

It's like putting cameras everywhere for crime. Crime is not caused by lack of security it is caused because we have a crappy society and no borders.

Likewise with accidents. Clogged roads and crappy people who have no reason to care about the others in their community are the issue. And if you think statistics is a good way to determine what's best, you're wrong. Already they have shown how bicycles are a problem for this nightmare 'solution' and when you get a million of these cars interacting and get the first real glitch that makes thousands crash at once then statistics are going to be cold comfort to all those dead people.

Oneder

There;s plenty in Europe, people here watch too much tv for their opinions to count.

Daniel4

This is the kind of attitude I was referring to.

There are no accidents, only collisions. And I may add, due to negligence.

If you remove all the crappy cyclists off the road, you'll still get over 30,000 road fatalities in the US every year. But try to imagine how much the decrease will be with no crappy motorists.

Even in Denmark and Copenhagen. I asked the traffic department for some stats and motorist fatalities there are still 5x higher than cyclist fatalities.

So the obvious solution to crappy motorists is to change what they drive into self-driving cars where they don't have to road rage or complain about the police anymore.

Show us a way in which you can turn crappy drivers into good drivers and we won't need self-driving cars.

McBTC

...so, still ok to prevent folks from dashing across runways or blame engineers when some drunken idiot steps in front of a moving train?

canklecat

Aside from the implication of victim-blaming (the stumbling person might be suffering from a medical condition rather than drunkenness, even if the physical result appears the same), these aren't the same issues or comparable scenarios. The history of fabricating the concept of jaywalking is entirely different.

Railroad tracks have restricted access almost everywhere. Even when pedestrians can walk on tracks or cars can attempt to cross tracks unsafely, there are clearly posted rules almost everywhere prohibiting these practices. There are blind and poorly marked rail crossings, but fewer than I used to see even in our rural area.

Railroads are operated by highly trained and regulated professionals. The burden is far easier, too easy, for operating a motor vehicle.

Engineers have limited abilities to control the speed and direction of trains. Drivers are capable of slowing down, braking and passing safely -- but many choose not to and instead accelerate to cut off drivers attempting to change lanes, or to crowd pedestrians who are attempting to cross roads safely, even at crosswalks. Engineers cannot indulge passive-aggressive hostilities in a moment to exacerbate the risks.

Even at clearly marked crosswalks, walk signals, etc., not a day goes by that I don't witness careless and recklessly indifferent drivers sailing through red lights to turn right, ignoring walk signals for pedestrians who are already in the crosswalk; or speeding up and changing lanes across a 3-lane boulevard to brush-by pass a pedestrian or cyclist. Every time I ride home on my bike I have to deal with drivers short-cutting a left turn against oncoming traffic. I'm riding straight through and have right of way, but invariably the opposing driver wanted to turn left will drive diagonally into the wrong lane, rather than pulling straight ahead to clear the traffic island before turning. And this is the least dangerous intersection of the alternatives I have for getting home. (The main problem is this particular neighborhood, which is generally hostile toward cyclists. I only need to get a mile away and the entire vibe changes and becomes more friendly.)

Trains can't do that in most situations, even if the engineer wanted to. It's a choice made by negligent drivers. That's one of the main risks that could conceivably be reduced with automated driving cars.

KraneXL

Statistics are just a tool and should never be relied upon on its own as proof of anything. It can also be manipulated by the originator, despite the insistence to the contrary.

McBTC

True, true and life in a complex society places a burden on humans to exercise some reality/time-based common sense if they're going to buy into the system. If you want to succeed you need to follow the herd to some extent or be willing to pay the price and not blame others when you find yourself all alone in the middle of the road,with no direction known, like a rolling stone.

We're living in the 21st century not the 17th and it's reasonable not to expect kids will be trampled to death by horses if they play in the streets. We also don't expect an adult with a brain to step out in front of car that's bearing down at >40 mph. Humans in the 21st century need to be a lot smarter than deer in the headlights.

KD5NRH

...stealing transponders and throwing them into heavy traffic would become the new "knockout game."

KD5NRH

Why not? You don't believe that eating margarine causes divorce?

KraneXL

My Point exactly. Aka, a spurious correlation. What about families that don't eat margarine?

himespau 

150 years ago before margarine was available, almost no one got divorced.

Maelochs

no one rode bicycles either ....

wphamilton

I'm not sure if this is bantering or a serious objection, but kids are arrested now and again for throwing things into traffic. Off of overpasses is what I've seen mostly. But it's pretty rare, so I doubt that having a transponder to throw would make it much worse.

In any event, I'm looking at the warning that you're approaching a pedestrian or cyclist. At the side of the road, or in the lane, up ahead so that you don't run over them. If a kid is standing on the shoulder and throws it into traffic, it's already done its job and warned drivers that he's standing there. It doesn't mean that cars are going to slam on the brakes and swerve into other lanes ... that's one of the reasons I opined that it will always be an additional safety measure and never the sole reliance.

wphamilton

The old saw is correlation is not causation, but that doesn't invalidate statistics. It's misused a lot that way though.

