Female Cyclist Killed This Morning In Belfast

dennisn

Kieran_Burns wrote:

While I have genuine sympathies for the family of the bereaved; I think people better take a very deep breath and think calm thoughts before they read that appalling piece of journalism.

I doubt you have "genuine sympathies" for anyone. You just wanted to complain about something. :roll: :roll:

Kieran_Burns

dennisn wrote:

Kieran_Burns wrote:

While I have genuine sympathies for the family of the bereaved; I think people better take a very deep breath and think calm thoughts before they read that appalling piece of journalism.

I doubt you have "genuine sympathies" for anyone. You just wanted to complain about something. :roll: :roll:

Oh, do shut up.

il_principe

Sheesh, Ole DennisN has rocked up on the commuter forum! Whatever next?

dennisn

Kieran_Burns wrote:

dennisn wrote:

Kieran_Burns wrote:

While I have genuine sympathies for the family of the bereaved; I think people better take a very deep breath and think calm thoughts before they read that appalling piece of journalism.

I doubt you have "genuine sympathies" for anyone. You just wanted to complain about something. :roll: :roll:

Oh, do shut up.

It's true. You could have just said "My condolences to the family" but no, you had make it into something about you and how you feel about a newspaper. Sad.

rolf_f

mybreakfastconsisted wrote:

Rolf, cycling is safe and getting safer as cycling becomes more popular. It is hard to compare stats sensibly, per mile travelled, types of road used, but broadly the risks for cycling are the same as for walking. It's a quirk of statistics that you're more likely to be killed by a police car on the pavement than a cyclist. The BMA reckon the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks by a factor of 8 to 1. The sloppy reporting above propogates the myth that cycling is dangerous- it really isn't!
pdf here:

I haven't said that cycling isn't safe or getting safer. What I've said is that it is a greater risk than walking. If you disagree, effectively you are suggesting that there isn't a correlation between risk and speed which there obviously is. As to whether cycling is dangerous - that depends on what you define as dangerous. In pure statistical terms, Space Shuttle flight can easily be defined as safe. Most people will probably define activities as dangerous in comparison to what they do already - if they are into cave diving, cycling will feel extremely safe, if they fairly sedentary then cycling will be perceived as relatively dangerous (and correctly so - it is).

Sorry, but what on earth has the BMA comment on health benefits got to do with anything?!!

Why don't you put a poll up on here asking people how many times they have hurt themselves walking around town and how many times they have hurt themselves cycling? I've had three significant offs on my road bikes in the last 18 months and no injuries as a pedestrian ever. A very, very poor sample set but I suspect many or even most on here will have similar experience.

andrewjoseph

I fell into the road whilst walking the other day, nearly collided with a car travelling in the same direction.

bails87

Rolf F wrote:

[
Sorry, but what on earth has the BMA comment on health benefits got to do with anything?!!

Because the risks of a sedentary lifestyle are greater than the risks from cycling. If you're talking about the risks of cycling vs not, you've got to include those risks too. So sitting on your arse all day might not seem like it, but is much more likely to kill you than mixing with traffic with no more than a bit of polystyrene on your head to protect you.

mybreakfastconsisted

This mentions the problems with comparisons upthread:

During the 1980s, the UK Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL) carried out a comprehensive study of risk for all road users in Great Britain [3]. It noted that relative risk between different classes of road user depended on the basis for comparison. One could consider the risk per kilometre travelled, the risk per hour of travel, the risk per average trip, or the risk per year. These various methods yielded greatly differing results.

Comparison by risk per kilometre strongly favoured the traditional view that the motor car was much safer than either cycling or walking. Pedestrians had the highest fatality rate per 100 million kilometres, followed by cyclists, with drivers having a rate almost twenty times less than for pedestrians.



Two studies have sought to pull together international data to make a comparison of risk in walking, cycling and motoring [5] [6]. Both of these studies have found that pedestrians face higher risks per distance travelled than cyclists.

[3] Morgan JM. Risk in Cycling. TRRL Working Paper WP/RS/75, Transport & Road Research Laboratory, Crowthorne, 1988.
[4] Sheafer A. Regularities in Travel Demand, an International Perspective. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
[5] Wardlaw MJ. Assessing the Actual Risks Faced by Cyclists. Traffic Engineering & Control 2002;43:420-424.
[6] Krag T. Cycling, safety and health. European Cyclists Federation.


