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are you the ghost of john forester or what? blaming cycling fatalities on a mythical vilified population of homeless cyclists who you assume to not be sober ins

are you the ghost of john forester or what? blaming cycling fatalities on a mythical vilified population of homeless cyclists who you assume to not be sober instead of the traffic engineers who designed your city is both incredibly misguided and prejudiced. shame on you.

asdff 4y ago
I paint a hypothetically plausible situation that could explain a lot of the incidents given what I see play out on the road surface in my city, I don't blame anyone, I just describe how there could be plenty of confounding factors that lead to a dangerous situation on the road. The numbers at the end of the day are so low. 10 per 4 million people a year does not indicate to me a trend one way or another in terms of safety to me. Again, imagine another hypothetical, maybe just some barhopping dudebros renting lime bikes while blackout drunk then getting into some tragic accident, that could throw the numbers up to 15 that year just from that one freak accident. People might go "wow deaths are up 50% this year" and start all sorts of discussions from that fact, but really this hypothetical increase could be well within the yearly variance of this metric and may not actually be a real trend. Life is bayesian.
- andbberger 4y ago
  the fundamental problem with your position is in pinning the culpability on cyclists. cyclists and pedestrians don't kill cyclists, cars do. and by extension traffic engineers.
  - asdff 4y ago
    I as a cyclist know how dangerous it is on the road when you do something irregular. At the end of the day human reaction time is what it is, the laws of physics are what they are, and doing something reckless on a 45mph road is going to lead to your death pretty easily on a bike. Defensive driving courses for example are effective because if you start practicing defensive driving, your odds of even being in a situation that might result in an accident go way down. Biking is the same way. No one is taught how to ride a bike on the road, unlike cars where you need to pass an exam with a government official sitting in the car showing you aren't wholly incompetent. People with bikes just go out and do it. That's why I see people biking the wrong way on major arterials all the time, biking at night without any lights, ignoring intersections, and generally not looking around, and people who have lights and mirrors and helmets are much more rare. The people who know how to take a dutch left turn on a bike are also unicorns, I've never see anyone else do it. As a cyclist I see car traffic as like a constant source of death, like a rushing river leading into a waterfall, or a big grizzly bear. It must be treated with care, but with sufficient knowledge it can be made to be nearly totally safe. When I see statistics like 10 deaths a year in a city of 4 million, of course I will assume that a lot of that has to do with the fact that most bike riders have zero education on using the road with a bike and there was probably some recklessness involved with where they were choosing to ride a bike, and that the cases e.g. of people getting killed while riding in a bike lane or on a residential street with a speed limit of 25 mph are so exceedingly rare in comparison that I may as well not worry about them personally ever happening to me, much like I ignore the low scale risk of death with just about anything one does in life.
    - andbberger 4y ago
      you are the ghost of john forester. i don't have much else to say other than that you're wrong and also in a morally compromised position. knowledge can't save you from the rushing river of 2 ton deathmobiles, traffic engineering (ie dutch cycling infrastructure) can.
      - andbberger 4y ago
        also: https://twitter.com/Wash_cycle/status/1551667761310482432 https://twitter.com/Wash_cycle/status/1551667761310482432

asdff 4y ago

I paint a hypothetically plausible situation that could explain a lot of the incidents given what I see play out on the road surface in my city, I don't blame anyone, I just describe how there could be plenty of confounding factors that lead to a dangerous situation on the road. The numbers at the end of the day are so low. 10 per 4 million people a year does not indicate to me a trend one way or another in terms of safety to me. Again, imagine another hypothetical, maybe just some barhopping dudebros renting lime bikes while blackout drunk then getting into some tragic accident, that could throw the numbers up to 15 that year just from that one freak accident. People might go "wow deaths are up 50% this year" and start all sorts of discussions from that fact, but really this hypothetical increase could be well within the yearly variance of this metric and may not actually be a real trend. Life is bayesian.

andbberger 4y ago
the fundamental problem with your position is in pinning the culpability on cyclists. cyclists and pedestrians don't kill cyclists, cars do. and by extension traffic engineers.
- asdff 4y ago
  I as a cyclist know how dangerous it is on the road when you do something irregular. At the end of the day human reaction time is what it is, the laws of physics are what they are, and doing something reckless on a 45mph road is going to lead to your death pretty easily on a bike. Defensive driving courses for example are effective because if you start practicing defensive driving, your odds of even being in a situation that might result in an accident go way down. Biking is the same way. No one is taught how to ride a bike on the road, unlike cars where you need to pass an exam with a government official sitting in the car showing you aren't wholly incompetent. People with bikes just go out and do it. That's why I see people biking the wrong way on major arterials all the time, biking at night without any lights, ignoring intersections, and generally not looking around, and people who have lights and mirrors and helmets are much more rare. The people who know how to take a dutch left turn on a bike are also unicorns, I've never see anyone else do it. As a cyclist I see car traffic as like a constant source of death, like a rushing river leading into a waterfall, or a big grizzly bear. It must be treated with care, but with sufficient knowledge it can be made to be nearly totally safe. When I see statistics like 10 deaths a year in a city of 4 million, of course I will assume that a lot of that has to do with the fact that most bike riders have zero education on using the road with a bike and there was probably some recklessness involved with where they were choosing to ride a bike, and that the cases e.g. of people getting killed while riding in a bike lane or on a residential street with a speed limit of 25 mph are so exceedingly rare in comparison that I may as well not worry about them personally ever happening to me, much like I ignore the low scale risk of death with just about anything one does in life.
  - andbberger 4y ago
    you are the ghost of john forester. i don't have much else to say other than that you're wrong and also in a morally compromised position. knowledge can't save you from the rushing river of 2 ton deathmobiles, traffic engineering (ie dutch cycling infrastructure) can.
    - andbberger 4y ago
      also: https://twitter.com/Wash_cycle/status/1551667761310482432 https://twitter.com/Wash_cycle/status/1551667761310482432