McBTC

Statistically, taking up bicycling may be bad for your health. Research shows that of many adult males who bowed to societal encouragement to take up cycling for positive health and wellbeing and subsequently died in a vehicle accident, most were riding without helmets and quarter were legally drunk.

Maelochs

Well ... helmets don't cause accidents ... and neither does the lack of helmets. But being drunk is pretty effective if you want to get wrecked.

I'd say, if you want to throw around statistics, include enough to make a point.

How many died in the first year of cycling? How many were riding at dusk or in the dark without lights?

And come on---How many people who take up cycling "For Their Health" subsequently ride drunk? I'd say there is about Zero overlap there. People who cycle drunk, i'd wager, are people who took up cycling "for their health" after a couple DUIs.

Statistically .... (get ready) ... being a bad or stupid cyclist is not a healthy endeavor.

Being a bad or stupid driver---or a drunk driver---is safer.

I'd like to see the research which Actually shows how many people who took up cycling "for their health" died in accidents. That is the first statistic ... and considering only about 1000 cyclists die in the US each year ... the number who took up cycling That year "for their health" is probably pretty low (if they did it past a year, i have to assume they liked it and why they started is irrelevant.)

And tell me please----how did anyone know why those dead drunk started riding? I am pretty sure none of the people mentioned in that so-called "research" answered any questions.

Basically, there is a Ton of really sketchy polling out there ... and the supposed 'conclusions" people draw from it are often a lot sketchier.

Show me the stats that prove that some group of people took up cycling purely for their health, and were riding drunk and died. You saw the data, right?

by the way ... 'bowed to societal encouragement"? What? is that in the supposed "research" too? Because as far as fitness goes, what I see most are suggestions to join a gym. Cycling for health is not promoted widely as far as I have ever seen ... possibly because for most people in the U.S. it is difficult half the year due to weather, and for anyone in an urban setting it is anything but healthy.

Nice to make broad claims ... better to back them up.

wphamilton

Relax, he was just being rhetorical IMO. Statistically, including injuries and fatalities, cycling correlates strongly with both general health and life expectancy, so he did miss the mark.

McBTC

These findings are looking at a third… here are two of the Highlights of a study of the effect of alcohol intoxication on as it relates to bicycle-related injury due to crashes:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...43919115012789

McBTC

Collison with a vehicle I think probably ups the odds of the seriousness of a bicycle-related injury but the cause of most injuries is falling down... "Mechanism and site of injury (Figure 2) Most of the injuries were caused by fall from bicycle... 65.2%"

mr_bill

You are going to want to take a closer read of the source. Of those SCREENED....

Most people on bikes were not screened at all. (Screening generally takes place when there is a legal requirement or when the patient presents with indication of alcohol use.)

Only 211 of 563 patients were screened.
Only 78 of 563 patients in the study had a positive test result for alcohol.

And legal intoxication is 0.08 g/dL EtOH what do the authors consider “intoxication?”

0.01 g/dL, which is the limit of detection. Far below legal intoxication.

(Unfortunately the binning is negative, everyone who tests positive to 2x legal limit, and >2x legal limit.)

-mr. bill

wphamilton

You found an study that misuses statistics in their conclusion. touche!

What they should have said was, relatively more injuries are suffered by intoxicated riders without involvement of motor vehicles. It doesn't mean they have less "risk" from collisions.

Unfortunately a lot of studies are published these days with this kind of error, or other serious errors. I will still say that it's misusing science and mathematics, and not a problem with the science itself.

Maelochs

yeah, I keep saying this ... glad to see it is generally understood (usually by the time I figure out a thing, most everyone else already has.)

I see a Lot of it ... because writers need to get readers, and concoct headlines to get clicks, and interpret data any way they want, and know that almost no one is going to go back and actually look at the data and effectively analyze it.

remarkable number of headline-grabbing studies about this tendency or that one, turn out to be based on the reaction of six out of ten fish, or seven out of twenty insects, or some number of bacteria reacting to a chemical being added to their environment ... but the writers extrapolate the results into predictions of human behavior ... because money trumps truth, I guess.

Right here we went from drunk riders without helmets being killed ... to people riding drunk and falling over on their own and sustaining minor injuries, more than sober riders.

Funny stuff, in that pit-of-the-stomach nausea kind of way.

McBTC

So, you're saying journalists and even scientific researchers, overgeneralize about a large group based on the behavior of a few members, and then tie that group to another member with a lot of bad press? That is outrageous.

wphamilton

I would say that this is overgeneralizing journalists and scientific researchers, and tying that behavior to disparagement of scientific methods.