binary_star

Today I met with friends, had a lovely lunch in a local cafe and went down the pub with my partner for a pint...but you keep pretending I'm wiling away my weekends trawling through your posting history. Might take you an evening to copy and paste a few links Loz, the rest of us not that long. An evening, really? Bless. Btw Google is extremely effective (and quick) at searching for stuff... Anyway personal insults aside (again) I'm not sure how many times I can repeat my point. You have maintained that cyclists are as dangerous to pedestrians as cars are because they cause more deaths per mile. Two problems with that: 1. They don't. Remember that you originally used such an anomalous year for cyclists that when you actually posted a link to the "rather better" longer term analysis, the stats didn't stack in your favour. 2. "Pedestrian deaths per estimated vehicle road mile travelled in Great Britain" has never and will never be used by any credible authority to measure the danger vehicles pose to pedestrians. In fact so far the only people this makes sense to is you and a random blogger. When you look at deaths per unit travelled by the vehicle that hit the causality (as opposed to the one the casualty travelled in), it's a metric that only makes sense within the wider context of other information, such as whether each vehicle type is using up equal amounts of mileage on roads which have a comparable number or frequency of casualties to kill. That's how the DfT interpret that type of data, as well as TfL and the Transport Research Laboratory...and anyone else with an ounce of common sense. I'm not entirely sure why you find the last point so difficult to grasp. And again, if you are going to write cyclists are "that dangerous" you need to qualify what "that" means. Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Really? You are confused about two words? Think of it as the opposite of 'not dangerous', as henryb tried to claim. No. The opposite "not dangerous" is just "dangerous". "That dangerous" implies you can qualify or quantify the danger. If you mean "cyclists are dangerous because they have been involved in a tiny minority of pedestrian deaths" then that's not really "that dangerous" is it? In the same year that 0 pedestrians were killed in collisions with cyclists, a whopping 55 people died by falling off a ladder. Wow, look at me I'm like a statistician or something and you know, I think this means that ladders are, just like, sooo dangerous! They travel 0 miles yet kill 55 people a year!! Stats don't always mean what you want them to mean...sometimes you just don't interpret them correctly.

Totally agree northlondoner...it p!sses people off and rightly so! But getting annoyed by anecdotal accounts of antisocial Lycra Louts doesn't equate to cyclists being any more dangerous than anyone else on the roads. It's just that people are really annoyed about them because they operate under different laws (or rather the same laws that have sensibly different rules for non-motorised vehicles). It's fine to get annoyed but pretending it's a road safety issue is a bit silly.

So now you're resulting to personal insults Loz? You refuse to see data sets for what they are because you so badly want to prove that cyclists are dangerous. But the data and metric you keep using is completely inappropriate and now you're getting antsy because I'm just calling you out on it. My pro-cycling agenda is very transparent. Your anti-cyclist (not anti-cycling) agenda is very transparent. Whenever there is an opportunity, you never fail to have a pop at cyclists. You try to marginalise genuine opinions from everyday cyclists by calling them 'evangelists' and saying things like: if anyone wanted to know why people find the cycle-evangelists a pain in the **** then this thread pretty much explains all. Apparently it's ok for you to speak for cyclists but obviously you need to make sure the message isn't a positive one: You're are a car driver. According to some cyclists, that makes you are [sic] always in the wrong. You make incorrect assumptions about why cyclists aren't interested in safety issues that have little to do with 'safety': Cyclists yell a lot about safety, yet when something effects them, they seem to be no longer interested. Usually vocally so. And despite all the stats you keep wading in with, your views just remain brain farts about what you *believe* but can't prove. Demonstrated succinctly in a thread asking "Who are the worst drivers in London?", you respond... Cyclists No evidence, no stats, no matter, just unhelpful brain farts. You are helping to create an 'us and them' mentality when what we should really be doing is concentrating on improving the safety of our roads. It's unhelpful and damaging LadyDeliah is right, the tide is turning and despite what you think local government are very much in favour supporting cyclists and cycling and are investing huge amounts of money in securing a cyclist friendly future. But do let me know when the DfT or TfL call you up for expert analysis won't you...

