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#901
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
I submit that on or about Fri, 19 Aug 2005 19:29:07 GMT, the person
known to the court as Steven Bornfeld made a statement in Your Honour's bundle) to the following effect: Risk compensation is real, and denying it is vacuous. No one is denying it. I am denying that safety measures are fruitless. I think it was Guy who suggested that road signs be removed in order to make vehicular traffic safer. There are two separate ideas there. The first is that safety improvements are fruitless. That is not quite what I'm saying; what I pointed out was that in 1938, Smeed noticed an inverse-square relationship between road casualties and motor vehicle ownership. He found it applied across 20 countries for which he had good data. It was always an empirical formula. What Adams notes is that despite all the time, effort, ingenuity and money spent on road safety interventions over the years, it's actually quite hard to prove any improvement over and above what the Smeed law predicts - which indicates that some at least of the safety benefit is being consumed in other ways. We all know this: modern cars accelerate faster, corner faster, brake better in the wet - and we use these features to get away quicker, go round corners faster and brake later than we used to, so we get to the end point quicker - or at least we would if we hadn't compensated for /that/ advance by choosing to live further from work! http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/PD...%27s%20law.pdf discusses this (and there's more from Adams at http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/publish.htm) The second point is that removing road signs, in line with Hans Monderman's "naked streets" ideas, might make the roads safer. Actually I suspect that some or all of the improvements in safety which have been yielded by these experiments would regress to the mean after a few years, or rather, that the overall levels of casualties would return to previous levels, but I'd be surprised if the severities would be as great, and I'd also be surprised if the balance didn't shift (right now we have a lot of highway engineers making changes which improve safety for those who are already safest at the expense of their victims; I don't know whether the so-called "naked streets" initiatives will reverse this at all). But even if that happens, even if the roads end up after a few years no safer than they were before, the end result is vastly more pleasant aesthetically, and vastly more humanised. Here's a comparatively limited scheme, in Kensington High Street in the City of London: http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/Environmental...eforeafter.asp Guy -- May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting. http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk 85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound |
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#902
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
Mark & Steven Bornfeld wrote:
I was making an inference (justified or not) that those who oppose helmet use based on risk compensation seemed to be saying that as a consequence (of risk compensation) that devices intended to improve safety would not accomplish this goal. This was never my opinion; whether my inference was unfair or not is another issue. Steve Yesterday I took my kids, and two nieces bicycling in Monterey. I realized that I had packed everything, except my own helmet. I didn't know what to do. I thought about those people who are just positive that risk compensation would rear its ugly head and I was terrified that I would suddenly begin riding at 2 mph and would have to pull over every time a car or bicycle approached from the front or rear. Amazingly, I found that I did not ride any differently with or without a helmet. I still raced down the downhill sections at 40 mph, I almost had a squirrel emded itself in my spokes which might have caused a fall beyond my own control, but fortuntately it mad it across the road a split second before my wheel. I finally realized that the problem was _not_ that I suddenly was riding more carefully because of no helmet, but that I had been riding too carefully when I actually did have a helmet. I should be riding much more dangerously when I wear a helmet, because otherwise the whole theory of bicycle helmets and risk compensation goes out the window. |
#903
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
I submit that on or about Fri, 19 Aug 2005 19:29:07 GMT, the person known to the court as Steven Bornfeld made a statement in Your Honour's bundle) to the following effect: Risk compensation is real, and denying it is vacuous. No one is denying it. I am denying that safety measures are fruitless. I think it was Guy who suggested that road signs be removed in order to make vehicular traffic safer. There are two separate ideas there. The first is that safety improvements are fruitless. That is not quite what I'm saying; what I pointed out was that in 1938, Smeed noticed an inverse-square relationship between road casualties and motor vehicle ownership. He found it applied across 20 countries for which he had good data. It was always an empirical formula. What Adams notes is that despite all the time, effort, ingenuity and money spent on road safety interventions over the years, it's actually quite hard to prove any improvement over and above what the Smeed law predicts - which indicates that some at least of the safety benefit is being consumed in other ways. We all know this: modern cars accelerate faster, corner faster, brake better in the wet - and we use these features to get away quicker, go round corners faster and brake later than we used to, so we get to the end point quicker - or at least we would if we hadn't compensated for /that/ advance by choosing to live further from work! http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/PD...