Bicyclist Fatalities in AZ 2009

In article ,
Peter Cole wrote:

On 11/19/2010 10:28 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 19, 9:28 pm, wrote:


Riding on sidewalks is an excellent way to reduce those "unwanted
events."

That's been researched many times. AFAIK, there is no study that's
ever found sidewalk cycling to be anywhere near as safe as riding
on the road.

http://katana.hsrc.unc.edu/cms/downl...ke_Analysis.pd
f

"Combining the two sources of information, the Commission was able to
conclude, for example, that the risk of injury for children riding
bicycles in the street was about eight times greater than riding on
bicycle paths, and nearly two times greater than riding on sidewalks"

For six year olds that seems likely to be reasonable, for adult possibly
not. I don't recall ever seeing numbers about that. The Minnesota
Department of Health data about head injury fatalities only breaks out
"on road" and "off road" "pedalcyclists" without being specific as to
what "off road" means (e.g., mountain biking, paved trails, etc.).

Adults riding a bike on sidewalks also pose a danger to other sidewalk
users, of course.

--
Gotta make it somehow on the dreams you still believe.

In article ,
Peter Cole wrote:

Similar to recent Portland statistics, this study found about 1/2 of
ER admissions for bike crashes in the road involved motor vehicles.

I would have expected that proportion to be much higher, just because I
expect the risk of injury to be much higher if the crash involves a 4000
pound mobile object.

--
Gotta make it somehow on the dreams you still believe.

On Nov 20, 7:12 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 20, 9:06 am, Peter Cole wrote:



"These findings lend strong support to previous research (summarized in
chapter 2) carried out in this country, as well as in Australia,
New Zealand, and a number of European countries, showing that reliance
on official road accident statistics greatly underestimates the
number of injured bicyclists and pedestrians."

Not to mention injured gardeners, injured aerobic dancers, injured
weightlifters, injured kids playing tag or hopscotch!

The fundamental principle is that of _course_ many injuries are
unrecorded, because most injuries are too minor to matter. This is
true no matter what the activity. It generates complaints only from
those who make it their mission to "dangerize" a particular activity.
For some reason, bicycling seems to attract the attention of a
disproportionate number of those people.


Frank, please just consider who all's reading this for a moment.
"dangerize"?

snip

On Nov 19, 9:07 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 18, 5:30 pm, James wrote:



So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents the
statisticians don't know or care about. How comforting.

Last night, I read through the article on Portland bike commuter
injuries: Hoffman, Lambert et.al., _Bicycle Commuter Injury
Prevention_, Journal of Trauma, V 69 No 5 Nov 2010.

It does just what James likes: It attempts to inflate the "Danger!"
impression attached to cycling by diligently capturing every tiny
injury, no matter how slight, that any bicyclist in its study
population received in an entire year.

Their technique was specifically designed to record even tiny injuries
that a cyclist might forget about five weeks later. From their
description, it sounds like if a cyclist pinched his finger in his
brake lever, that's a "traumatic event" and would get recorded. If a
cyclist had any medical person look at the injury, no matter how
slight, it got recorded as a "serious traumatic event."

So what did they find? Although not called out this way, they found
one "traumatic event" (i.e. tiny boo-boo or worse) every 6,700 miles
of commuting in Portland. They found one "serious traumatic
event" (e.g. the nurse put a band-aid on your blister or worse) every
25,600 miles of bike commuting.

As in all such studies, defining "serious" as "visited a doctor or
nurse" is certainly weak logic. The judgment of "serious" is thus up
to the person responsible for the trip to the treatment, as opposed to
the medically trained person. It completely prevents a doctor saying
"Oh, that's a trivial injury, too small to bother with." It means
hypochondria and outstanding medical coverage will be confounding
factors, just as health care group membership and over-protection
apparently were in the 1989 Thompson & Rivara paper.

And indeed, few as they are, the most common "traumatic" or "serious
traumatic" event in this Portland paper was an injury to "Skin/Soft
Tissue." I guess that they didn't want to come out and say "road
rash" or "skinned knee."

But still: If it takes, on average, 25,000 miles commuting in a major
city to trigger _any_ visit to any doctor, even for a skinned knee, it
sounds like cycling is really not very dangerous at all.

We should stop pretending bicycling is dangerous. It does us no good.


I'm fighting off paronychia from the 1 cm avulsion I sustained a few
weeks ago. And I seem to have Lightfoot syndrome in my neck (though
that may be likely unrelated to the particular fall)

On Nov 20, 9:14 am, Dan O wrote:
On Nov 19, 9:07 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:



On Nov 18, 5:30 pm, James wrote:

So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents the
statisticians don't know or care about. How comforting.