Another problem is that cyclists are often young men, statistically the higher risk group- average age of cyclist casualties is 23, with car drivers it's 35.

deptfordmarmoset

A further complication with comparisons is that extent to which danger becomes ''exported.''
When we think of a ''safe'' car, we will tend to think of how safe it might be for the driver and passengers, how it got through the crash tests, etc, and any thought about the collateral damage such a car may cause to other road users comes a poor second.

I would hazard a guess that one of the safest ways of driving around town would be to do it in a lorry. The danger is not in the cab, it is exported primarily into the drag-sweep of tons of unmonitored axle-weight. The exporting of the danger is so complete that '' I didn't know I ran them over'' has almost become an acceptable excuse for HGV drivers who fail to stop.

Cyclists and pedestrians are the principal victims of this transferred risk.

I'm not sure how this exporting of danger came to be accepted to the extent that it has. Health and Safety law used to be quite clear that there is a joint responsibility to yourself and to others.

antlaff

BBC must have read the forum as article now be rewritten

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14384225

tailwindhome

Radio Ulster were to do a follow up on this on the morning news programme.

Anyone catch it?

antlaff

I didnt but it gave the Belfast Telegraph the oppoutunity to raise the old helmet bill!!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/medics-battled-in-vain-to-save-crash-cyclist-16032056.html

antlaff

I didnt but it gave the Belfast Telegraph the oppoutunity to raise the old helmet bill!!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/medics-battled-in-vain-to-save-crash-cyclist-16032056.html

rolf_f

bails87 wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

[
Sorry, but what on earth has the BMA comment on health benefits got to do with anything?!!

Because the risks of a sedentary lifestyle are greater than the risks from cycling. If you're talking about the risks of cycling vs not, you've got to include those risks too. So sitting on your ars* all day might not seem like it, but is much more likely to kill you than mixing with traffic with no more than a bit of polystyrene on your head to protect you.

No, you can't include those as well. It is a different variable albeit related (and you'd have to normalise the data for this sort of thing if you are going to research data on it). For example, NASA astronauts are extremely fit and healthy. Therefore they are likely to live longer and healthier than average. However, being in a Space Shuttle crew is extremely dangerous - not sure how many missions there were in total but two blew up with all lives lost.

So, statistically, you can argue being a Space Shuttle crew is actually good for you but it doesn't alter the fact that it is actually very dangerous.

And it is possible to be fit and healthy without doing "risky" activities. And the people sat on their arse all day aren't the ones who would take up cycling anyway. Most cyclists are probably at least averagely healthy to start with.

As for pedestrians - the big difference between pedestrians and cyclists is that (hopefully!) cyclists are generally aware of their surroundings and looking for danger before it hits them. Pedestrians on the other hand are often in planet bonzo somewhere with a totally detached brain and no hearing (due to iPods etc). Therefore, a good chunk of the pedestrian injury statistics is probably down to people wandering into moving cars without looking - but you can mitigate that risk completely by actually looking both ways! This is the sort of research we need to answer this problem properly!

bails87

The NASA thing is a pretty flawed isn't it? It's not the act of space shuttle travel that makes you fit, whereas the act of cycling is, in fitness/health terms, good for you.

Preparing for space shuttle flight is good for you, in the same way that cycling is. But actually sitting on top of a giant firework and being hurled into space might not do so much for your health.

mybreakfastconsisted

antlaff wrote:

BBC must have read the forum as article now be rewritten

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14384225

I complained but didn't get a reply.

Confusedboy

Come on guys. A terrible accident in which a woman died has happened and you have (collectively, I am not blaming any individual) allowed it to develop into a trollfest 'discussion' about cycling safety in general and media reporting of cycling in general. As I say, no one is individually to blame for this as such discussions often take on thier own momentum.

But it might be a good idea to stop it, now.

bails87

Confusedboy wrote:

But it might be a good idea to stop it, now.

Why?

It's not like we're invading her funeral to have a debate on cycling vs motorised transport.

It's a tragedy, and I can't imagine what her family are going through, but a death on the road doesn't mean we can't discuss road safety does it.