Originally Posted by
hagen2456
Weird. I posted an answer to this some minutes ago, but it never appeared on the site. I'll try again:
What kind of statistics back you up? Educated cyclists versus uneducated cyclists? If so, it's a no-brainer: Just about any education on how traffic works vis-a-vis cyclists will be of benefit, no matter if it's VC training or something else. Oh, and how comprehensive was the study? Who did it? When? What kind of crashes?
snip
The US National Safety Council made two studies of the use and crash rate of typical American cyclists, one group in school, the other group college-associated adults. Kaplan made a study of the use and crash rate of members of the League of American Wheelmen, who at that time were the group in America most likely to ride in the vehicular manner. The British CTC studied the use and crash rates of newer members (therefore typical of the general cycling public) and of longer-time members. In both the American and the British comparisons, those groups of cyclists whose members were most likely to ride in the vehicular manner had crash rates between 20% and 25% (depending on type of crash) of those of the general cycling public. At the time of the American studies, cyclist training was in the form of what I called "bike-safety" cautionings for staying out of the way of motorists; Effective Cycling had not yet been published. England had had an on-and-off history of cyclist training programs.