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giff77.
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August 12, 2019 at 4:30 pm #30013
Xenophon2
So, I’m not about to proselytize or seek to convert people, this is what I experienced today: (disclosure: I’ve always been a sort of fan of helmets though never a fanatic, today made me a firm believer though).
Returning home, gusts of wind, rain starting in earnest. I took a roundabout that I’ve taken a thousand times before. Only difference was that I’d forgotten that just last saturday I had installed a brand new set of Hutchinson sector 28 mm tyres, brilliant on dry pavement, murder on wet, especially when new.
I entered the roundabout (right hand side driving over here) at 32 kmph (about 20 mph I guess) and halfway through, felt the rear wheel slide from under me. I hit the pavement on my left hip and elbow, then my head just ‘bounced’ on the tarmac. Or rather, my Bontrager specter wavecell helmet did. Picked myself up almost immediately, saw the proverbial stars and felt a bit dizzy. A police patrol that saw everything pulled over to ask if I needed medical assistance, which I declined. Rode home (no real damage to the bike) at a much lower speed than before.
End result:
– Bit of a headache
– 20 cm of road rash on my left hip (kudos to Assos: not a nick on their Cento evo bib, under it my skin was virtually gone). Spraying desinfectant on that was an interesting experience. Guess I’ll be black and blue tomorrow.
– Sore elbow
– Sore ribs
The helmet shows very little sign of impact on the exterior, just some dimples. On the interior however, the wavecell structure cracked/deformed in the temporal region. I guess that’s what it’s designed to do. I’ll have to get a new one but don’t doubt for a second that without it I’d have been visiting the casualty ward, riding in a ambulance rather than on my bike. So for me it’s helmets all the way from now on.
For the doubting Thomases (I understand): yes, I have pics but unfortunately I don’t see how to upload them here. If you can explain how I should do so I’ll gladly post them.
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FluffyKittenofTindalos
Rich_cb wrote:
Rich_cb wrote:
If there was increased risk taking by drivers after seatbelts became mandatory then we would expect to see an increase in the number of accidents. There was no such increase. Unless you’re suggesting that the increased risk taking took place exclusively around cyclists then I don’t see how you can continue to claim there is any evidence for the proposed increase in risk taking. The ratio is completely irrelevant to the argument, it’s meaningless.FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:Exccept that the graph plotting ratios shows no such large percentage fluctuation due to simple chance. Over nearly 40 years it shows a coherent trend, with small year-to-year changes, except for the year where the law came in, when there was a change dramatically larger than between any other succesive years in the period. That change is an outlier – is your position that something else happened that year to cause an usual change in the ratio?
And at the same time, contradicting your second point, there’s no decrease in overall casualties in that year that is large enough to cause such a large effect (in fact the total went up slightly) – which suggests it’s not particularly about the denominator getting smaller, but more about a change in the distribution of casualties, with cycling getting relatively more dangerous.
Your responses just don’t work, as far as I can see. Which is not to say the increased risk for cyclists is a large effect or that it is even necessarily a permanent one. But some measure of risk compensation does seem to be apparent in the figures.
It’s also claimed here that the similar effects are visible in Australian and Canadian data, but I haven’t found the papers referred to, so don’t really know how convincing they are.
http://www.oocities.org/galwaycyclist/info/seatbelts.html#_ednref1
On balance I still think you are wrong.
Not in the context of an existing downward trend. Insisting there must be an absolute increase is disengenuous when it wasn’t a flatline to begin with.
I know you keep insisting “the ratio is meaningless”, but that isn’t an argument, it’s making a noise. Unless you can prove that the casualty rates are completely independent and have no common factors, which you haven’t done. Arbitrarily declaring anything that contradicts what you want to believe to be ‘meaningless’ makes rational debate kind of difficult.
Rich_cb
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:Exccept that the graph plotting ratios shows no such large percentage fluctuation due to simple chance. Over nearly 40 years it shows a coherent trend, with small year-to-year changes, except for the year where the law came in, when there was a change dramatically larger than between any other succesive years in the period. That change is an outlier – is your position that something else happened that year to cause an usual change in the ratio?
And at the same time, contradicting your second point, there’s no decrease in overall casualties in that year that is large enough to cause such a large effect (in fact the total went up slightly) – which suggests it’s not particularly about the denominator getting smaller, but more about a change in the distribution of casualties, with cycling getting relatively more dangerous.
Your responses just don’t work, as far as I can see. Which is not to say the increased risk for cyclists is a large effect or that it is even necessarily a permanent one. But some measure of risk compensation does seem to be apparent in the figures.
It’s also claimed here that the similar effects are visible in Australian and Canadian data, but I haven’t found the papers referred to, so don’t really know how convincing they are.
http://www.oocities.org/galwaycyclist/info/seatbelts.html#_ednref1
On balance I still think you are wrong.
