Papa Tom

>>>Oooh my brain is tired.<<<<

Ccycommute: I normally despise sarcasm, but that last thread was dead on.

alan s 

Sorry, but I have no idea what you are trying to say here.

In my case, I need lights to see and be seen. Pitch black MUPs are almost impossible to ride at any speed without lights. You may or may not get injured in the process, but for sure, your stress level will be through the roof. There's a ninja rider I've seen a couple times going the other way, and he literally runs off the path when I'm passing. I guess he's able to see well enough in the dark, but my lights must blind him. Sorry dude, but get some lights like the rest of us. On the streets and where the MUPs cross streets, lights certainly get the attention of cars and greatly enhance safety. Not much to debate on the topic.

headset

One wonders how the ninja proponents would feel if a few motorists decided to drive with their lights off at night. They'd rely on their heightened sense of awareness to aviod hitting anyone of course.

Walter S

Naturally. I think the ninjas are to be ignored until somebody can explain why, in spite of the fact that we see better in the light than at dark, that you're no safer with a light. Nobody needs stats and studies and crap. Just use a few of your brain cells to apply some trivial logic to the situation.

cyccommute 

Whadd I say? Huh? Whadd I say? I can see some of the logic from the anti-H crowd...not that I agree with it...but I can see some of their point. However, lights are, well, black and white.

Wish I could claim it. But that is Walter S's comment.

Yup, your lights do, in fact, blind him. It takes few photons to saturate the rod cells in the eye...which is responsible for providing us with "night vision"...and it takes quite a while for those cells to relax enough to send signals to the brain again. Each light exposure causes the cells to saturate and continue to "blind" the receptors. If you stand under a starlit sky for 20 to 30 minutes, you'll have enough "night vision" to walk across a field and even pick out some details. You won't be able to pick out many fine details because we lack the tapetum lucidum that many mammals have which concentrates the light so that they can see very fine details...fine enough to run across the same field that you can only walk across.

Put someone behind the wheel of a car or put them on a bicycle even in a well lit city with thousands of light sources of various intensities and their "night vision" is shot just like your ninja on the MUP. spare_wheel and ILTB are the Really® True Believers here...and not a little bit of the True™ Drama Queens.

I fully agree. One wonders how they could twist their logic if ninja bicyclist meets ninja motorist. Would it make them doubly safe because the motorist and the bicyclist are at an incredible level of "heightened awareness"? Constructive vs destructive interference, to use the language of light?

alan s 

No rational person would waste their time studying whether lights help you see and be seen and increase safety. Nor would they study whether water is wet. It's obvious.

cyccommute 

In the sciences, we call that a "trivial question" when we are being professional. When we aren't being professional, we call it a "Well, duh!" question and follow it with a dope slap

If you are working with a woman scientist (or have a woman in your life), a "Well, duh!" question would be followed by "The Look!". "The Look!" is on that leg of the chromosome that we men lack which means that we can't give it. But you all know what it is and how it makes any male from 1 to 100 feel and girls from 1 to 10 feel. After 10 years, all girls develop "The Look!" and can use it to great effect against any male of any age. Both these guys could stand a heavy dose of it right now.

I-Like-To-Bike

Let me lay it out for you and the other Smart Guys. No one is arguing that lights are not helpful or useful. The objection is to the over-the-top doomesday rhetoric from self appointed bicycling safety experts who post sky is falling warnings based on their own fabricated incredibly high deadly hazard statistics (or their own peculiar sense of cold logic) for any bicyclist or bicycling practice that doesn't fit their own cycling profile. Be it lights, blindingly bright lights, helmets, reflective day glow clothing, bike lanes, stay in the lanes, cameras, door zones, foot-pedal restraints, whatever.

It seems to me some bicyclists get their jollies by feeling (and posting) smugly superior to all those motorists who are not the physical/mental/moral specimens that these bicyclists think they are. Others gets their jollies disparaging other cyclists who don't meet the approved bicycling correct profile, whether it be so-called Ninjas, Salmons, unlit, unwashed, whatever.

Bottom line: safety advice is always welcome, even if misguided;condescending fire and brimstone safety nannyism BS is not.

Walter S

Where is the sky is falling stuff you're talking about? I feel strongly that lights make you safer. I also feel that it is not likely on any given night that if I didn't have a light I would be in an accident that night. But of course life is made up of thousands upon thousands of nights (hopefully), so getting thru tonight is not the goal. Reducing the odds of an accident over the long haul remains important. It's not a dooms day situation until that fateful night when having a light would make the difference. Since I don't know when that night might come, I guard against it by running lights as a policy.

I-Like-To-Bike

You could more effectively guard against a fatal night time bike accident if you are that nervous about such low probability (whether lit or not) occurrences, by making it a personal policy not to ride at night (whether lit or not), or at other times when there is likely to be a higher percentage of tired or inebriated drivers.

spare_wheel

Despite suggesting that ninjas are at risk of death Grillparzer could not find a single news report of a fatality in his area. Instead he posted a link to a collision in another city that took place 5 years ago. QED again.

Random anecdotes that are 2, 1, and 6 months old in a nation of ~300 million people do not an argument make. They do suggest that you have better google-fu than Grillparzer, however.

PS: Aren't you supposed to be a scientist? Perhaps you should dust off and review a probability and statistics text book.