Loz, take a look at what happens when people who actually know what they are doing try to assess risk by analysing data using deaths per unit of distance travelled (my emphasis): "The risk per unit of distance travelled by articulated HGVs is greater, being involved in the collisions resulting in five (11%) of the relevant fatalities but only 5% of the total vehicle kilometres driven by goods vehicles in London. However, it is clear that by far the greatest risks per unit of distance travelled are presented by rigid HGVs, being involved in 87% of the relevant fatalities, despite making up just 15% of the total goods vehicle traffic." Even though they've actually managed to narrow their traffic data to London's roads, at first it looks like they're doing a Loz doesn't it? But wait... "On the surface this would imply that moving freight from rigid vehicles to larger articulated vehicles would reduce the number of cyclists killed in left turns. However, this would ignore the possibility that within this traffic data there is a different distribution by class of road, for example, articulated vehicles may be doing a greater proportion of their total distance on relatively safe major arterial roads whereas rigid vehicles might be used more on local unclassified roads where the chances of a conflict with a cyclist may be greater. Much more detailed modelling of the routes taken by different types of HGV combined with information on cyclist flows by route would be required to evaluate this further." Do you understand why using deaths per unit travelled doesn't make any sense unless you also understand the types of journeys made and on what roads they are made on? Well you might not but thankfully the Transport Research Laboratory do. Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Oh, I give up binary_star. I would as well if I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > binary_star Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > You did it with motorways, I just used your > method. Anyway, That was the first lot of stats. > > How about the second? I didn't do anything to > those. > > I did it with motorways purely as an aside just to > try and make the cycling figures look more > palatable for you. As I said, assuming no > pedestrian deaths on motorways is not an > unreasonable assumption (though wrong), but you > have assumed that EVERY pedestrian death in the UK > occurs on a minor urban road - a ridiculous > assumption. > > And your second calc IS the minor urban roads > one. No I'm talking about these stats. Yes, initially I used YOUR OWN dodgy technique on the original 2010 data which YOU provided...but I then used the stats from the twelve year analysis you also provided. I didn't manipulate those figures they just showed that year on year for over a decade, cyclists caused very few deaths and that overall motorists caused almost three times as many deaths "per estimated mile travelled" than cyclists. Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > For the vehicle you are travelling IN yes, certainly. For the one that hits you? No Loz, that's just bonkers. > Not at all. It's cause of death. It's like looking > at cycle deaths. I'm guessing here, but I would > suspect that HGVs and buses caused cycle deaths > would be a small percentage of total deaths > compared to cars and other vehicles, but very high > in relation to their comparative annual miles > travelled (i.e. high in relation to the > possibility of being near one). It's this sort of > standardisation that brings the real issues to the > fore. You just don't understand how stats work. I understand perfectly well how they work, you just don't understand what they mean or how to use them. You have said on this forum that you have proved: "cycling causes relatively, by total mileage, more casualties that cars and vans and, thus, is more dangerous" using "deaths per estimated mile travelled". That metric is bonkers in terms of the stats you keep quoting because it includes miles travelled across the whole of Great Britain from totally incomparable journeys. It doesn't tell us anything...cyclists' journeys are typically in areas where there are lots of pedestrians to hit. Just because a car can travel hundreds of miles down country lanes and a-roads without even seeing a pedestrian doesn't mean anything. Which is why not a single study actually uses that data like that. It might make some sense if you were to use data from one central location where journeys by all vehicles are equally weighted by pedestrians (like inner London) but then I expect (no I haven't looked into it) that motorists would come out worse still. I don't know why I'm bothering because the longitudinal data clearly blows your theory out of the water anyway.