If there was increased risk taking by drivers after seatbelts became mandatory then we would expect to see an increase in the number of accidents.
There was no such increase.
Unless you’re suggesting that the increased risk taking took place exclusively around cyclists then I don’t see how you can continue to claim there is any evidence for the proposed increase in risk taking.
The ratio is completely irrelevant to the argument, it’s meaningless.
alansmurphy
Riding to conditions and not
Riding to conditions and not putting shit tyres on your bike would have offered a far better result than the need to buy a new helmet…
Boatsie
When I was child. Dad rode
When I was child. Dad rode into the back of a parked car. Buckled everything up, bike, boot, I think he broke the rear windscreen.
Then when I grew old enough to ride 5+5 km to the bmx track. He didn’t wear a lid (back streets, very minimal traffic, speeds of a child on a bmx) but I was made to wear his old motorcycle lid. Heavy full face.
Upsides are improved neck muscles.
Modern lids are so light, caps fit between skull skin and lid. I like them.Rich_cb wrote:Cyclist fatalities represent a tiny percentage of the overall number of car accidents. Increased risk taking would cause an increase in both the overall accident rate and the cyclist fatality rate. If the cyclist fatality rate jumps by 10 percent then you would expect a similar increase in the accident rate.Not sure why that would necessarily be the case. Cyclist fatalities would relate to a specific sub-type of ‘accident’, not to ‘accidents’ in general.
Rich_cb wrote:As a much smaller figure the cyclist fatality rate is far more likely to fluctuate by large percentages due to simple chance. Without a corresponding increase in the overall accident rate a random fluctuation is a far more likely explanation for the increase in fatalities than seat belt induced risk taking. The ratio is meaningless as you can infer nothing from it. If cars get safer the ratio can worsen without cycling getting any more dangerous so as a tool to assess cycling safety it’s pointless. I have edited my previous post for clarification re the Ksi figures as I didn’t make it clear what year I was referring to.Exccept that the graph plotting ratios shows no such large percentage fluctuation due to simple chance. Over nearly 40 years it shows a coherent trend, with small year-to-year changes, except for the year where the law came in, when there was a change dramatically larger than between any other succesive years in the period. That change is an outlier – is your position that something else happened that year to cause an usual change in the ratio?
And at the same time, contradicting your second point, there’s no decrease in overall casualties in that year that is large enough to cause such a large effect (in fact the total went up slightly) – which suggests it’s not particularly about the denominator getting smaller, but more about a change in the distribution of casualties, with cycling getting relatively more dangerous.
Your responses just don’t work, as far as I can see. Which is not to say the increased risk for cyclists is a large effect or that it is even necessarily a permanent one. But some measure of risk compensation does seem to be apparent in the figures.
It’s also claimed here that the similar effects are visible in Australian and Canadian data, but I haven’t found the papers referred to, so don’t really know how convincing they are.
http://www.oocities.org/galwaycyclist/info/seatbelts.html#_ednref1
On balance I still think you are wrong.
L3gion
kevvjj wrote:L3gion wrote:Glad to hear you are OK after all that!Personally speaking, my hutchinson sector 32s are hanging up gathering dust and I will never fit them again after a few damp rides that scared the beejezus outta me. I’m amazed you seemed to know they were this bad in the wet – and then bought another pair!?
ditto!
Hutchinson Sector 32s have been binned after a disasterous winter season where they saw me on my arse more than once. Does anyone have recommendations for a 32c tubeless ready tyre that does grip in the wet?
I’ve seen quite a lot of posts on other forums along the same lines. When I questioned Hutchinson about what pressures they should actually be run at I got very confusing replies that contradicted both the website and the packaging. And even at very low pressures, they still slid and locked up freely at any sign of dampness. Never again for me.
They’re 30 not 32, but from experience Schwalbe G-one speeds stick like glue in the wet (but don’t last all that long).
I’ve got some 32mm WTB exposures on the way so will soon find out what they’re like as well.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:Except that the data there includes raw numbers as well as ratios. The first graph clearly shows a falling trend being interrupted by the seatbelt law. The trend is downward till the year the seatbelt law came in, then it flatlines for a period. And if you consider the graph of ratios in conjunction with the first table, it seems an obvious conclusion that for cyclist deaths there was an uptick.
(Also, why do you say ‘you would see a large spike in accidents’? Where do you get that from? It seems to presume there can be no such thing as a small increase in risk taking, it must be large or non-existent. That again seems to indicate bias on your part, addding in hidden assumptions to try and get to the conclusion you want).
