Posts by linger
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Hard News: The long road to Hit and Run, in reply to Tinakori,
its positive impact is potentially disproportionate to its size.
As is its negative impact.
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to BenWilson,
Actually, treating it as an all-or-nothing "restriction of liberty" harm rapidly becomes a slippery-slope argument whichever direction along the dimension of degree of risk you go. Even if you're happy to allow cyclists to choose to ride without helmets, you might still justifiably believe that a helmet should be required as part of motorcycling, or of taking part in high-speed sports; or that safety equipment such as helmets, goggles, gloves, or boots be mandated in workplace environments where corresponding injury risks exist. At some point (but we can reasonably disagree about exactly where), the individual right to take risks has to be balanced against government responsibility for public safety and maintaining some level of healthcare.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Alfie,
Or a "Dipton something"?
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Looking at the Olivier et al paper, there are some substantive claims to address concerning the evidence for or against a causal relationship between helmet laws and cycling uptake.
(i) Time series evidence from before the introduction of helmet laws is patchy, so we can’t conclusively say that numbers of cyclists weren’t declining anyway around the time the laws were introduced. (Olivier et al suggest that numbers of cyclists were in fact steadily declining in both Australia and NZ, though they rely on data from NSW rather than NZ throughout.) This is an argument from ignorance, though it does indicate that the case for a direct causal effect is weaker than claimed by its proponents. (My extrapolation of this is that in the NZ case, it could still be argued that there was an effect from the campaign introducing the law, but it would be much harder to demonstrate any further ongoing effect from the law’s subsequent continued existence.)
(ii) Surveys of cyclists place helmet wearing well down the list of concerns (typically cited by only 5%) compared to inadequate infrastructure. This is relevant to the NZ case, because infrastructure was not developed (or in some cases, notably the Wellington Motorway cyclepath, even properly maintained) in the decade following the introduction of the law; hence this could be a viable alternative explanation for continued decline. So the ideological purity that makes the NZ data seem a controlled comparison, may also make it an outlier as far as other factors are concerned. -
Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Moz,
Yeah, and it should be required by law that men all wear condoms at all times too... You know that's not what Kevin meant.
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It strikes me that the ability of artists to leave at will is a feature that would cause any accountant to have kittens; but it might just work if the sense of community is strong enough. Good luck!
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Stephen R,
Tokyo residents would be amused to hear Osakans described as polite, but otherwise, yes. Where it can get a little riskier is out in the countryside, especially just after sunset (when cyclists who don’t have lights are racing to get home before nightfall, and street lighting is irregular to nonexistent). Walking home last night, I got buzzed by two cyclists coming up from behind me without lights, and without any auditory warning. The first one I didn’t see at all, and just managed to pull my arm back as he went past. The second one I glimpsed the approaching shadow of just in time to step to the side and stop as she went by. Closest calls I’ve had so far this year; quite unnerving to have them in the same journey. (Though, to be scrupulously fair, I wouldn't have been that visible to them either, and the presence of any pedestrian on that path at that time would be unexpected.)
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The problem is, the article itself is paywalled, unless you belong to an institution that is recognised as subscribing to Wiley Online. (For me at least, the link redirects to Wiley, which charges USD38 to download the PDF.)
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to David Hood,
The cyclist profile changes as the numbers drop too, in ways that may affect risk to pedestrians, e.g. average cycling speed rises; and a single cyclist is less visible to a pedestrian than a group of cyclists. On the other hand it may be that fewer less experienced cyclists (e,g, young children) may pose less risk to pedestrians. It'll be interesting to see what the data shows.
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to David Hood,
In the NZ case, historically, the answer would have to be “not much”, because cyclists and pedestrians weren’t supposed to be sharing paths. Shared-use paths are a more recent development, and are still not widespread enough to affect national-level statistics.
Also, if there were any appreciable decrease in cyclist-pedestrian injuries, it would have to be offset against the increase in pedestrian-vs.-car collisions resulting from the increased traffic density resulting from the decrease in cyclists. And the latter would naturally be expected to have the larger impact.
So my guess (and it has to be a guess, because, as you suggest, the reporting rate for pedestrian-vs.-cycle incidents is unreliable at best, partly because the consequences are more likely to be negligible) is that including effects on pedestrians would not alter the overall case for increasing cycling uptake, and may even strengthen it.
Shared cycle/pedestrian pathways may increase cyclist-pedestrian collisions, but overall are a positive development because they help isolate cyclists – and pedestrians – from motorists (where collisions can have much more serious consequences). Though it would be better to have dedicated cycle-paths and dedicated walkways.