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Directed straight at you, obviously. You can't > mix-and-match stats like you tried, taking > casualties for all roads and dividing them by a > very small subset of roads. Find the casualty > rates for minor roads and you may have an > argument. Until then, your calculation is flawed > and meaningless. You did it with motorways, I just used your method. Anyway, That was the first lot of stats. How about the second? I didn't do anything to those. Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > Anyway. Even though I used those stats to > disprove your argument, you still have no > explanation as to > > why you ever thought "casualties per estimated > mike travelled" actually tells us anything... > > Google 'deaths per mile travelled' and 'deaths per > mile travelled uk'. It's a fairly well used > approach to standardise differing modes of > transport. For the vehicle you are travelling IN yes, certainly. For the one that hits you? No Loz, that's just bonkers.

Loz you're having so many cyclist-bashing arguments on here you've forgotten which ones are which. I'm not referring to the argument you're having with henryb I was tailing about the one you and I were having about cyclists being 'that dangerous' although still no idea what that means (as dangerous as a Honda civic apparently). No stats for that one though... P.S. I don't own Lycra shorts

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'd expect no less (and certainly no more) from > you LD. Besides, my stats are solid and > referenced. Unlike some. I trust that wasn't directed at me since I used the same ones you did. Twice. Anyway. Even though I used those stats to disprove your argument, you still have no explanation as to why you ever thought "casualties per estimated mike travelled" actually tells us anything...

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Look at it this way - cyclists probably (as I > don't have the stats) as dangerous as red Honda > S2000s on the basis that they have probably killed > a similar amount of pedestrians over the last 10 > years. On that basis, should we exclude red Honda > S2000s from road rules? I have never said anyone should be exempt from road rules? > Of course not, because for > the number of them on the road, they are similarly > as dangerous as any other vehicle. Now you're just being silly. A vehicle's make or model doesn't equate to vehicle type which is why they are all subject to the same rules. > And that's why your argument is fallacious. > > And actually, I (and probably anyone else still > awake) have rather lost the point of your > argument. My argument is fallacious but you don't actually know the point of it? > My original post was to highlight and > disprove henryb's comment that 'cyclists don't > kill', which is easily rebutted (indeed you have > done so yourself). So, what exactly are you > saying? What I'm saying is that some people have an emotional response to seeing cyclists riding on pavements, jumping red lights, cycling "in the middle of the road". But instead of admitting that they're getting all frothy mouthed about it because they don't think it's fair, they start saying daft things like cyclists are one if the biggest dangers on our roads. My point is that, no actually they're really not. Stop trying to hide annoyance behind a safety issue.

Just because this forum has theme tourettes doesn't mean you have to listen to it...

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > In a desperate attempt to try and skew the figures, you have discounted all major, non-motorway roads > without any adjustment in the death figures (which would not be insignificant). > > Ridiculous. And a complete stats fail. Not really, I was desperately trying to use the same data set, not desperately trying to skew that data. Methodological fail, but only because that data can never be broken down like that. Let's use the other stats you linked to instead then if you like... This 'proves' (by your weird definition) that cyclists have been consistently less dangerous every single year that the data was recorded for more than an entire decade. In fact, if you collate the data for deaths from "Bike: Killed/Billion passenger kilometers" and "Car: Killed/Billion passenger kilometers not on motorways" from his spreadsheet then over the 12 yrs the results are: Bikes: 7.08 Cars: 19.4 Cars come out almost 3 times as 'dangerous'. BUT seriously...who cares about "casualties per estimated mile travelled"??? The reason it's impossible to find a credible study that compares data like this as a measure for safety/risk/danger (as opposed to the post by a random blogger that you consider to be "rather better statistical analysis") is because that metric is completely useless. It doesn't tell us anything about how dangerous vehicles are to other road users or pedestrians. It's a bit like saying wild lions are less dangerous than captive lions because they can travel miles and miles without savaging anyone whereas captive lions kill more people per mile in their cages in captivity...utterly bizarre way of looking at things. Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Face it BS, we can argue all day which is more dangerous, but cars and bicycles are both dangerous and lethal to pedestrians. The cycle-evangelists around here need to just accept that fact. Cycles ARE that dangerous, and as more > cyclist take to the roads the death toll is only going to increase. > > Accept it, or prove (with decent, referenced stats) otherwise. Define 'that dangerous'. I accept they can be dangerous but cyclists are involved in such a small minority of incidents I honestly don't believe it's morally viable to divert resources from more effective measures to increase road safety for everyone.