Also in declaring ratios to be ‘meaningless’ you are assuming there are no common factors that could affect both cyclist and motorist death rates. That seems highly implausible. Conclusive, clearly not, but ‘meaningless’? That seems to suggest bias on your part. The discontinuity at the moment of seatbelt law introduction is quite substantial – yet you are arguing it’s totally random and coincidental and that there is nothing that would cause different road-user death rates to correlate at all? Nah.
Furthermore your own link shows your original statement here is incorrect. The data in it clearly shows deaths and accidents went up between 83 and 84. So that directly contradicts the statement you made when you claimed the previous poster was wrong (though I am not claiming that increase is statistically significant either way, it _is_ contradicting what you just said).
Seems to me fairly clear that there was a risk-compensation effect. Whether it lead to a significant long-term effect compared to all the other factors causing deaths to decline, and whether the risk-compensation remains constant for all time (as people adjust to the new situation) is another question, but it appears to be there in the data, albeit small.
Cyclist fatalities represent a tiny percentage of the overall number of car accidents.
Increased risk taking would cause an increase in both the overall accident rate and the cyclist fatality rate.
If the cyclist fatality rate jumps by 10 percent then you would expect a similar increase in the accident rate.
As a much smaller figure the cyclist fatality rate is far more likely to fluctuate by large percentages due to simple chance.
Without a corresponding increase in the overall accident rate a random fluctuation is a far more likely explanation for the increase in fatalities than seat belt induced risk taking.
The ratio is meaningless as you can infer nothing from it. If cars get safer the ratio can worsen without cycling getting any more dangerous so as a tool to assess cycling safety it’s pointless.
I have edited my previous post for clarification re the Ksi figures as I didn’t make it clear what year I was referring to.
Rich_cb wrote:
Rich_cb wrote:
The data on car accidents is here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/743328/ras10013.ods The issue with your link is the use of ratios, statistically it’s meaningless. If seat belts increased driver risk taking you would see a large spike in accidents when the seat belt wearing rate changed dramatically, for example in the years following mandatory wearing laws, there is no such spike.FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:We’ve had this debate before. Where are you getting this data from? Because the data I posted then showed that the number of cyclist KSIs (and car accidents, come to that) did indeed rise the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK. As I recall your response was that you can’t tell anything from one year because other things might have changed. That might well be true, but it’s the opposite of what you are saying now.
Perhaps we’ll have to go through it again because I can’t for the life of me remember where the discussion went last time.
I believe it started with the graphs here
Personally I’m not anti-seat belt, particularly, but I am far less interested in increased safety devices for motorists than I am in just keeping cars the hell away from the rest of us. There need to be far more restrictions on where the things can go and who can drive them.
Except that the data there includes raw numbers as well as ratios. The first graph clearly shows a falling trend being interrupted by the seatbelt law. The trend is downward till the year the seatbelt law came in, then it flatlines for a period. And if you consider the graph of ratios in conjunction with the first table, it seems an obvious conclusion that for cyclist deaths there was an uptick.
(Also, why do you say ‘you would see a large spike in accidents’? Where do you get that from? It seems to presume there can be no such thing as a small increase in risk taking, it must be large or non-existent. That again seems to indicate bias on your part, addding in hidden assumptions to try and get to the conclusion you want).
Also in declaring ratios to be ‘meaningless’ you are assuming there are no common factors that could affect both cyclist and motorist death rates. That seems highly implausible. Conclusive, clearly not, but ‘meaningless’? That seems to suggest bias on your part. The discontinuity at the moment of seatbelt law introduction is quite substantial – yet you are arguing it’s totally random and coincidental and that there is nothing that would cause different road-user death rates to correlate at all? Nah.
Furthermore your own link shows your original statement here is incorrect. The data in it clearly shows deaths and accidents went up between 83 and 84. So that directly contradicts the statement you made when you claimed the previous poster was wrong (though I am not claiming that increase is statistically significant either way, it _is_ contradicting what you just said).
Seems to me fairly clear that there was a risk-compensation effect. Whether it lead to a significant long-term effect compared to all the other factors causing deaths to decline, and whether the risk-compensation remains constant for all time (as people adjust to the new situation) is another question, but it appears to be there in the data, albeit small.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:We’ve had this debate before. Where are you getting this data from? Because the data I posted then showed that the number of cyclist KSIs (and car accidents, come to that) did indeed rise the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK. As I recall your response was that you can’t tell anything from one year because other things might have changed. That might well be true, but it’s the opposite of what you are saying now.
Perhaps we’ll have to go through it again because I can’t for the life of me remember where the discussion went last time.
I believe it started with the graphs here
Personally I’m not anti-seat belt, particularly, but I am far less interested in increased safety devices for motorists than I am in just keeping cars the hell away from the rest of us. There need to be far more restrictions on where the things can go and who can drive them.