Last night, I read through the article on Portland bike commuter
injuries: Hoffman, Lambert et.al., _Bicycle Commuter Injury
Prevention_, Journal of Trauma, V 69 No 5 Nov 2010.

It does just what James likes: It attempts to inflate the "Danger!"
impression attached to cycling by diligently capturing every tiny
injury, no matter how slight, that any bicyclist in its study
population received in an entire year.

Their technique was specifically designed to record even tiny injuries
that a cyclist might forget about five weeks later. From their
description, it sounds like if a cyclist pinched his finger in his
brake lever, that's a "traumatic event" and would get recorded. If a
cyclist had any medical person look at the injury, no matter how
slight, it got recorded as a "serious traumatic event."

So what did they find? Although not called out this way, they found
one "traumatic event" (i.e. tiny boo-boo or worse) every 6,700 miles
of commuting in Portland. They found one "serious traumatic
event" (e.g. the nurse put a band-aid on your blister or worse) every
25,600 miles of bike commuting.

As in all such studies, defining "serious" as "visited a doctor or
nurse" is certainly weak logic. The judgment of "serious" is thus up
to the person responsible for the trip to the treatment, as opposed to
the medically trained person. It completely prevents a doctor saying
"Oh, that's a trivial injury, too small to bother with." It means
hypochondria and outstanding medical coverage will be confounding
factors, just as health care group membership and over-protection
apparently were in the 1989 Thompson & Rivara paper.

And indeed, few as they are, the most common "traumatic" or "serious
traumatic" event in this Portland paper was an injury to "Skin/Soft
Tissue." I guess that they didn't want to come out and say "road
rash" or "skinned knee."

But still: If it takes, on average, 25,000 miles commuting in a major
city to trigger _any_ visit to any doctor, even for a skinned knee, it
sounds like cycling is really not very dangerous at all.

We should stop pretending bicycling is dangerous. It does us no good.

I'm fighting off paronychia from the 1 cm avulsion I sustained a few
weeks ago. And I seem to have Lightfoot syndrome in my neck...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072288/

Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
Peter Cole wrote:

On 11/19/2010 10:28 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Nov 19, 9:28 pm, wrote:

Riding on sidewalks is an excellent way to reduce those "unwanted
events."
That's been researched many times. AFAIK, there is no study that's
ever found sidewalk cycling to be anywhere near as safe as riding
on the road.
http://katana.hsrc.unc.edu/cms/downl...ke_Analysis.pd
f

"Combining the two sources of information, the Commission was able to
conclude, for example, that the risk of injury for children riding
bicycles in the street was about eight times greater than riding on
bicycle paths, and nearly two times greater than riding on sidewalks"

For six year olds that seems likely to be reasonable, for adult possibly
not. I don't recall ever seeing numbers about that. The Minnesota
Department of Health data about head injury fatalities only breaks out
"on road" and "off road" "pedalcyclists" without being specific as to
what "off road" means (e.g., mountain biking, paved trails, etc.).

Adults riding a bike on sidewalks also pose a danger to other sidewalk
users, of course.


In my experience, sidewalks and 'paths' dump cyclists onto
streets at points unanticipated by other traffic.

It's one thing to cross an intersection where most
participants expect cross traffic. It's quite another 15
feet away between/behind hedges, parked cars and other sight
line obstructions.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Nov 20, 10:04*am, Dan O wrote:
On Nov 20, 7:12 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:





On Nov 20, 9:06 am, Peter Cole wrote:

"These findings lend strong support to previous research (summarized in
chapter 2) carried out in this country, as well as in Australia,
New Zealand, and a number of European countries, showing that reliance
on official road accident statistics greatly underestimates the
number of injured bicyclists and pedestrians."

Not to mention injured gardeners, injured aerobic dancers, injured
weightlifters, injured kids playing tag or hopscotch!

The fundamental principle is that of _course_ many injuries are
unrecorded, because most injuries are too minor to matter. *This is
true no matter what the activity. *It generates complaints only from
those who make it their mission to "dangerize" a particular activity.
For some reason, bicycling seems to attract the attention of a
disproportionate number of those people.

Frank, please just consider who all's reading this for a moment.
"dangerize"?

It is probably not the unidentified and anonymous members of "those
who make it their mission to 'dangerize' a particular activity."

Maybe Frank will be more successful than OJ in his quest to find these
elusive folks.
DR

"Phil W Lee" wrote in message
...
Dan O considered Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:23:01
-0800 (PST) the perfect time to write:

On Nov 19, 9:46 am, Duane Hébert wrote:
On 11/19/2010 12:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On Nov 18, 5:30 pm, wrote:

So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents
the
statisticians don't know or care about. How comforting.