Walter S

If I avoided everything that has a risk of injury I'd have to sit at home in my bomb shelter. I'd rather ride with a light and hope for the best.

the sci guy 

I can't believe you're arguing over this.

cyccommute 

Except that, in your eyes, safety advice is always concescending fire and brimstone safety nannyism. You drag every discussion is the exact same direction.

cyccommute 

To quote the great Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. If you had specified some parameters for the bet you made to Grillparzer, you might have demonstrated something. However, you didn't so you haven't demonstrated anything other than the fact that you are a sore loser. He called your bet. You lost. Q.E.D.

How many anecdotes do you need to make an argument? 300 million? You asked for one. We've given you 4. I suspect that there is no number that would satisfy you. Nor is there any level of detail that would satisfy your requirements.

It is a trivial question as I said above. A trivial question doesn't need probability or statistics because the answer is so obvious that probability doesn't measure anything.

cyccommute 

I can't believe it either.

I-Like-To-Bike

Just like questioning the alleged risk reduction effectiveness/value of bicycle helmets, eh? Can't believe anybody can/should question safety related sacred cows, you don't need no stinkin' evidence, you just KNOW IT, doncha?

dynaryder

Not always,language changes.

spare_wheel

Helmet nazis often use the same non-argument. Stating that something is "obvious" or "trivial" is "proof by assertion" -- the most basic logical fallacy..

And the question is not trivial because, contrary to the strawmen being built here, no one is arguing for riding without lighting in the pitch dark on a bumblefrack rural highway. In well-lit urban areas there is surprisingly little evidence that riding without lighting is particularly risky. Thus far, you have only brought bluster and ad hominems to this discussion. It would be nice if you could attempt to actually develop a coherent argument (stating that it's obvious or trivial is not an argument) and provide some evidence or data to support your argument.

In a previous thread I linked to several studies that attempted to measure the risk of riding without lighting in urban areas. Surprisingly, in urban areas the risk of riding without lighting was low or difficult to measure (e.g. non-trivial):

https://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-s...ban-areas.html

spare_wheel

Maybe...just maybe...my bet was rhetorical, not literal.
Unfortunately, I'm beginning to suspect that you are not particulary interested in rhetoric: "It is a trivial question"..."the answer is so obvious" (e.g. how dare your challenge my solipsistic reality!).

This thread is full of people claiming that ninjas are dying, have a death wish, and are removing themselves from the gene pool. The fact that both you and Mr. "Papa_Tom" have had to google up a few anecdotal collisions illustrates how little evidence underlies your "beliefs". The evidence you both provided was so risable that I did not even bother to point out that these media reports contain no evidence that lack of lighting caused these particular collisions. I also find it very sad that you are using the same anti-cycling FUD that the media uses when people who cycle are hit while "not wearing a helmet".

headset

Debate the studies all you like, for me, riding with a light at night is a basic courtesy to other cyclists. There will always be a percentage of a given population that feel they are above common courtesy, so be it. It's best to ignore them and get on with things.

kickstart

I can see better with lights, I can see lit objects better.

One way or the other there's no guarantee of results, but the route of least resistance is obvious.

cyccommute 

In the context that spare_wheel used it, it means "it has been shown".

This is not a helmet thread. It's a light thread. Let's keep it as such.

The problem with straw men is that you have to be careful about building your own. The NHSTA statistics, the Huhn paper, the SWOV paper as well as others I've seen all have the similar statistics. In the Huhn paper, 10% of the bicycle riding populace ride at night but account for 25% of the bicycle accidents and fatalities. In the US, I suspect that the percentage of the bicycle populace riding at night is lower than 10% but they account for nearly 40% of the fatalities. The SWOV paper states That lays it out clearly. Riding at night is 4 to 5 times more of a risk than riding during the daylight hours. One has to wonder why? ...Not really. You only have to wonder why if you ignore the elephant in the room.

Further from the SWOV paper

The reason it hasn't been sufficiently studied is because it is a trivial question. You can't get funding to study something that is obvious. As alan s said above it's like saying "water is wet". No one will give you money to study the obvious. Even if you could get funding, a paper studying whether using lights by cyclists benefit road safety probably wouldn't get past peer review because, again, it's rather obvious.

Also, from the above quote, I suspect that whether or not the cyclist was using lights isn't often recorded in accident reports most anywhere. That might be worth studying but only from the standpoint of why it isn't recorded.


Finally, the SWOV paper reaches this conclusion

Alcohol does play a role in bicyclists' injury related crashes but only in about 30%. A little simple math shows that around 70% of the non-motor vehicle crash resulting in serious injuries are for people who are stone cold sober. The final sentence is actually a CYA conclusion. There isn't any data...it's not recorded in accident reports...to support a conclusion that bicycle lights add to bicycling safety during darkness but if you were to ask the author off the record, he'd say "Well, duh!" and dope slap you.

cyccommute 

Again, you are using words that don't mean what you think they mean. A rhetorical question is on for which there isn't really an answer or the answer is obvious. "Does the Pope wear a funny hat?", "Is the Pope Catholic?", "Is it dark at night?", "Is water wet?" are examples of rhetorical questions. A rhetorical question also isn't on for which you can use "quod erat demonstrandum" because there isn't anything to demonstrate. Just because you asked a question to which you didn't really want an answer, doesn't make your question rhetorical. And when someone answered your "rhetorical question" with just the example you asked for doesn't mean that you made your point. Just the opposite is true.

You made the "bet" and people called it. Learn how to lose graciously.

And don't go pickin' on Papa_Tom. He didn't go looking up anything on Google.

I-Like-To-Bike

Correct, only the use of manipulation of snippets of stats, factoids, and non-existing stats to formulate a conclusion already predetermined by the so-called cold logic of the manipulator appears identical.