The data on car accidents is here:
The issue with your link is the use of ratios, statistically it’s meaningless.
If seat belts increased driver risk taking you would see a large spike in accidents when the seat belt wearing rate changed dramatically, for example in the years following mandatory wearing laws, there is no such spike.
Edit: Completely agree with your last sentence.
Rich_cb wrote:
Rich_cb wrote:
As with pretty much every ‘fact’ you post this is not really true. If seat belts actually induced more risk taking then the number of car accidents and cyclist KSIs would both have risen the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK. They both fell.burtthebike wrote:And just like helmets, the benefits have yet to be proved. Sure, they save some drivers and passengers, but because of risk compensation, more pedestrians and cyclists die. The safest car wouldn’t have seat belts, air bags, side impact bars or any other kind of preservation device for the driver, but it would have a rusty 14″ bayonet sticking out of the steering wheel.
Basically, we’ve approached road safety from completely the wrong angle, and instead of making it safer, we’ve made driving more survivable so that people drive more recklessly, putting vulnerable road users at greater risk.
We’ve had this debate before. Where are you getting this data from? Because the data I posted then showed that the number of cyclist KSIs (and car accidents, come to that) did indeed rise the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK. As I recall your response was that you can’t tell anything from one year because other things might have changed, and one-year fluctuation is just statistical noise. I accept that might well be true, but it’s the opposite of what you are saying now.
Perhaps we’ll have to go through it again because I can’t for the life of me remember where the discussion went last time.
I believe it started with the graphs here
Personally I’m not anti-seat belt, particularly, but I am far less interested in increased safety devices for motorists than I am in just keeping cars the hell away from the rest of us. There need to be far more restrictions on where the things can go and who can drive them.
burtthebike wrote:
burtthebike wrote:And just like helmets, the benefits have yet to be proved. Sure, they save some drivers and passengers, but because of risk compensation, more pedestrians and cyclists die. The safest car wouldn’t have seat belts, air bags, side impact bars or any other kind of preservation device for the driver, but it would have a rusty 14″ bayonet sticking out of the steering wheel.
Basically, we’ve approached road safety from completely the wrong angle, and instead of making it safer, we’ve made driving more survivable so that people drive more recklessly, putting vulnerable road users at greater risk.
As with pretty much every ‘fact’ you post this is not really true.
If seat belts actually induced more risk taking then the number of car accidents and cyclist KSIs would both have risen the year after seat belts became mandatory in the UK.
They both fell after 1991 and the accident rate fell after 1983.
brooksby
hawkinspeter wrote:I don’t see much benefit in a helmet though I always wear one now (the wife gets anxious if I don’t).My wife insists I should wear a helmet because this one time driving through town she saw a woman come off and get taken away in an ambulance.
I wear a helmet if its icy or snowy (admittedly, how often is that nowadays?) or if my wife catches me before I’ve left the house…
slappop
Awavey wrote:Organon wrote:I’ll take the acedotal evidence every time because strangely enough we don’t here from the people hitting their heads sans helmet and then saying ‘I was fine.’ Please come forward if this is you.Ive flown over the handlebars in a crash, landed on my head, still have the visible scar from when I used my head to stop a somersault on a balance beam, and face planted more than once when Ive lost my footing, I certainly know what concussion feels like, if anything I should wear a helmet as a pedestrian as Im far more likely to hit my head just walking along on past history
If you’re falling that often, maybe get your vitamin B12 levels checked. For example:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0029665113002735
Anonymous
L3gion wrote:Glad to hear you are OK after all that!Personally speaking, my hutchinson sector 32s are hanging up gathering dust and I will never fit them again after a few damp rides that scared the beejezus outta me. I’m amazed you seemed to know they were this bad in the wet – and then bought another pair!?
ditto!
Hutchinson Sector 32s have been binned after a disasterous winter season where they saw me on my arse more than once. Does anyone have recommendations for a 32c tubeless ready tyre that does grip in the wet?
burtthebike
mattsccm wrote:Bit like seat belts I guess. My fathers generation need to be reminded to use them, mine sticks them on most of the time and my neice would put her on like she picks up her phone.Compulsion and fear of getting caught has brought this about.
And just like helmets, the benefits have yet to be proved. Sure, they save some drivers and passengers, but because of risk compensation, more pedestrians and cyclists die. The safest car wouldn’t have seat belts, air bags, side impact bars or any other kind of preservation device for the driver, but it would have a rusty 14″ bayonet sticking out of the steering wheel.
Basically, we’ve approached road safety from completely the wrong angle, and instead of making it safer, we’ve made driving more survivable so that people drive more recklessly, putting vulnerable road users at greater risk.
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