Last night, I read through the article on Portland bike commuter
injuries: Hoffman, Lambert et.al., _Bicycle Commuter Injury
Prevention_, Journal of Trauma, V 69 No 5 Nov 2010.

It does just what James likes: It attempts to inflate the "Danger!"
impression attached to cycling by diligently capturing every tiny
injury, no matter how slight, that any bicyclist in its study
population received in an entire year.

James is saying that using only fatalities and not other cycling
injuries is skewing the data if the data is used to determine whether
cycling is dangerous. Are you disagreeing with that?

Accusing him of trying to inflate the danger and then phrasing it
as "diligently capturing every tiny injury ..." is irritating.

To say the least.

Although completely accurate, when all meaningful statistical
comparisons will be made with other activities where such inflated
figures for "serious" injuries are not used.

Questioning the inaccurate use of less than adequate statistics is
not trying to inflate the danger. If you guys want to use statistics to
make a point, you should be able to respond to the question without
resorting to insulting innuendo and hyperbole.

You simply cannot use figures for comparison which are collected in
such different ways and using such widely varying criteria

Of course not. But you can't cherry pick figures that make your
argument either.

You can get some statistics based on those actually showing up
in ERs and then subsequently being admitted. Not sure about where
you are, but skinned knees don't usually get hospital rooms here.

But to counter that possibility by claiming someone who takes
5 weeks to recover from an injury is inconsequential makes
your argument sound weak, to say the least.

On Nov 20, 10:00 am, Phil W Lee wrote:
Dan O considered Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:23:01
-0800 (PST) the perfect time to write:



On Nov 19, 9:46 am, Duane Hébert wrote:
On 11/19/2010 12:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On Nov 18, 5:30 pm, wrote:

So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents the
statisticians don't know or care about. How comforting.

Last night, I read through the article on Portland bike commuter
injuries: Hoffman, Lambert et.al., _Bicycle Commuter Injury
Prevention_, Journal of Trauma, V 69 No 5 Nov 2010.

It does just what James likes: It attempts to inflate the "Danger!"
impression attached to cycling by diligently capturing every tiny
injury, no matter how slight, that any bicyclist in its study
population received in an entire year.

James is saying that using only fatalities and not other cycling
injuries is skewing the data if the data is used to determine whether
cycling is dangerous. Are you disagreeing with that?

Accusing him of trying to inflate the danger and then phrasing it
as "diligently capturing every tiny injury ..." is irritating.

To say the least.

Although completely accurate, when all meaningful statistical
comparisons will be made with other activities where such inflated
figures for "serious" injuries are not used.

You simply cannot use figures for comparison which are collected in
such different ways and using such widely varying criteria.

I don't really give a flying fig about numbers (except those like
dropout spacing). I only know that I was just soaking my paronychia
in a Sponge Bob cup of magnesium sulfate while hosing walnut slime off
the driveway with the other hand :-)

On Nov 20, 11:46*am, Dan O wrote:
On Nov 20, 10:00 am, Phil W Lee wrote:





Dan O considered Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:23:01
-0800 (PST) the perfect time to write:

On Nov 19, 9:46 am, Duane Hébert wrote:
On 11/19/2010 12:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On Nov 18, 5:30 pm, *wrote:

So you're saying because it's too difficult to assess bicycling
accidents that don't result in a death, we should just ignore that
dataset. *Hmm, me thinks there's likely a whole range of accidents the
statisticians don't know or care about. *How comforting.

Last night, I read through the article on Portland bike commuter
injuries: *Hoffman, Lambert et.al., _Bicycle Commuter Injury
Prevention_, Journal of Trauma, V 69 No 5 Nov 2010.

It does just what James likes: It attempts to inflate the "Danger!"
impression attached to cycling by diligently capturing every tiny
injury, no matter how slight, that any bicyclist in its study
population received in an entire year.

James is saying that using only fatalities and not other cycling
injuries is skewing the data if the data is used to determine whether
cycling is dangerous. Are you disagreeing with that?

Accusing him of trying to inflate the danger and then phrasing it
as "diligently capturing every tiny injury ..." *is irritating.

To say the least.

Although completely accurate, when all meaningful statistical
comparisons will be made with other activities where such inflated
figures for "serious" injuries are not used.

You simply cannot use figures for comparison which are collected in
such different ways and using such widely varying criteria.

I don't really give a flying fig about numbers (except those like
dropout spacing). *I only know that I was just soaking my paronychia
in a Sponge Bob cup of magnesium sulfate while hosing walnut slime off
the driveway with the other hand :-)

Since your injury is statistically insignificant, you can just ignore
it.
DR