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 1) You've just proved for me that what henryb said was incorrect (that cyclists "don't kill", so well > done for proving my point. No problem, always happy to dig out actual facts. Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 2) You have completely failed to reference your death figures for 'minor roads'. That stat does > not appear in the link you gave - where did you get it? Did you just make it up? This is getting tedious, you know very well that the data set you used doesn't break fatalities down like that. I used EXACTLY the same data source as you which means I had to use EXACTLY the same method you did to calculate when you discounted motorways - I just removed the mileage. If you're not happy with that, then I'd need to use a different data set (pretty sure one that only includes journeys where pedestrians are likely to be like inner London would be ideal). But I have a hunch that it wouldn't matter would it - because you're just not going to accept that cyclists aren't actually that dangerous after all, no matter what the data or common sense says. Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 3) I was actually referring to a rather better statistical analysis that was picked up in another > thread, namely this one. You mean the one where he concludes: "In conclusion, bicycles cause far fewer injuries than motor vehicles but on a per km basis, cyclists are lower but surprisingly still in the same order of magnitude as motorised vehicles." Why is this a "better" statistical analysis? Because he uses the same approach as you? The thing is Loz, you seem to have completely lost the plot getting caught up in proving this 'deaths per vehicle mile travelled' nonsense because you're so hell bent on demonstrating that cyclists really are dangerous in whatever way possible, even if it makes absolutely no sense to anyone but yourself and some random blogger. What you're failing to understand is that no-one actually gives a sh!t (including, thankfully, the government) how far a vehicle has travelled before it kills someone....what difference does it make if a driver has come all the way down from Birmingham without running anyone over if they then proceed to run someone over in London?? Surely all we should care about is how likely it is we're going to be hit by something and whether or not we're going to die or be seriously injured by whatever hits us? No-one is saying that cyclists can't be dangerous - everything has the potential to be dangerous and everyone has the potential to be inconsiderate, regardless of the vehicle they're in charge of. But, comparatively speaking, cyclists pose nowhere near as much danger to other road users as people in motorised vehicles do. 'Deaths per average mile travelled' only makes sense when you are talking about how dangerous a particular vehicle is to travel in, not get hit by. Why do you care how far a vehicle has travelled before it hits someone, really? Is it because you think this is genuinely a valid metric, or is it because it's the only way you can pretend your position is valid? Just because you don't like cyclists on the road doesn't mean it makes any sense whatsoever to plough resources into something that's going to have such a minor impact on the problem. We need to have a less emotive and more sensible approach to road safety and concentrate on making our roads genuinely safer not getting all het up about 'lycra louts' because we think they're a bit arrogant.