%27s%20law.pdf discusses this (and there's more from Adams at http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/publish.htm) The second point is that removing road signs, in line with Hans Monderman's "naked streets" ideas, might make the roads safer. Actually I suspect that some or all of the improvements in safety which have been yielded by these experiments would regress to the mean after a few years, or rather, that the overall levels of casualties would return to previous levels, but I'd be surprised if the severities would be as great, and I'd also be surprised if the balance didn't shift (right now we have a lot of highway engineers making changes which improve safety for those who are already safest at the expense of their victims; I don't know whether the so-called "naked streets" initiatives will reverse this at all). But even if that happens, even if the roads end up after a few years no safer than they were before, the end result is vastly more pleasant aesthetically, and vastly more humanised. Here's a comparatively limited scheme, in Kensington High Street in the City of London: http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/Environmental...eforeafter.asp Guy Where is the traffic? ;-) Steve -- Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS http://www.dentaltwins.com Brooklyn, NY 718-258-5001 |
#904
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 16:57:53 GMT, Mark & Steven Bornfeld
wrote: I'm finished with this thread. Good. I hope for your own sake you keep reading it though. JT **************************** Remove "remove" to reply Visit http://www.jt10000.com **************************** |
#905
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 16:57:53 GMT, Mark & Steven Bornfeld wrote: I'm finished with this thread. Good. I hope for your own sake you keep reading it though. JT You're a good guy, John. Trust me on this one--continuing to read this post will NOT be good for my health. Steve **************************** Remove "remove" to reply Visit http://www.jt10000.com **************************** -- Cut the nonsense to reply |
#906
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
"bryanska" wrote in message ups.com... This post is solely intended to drive this thread to 1000 posts. Please pitch in. I'm in. So, how does this compare to "Sheldon is a Party Doll." Attention Carl Fogel -- you have a research assignment. Which thread is longer? -- Jay Beattie. |
#907
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
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#908
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message
... Per Tom Kunich: I even had Dr. Shively, the DEAN of helmets as past director of the Snell Institute admit at the transportation committee in Sacramento that no possible helmet can make a difference in any accident which would normally cause a fatality on a motorcycle. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's above. Is that to say that somebody claims that a motorcycle helmet cannot save somebody's life? That is to say that accidents in which a motorcyclist is killed from a head injury alone and in which the head injury therefore sustained could be mediated by a motorcycle helmet to less than lethal are so rare as to be a statistical freak. If you read the accident reports and the statistics you can arrive at no other answer. Moreover, Dr. Shively, the past director of the Snell Memorial Foundation - the originator of safety helmet science - said so at a meeting of the Transportation Committee meeting in Sacramento, CA. It was widely reported in the media as "Hell's Angels Defeat Helmet Bill". Then when everyone else had cleared out the fine Senators quietly passed the helmet bill and bankrupted 2/3rd's of the motorcycle shops in California. |
#909
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:37:49 +0100, "Just zis Guy, you know?"
wrote: The second point is that removing road signs, in line with Hans Monderman's "naked streets" ideas, might make the roads safer. And after a short time with GPS in the Prius, I have to say that it is entirely doable in the near future. Don't need the entire map system display, just a couple of text displays. No problem about reading road signs at night or worry about missing signs. Curtis L. Russell Odenton, MD (USA) Just someone on two wheels... |
#910
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Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet
On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:17:21 -0400, Curtis L. Russell
wrote: On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:37:49 +0100, "Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote: The second point is that removing road signs, in line with Hans Monderman's "naked streets" ideas, might make the roads safer. And after a short time with GPS in the Prius, I have to say that it is entirely doable in the near future. Don't need the entire map system display, just a couple of text displays. No problem about reading road signs at night or worry about missing signs. Uhhh, dude, you know there are people who travel w/o cars sometimes -- like walking or even (gasp) on a bike. Are we supposed to carry a GPS at all times too? JT **************************** Remove "remove" to reply Visit http://www.jt10000.com **************************** |
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