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------ > Do we have to dig out the 'cycles and cars are - > per mile travelled - similarly lethal to > pedestrians' figures again, henryb? > > So you can put that little faux-halo away. I couldn't be *rsed to do this at the time on the original thread but now you're persisting with that ridiculous 'statistic'... The extremely small number of pedestrian deaths by cyclists means even minor differences will massively skew the data year on year if you're going to measure deaths per mile. However, I've voiced my opinion on the problems with 'deaths per estimated mile' enough so let's run with it for now... If you are going to compare two data sets you should try to pick the same year to do it (i.e. not compare my 2007 deaths with your 2010 estimated travel miles). The reason I used 2007 data for pedestrian deaths was because that year was a huge anomaly for cyclists because they killed a record 6 pedestrians. If you actually look at most other years it's more like 2 or 3. In fact, in 2009 there were NONE, so that year cyclists weren't deadly at all to pedestrians using 'estimated death per mile' or any other parameter because they didn't kill ANY. If I use that year, I don't need to do any calculations...cyclists by your own definition were not dangerous at all. Anyway, you were using 2010 data so I'll work out pedestrian deaths in 2010 (from the ONS stats you used here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdEZBNS1ETG8xT0JBSnR5N3Z6Q0hzNnc&f=true&noheader=false&gid=13) per estimated billion vehicle miles travelled in 2010 (from the dft stats you used here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/10424/tra0104.xls) PEDESTRIAN DEATHS 2010 -------------------------------- By car or van: 133 By pedal cycle: 2 Estimated billion miles travelled on ALL ROADS, EXCLUDING MOTORWAYS 2010 --------------------------- Cars, taxis (194.1) + vans (33.6) = 227.7 Pedal cycles: 3.1 Deaths per billion mile By cars + vans: 133/227.7 = 0.584 By pedal cycles: 2/3.1 = 0.645 Estimated billion miles travelled on MINOR URBAN RDS 2010 --------------------------- Cars, taxis (51.8) + vans (8.7) = 60.5 Pedal cycles: 1.8 Deaths per billion mile By cars + vans: 121/61.1 = 1.980 By pedal cycles: 2/1.8 = 1.111 If you look at the two calculations, it clearly shows that on roads where there are actually likely to be any pedestrians, cars are almost twice as dangerous. In general, things don't tend to pose a danger to you when they're nowhere near you... Even with your loophole allowance which allows cars to rack up almost 200billion miles worth of relatively pedestrian free roads (of which cyclists only used 0.6billion miles), cars are still not coming out much better than cyclists. So it expends on what year and what roads. But more importantly 'deaths per mile travelled' is just a load of sh*t and you know it.

It depends who you want your theories to be taken seriously by. Theologians, philosophers and scientists all have very different ideas of what might validate truth, as does the EDF, clearly. I'm just saying you can't expect the scientific community to accept non scientific explanations...even though scientists may do that in their personal lives they still accept that there are things it is not science's position to explain (religion is an obvious example).

root Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think what we need to fully understand before we come up with an answer is what we are asking in the first place? This is the problem....if we're asking: "is something supernatural behind this", then we are looking for ontological/metaphysical explanations...which are equally valid but NOT scientific. If we are asking: "is something natural behind this", then we need to come up with a scientific theory to test that can be replicated and verified by other scientists. root Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What is a God? Depends on your definition, but again science probably not the right answer. Unless you believe God to be a natural phenomenon obv.

By it's very definition paranormal activity lies outside the laws of science. Why is there this delusion that science will explain the supernatural? Unless Sheldrake or anyone else can prove natural laws are operating behind this stuff then science will never provide an answer for it because science requires empirical evidence of phenomenon occurring within natural laws. Would you expect maths to answer questions about God, physics to answer questions on religion? It's daft, stop it.

"A PHYSICAL PRICE TAG FOR A DIGITAL CURRENCY." http://bittag.net/ As seen in...yeh, East London: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26031331

Otta Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > East London is poor? Isn't Hackney East London? Hackney is pretty poor: http://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/shocking_child_poverty_map_of_london_shows_hackney_is_third_worst_affected_area_in_the_uk_1_1176263

See you got the hang of editing those posts...

Wow fruitcake by name... I was asking admin a question about registering an additional business username for myself.

What's the deal on multiple usernames? I have this one which I registered ages ago on a bit of a whim but I would also like to register a username to represent my business. Is this allowed? I don't want the two getting muddied...I say some rather dubious things on here at times.

...according to other Londoners: http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2014/01/29/north-is-intellectual-south-is-rough-west-is-posh-east-is-poor-londons-view-on-postcodes-revealed/

Yeh southwark council actually paid through the nose to make that bike lane look like a footpath.

If buying a house in this area was near impossible then they wouldn't be selling. But they are. What you mean is it's near impossible for you. And as it happens, for me. It's sh*t isn't it but then no-one *has* to live in ED after all.

Voting polls? Used for things like who does the best roast, fry up, etc. Would make decisions like where to take my hangover easier.