Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
Perhaps you should spend more time editing your posts and toss the guesswork about cycling stereotypes and their equipment and guesswork about who/what was or wasn't included in raw safety data, and leave in the parts (if any) that support your position.
Having been away from A&S and most other parts of BF for several years, I've not "met" you before. Having now read through some of your other writings it's pretty clear you live in a world where anything that doesn't fit your model of "cycling" is a blasphemy that must be rebuked.
Unfortunately, your biases make it such that you can't see the forest for the trees...
The reason I introduced the stereotypical minimum wage worker on a bike was to remind "cyclists" that when looking at fatality statistics they need to remain open-minded as to "what" exactly a pedalcyclist IS.. and that's anyone riding a bike, regardless of what they ride, how they dress and why they ride. Therefore, and much to your chagrin, my statement reinforces much of what you 'preach' in your postings...
A cyclist is not defined by what they look like, ride or why they ride.... they are simply people who ride bicycles.
As for "logging miles", I don't have a friggin' clue how many miles I ride a year. A rough idea, yes... And, yes, there are cyclists who log every mile they ride OR who commute the same 20 mile round trip each day x number of weeks a year who can predict with fairly good accuracy how many miles they ride. Conversely, it's commonplace for many cyclists to exaggerate / overstate their riding exploits and that type of data routinely makes it way into 'surveys' regarding bicycle ridership, lord knows why... but I've seen it in the raw data I've received during
my own tandem ridership & ownership surveys over the past 6 years or so. Cranky, if you believed what Bicycling puts out in their data in terms of how many people ride bikes and how often the US would look like Europe, except that everyone would be riding $10k bicycles: have you ever SEEN Bicycling Mag's Media Kit??
http://www.bicycling.com/mediakit/au...ingmarket.html
So, my point is this.
I'm not a Helmet zealot... I wear one and I have taught my family to wear them when we're riding on public roads or riding technical off-road trails because it's prudent, but I really don't care if you or anyone else does.
I'm not really a bike snob, but can easily be assumed to be since I own and ride very high-end bikes and spend the majority of my time engaged in the technical, high-end aspects of the cycling hobby. But, it's not a zero-sum game. Again, I don't care what anyone else rides, so long as they ride what they like and ride responsibly. It pisses me off when I see anyone on a bike doing something that will feed motorist disdain for cyclists who ride on public roads... in much the same way that it pisses me off to watch folks who ride motorcycles like idiots or who are moronic enough to think "loud pipes" do anything other than annoy people who still have most of their hearing intact (I'm a motorcyclist too; these "tribal" issues are not germane to the cycling community).
Therefore, my examples were not intended to suggest that helmetless, civilian clothed cyclists are what drives fatality statistics. Instead, it attempted to make the point that it's a very diverse population embedded in those numbers and they should be looked at with that in mind. Without exception, any time I've ever posted out the FARS data on cyclists it IS the DUI numbers that catch readers by surprise. Just imagine how large that number might be if they reported BACs between .00 and .079. And, no... it's not just alcoholics caught up in those numbers. It's anyone who decides to drink and then ride -- in flips, cycling shoes, sneakers or work boots -- and ends up in a body bag or ICU on their way to the FARS database.
I'll close my tome with this except from my
own Website and an entry I made back in March before I began a hiatus from making updates over the summer.
Speaking of Retrospectives - One of the forums I frequent has been all a buzz about the risks associated with cycling ever since Lance Armstrong broke his collarbone. While tempted to weigh in I have, instead, elected to reminisce about the early days of cycling in my youth. This was a time when just about every kid rode a bike to school, families would go out for rides around their neighborhood and nearly all the local newspapers were delivered by kids like me who ride bikes. Funny how today the bikes have been long gone and now so too are most of the local newspapers: I believe this is called progress?
Anyway, lest I digress further...
As I pondered the past and cycling's rightful place in history I was reminded that helmets, risk and the other current trappings of 'cycling' just weren't a part of my memory. We rode our bikes in street clothes and knew how to ride with traffic, just as we all knew how to walk against traffic. Our bikes all had mud guards and kickstands and in the Northeast we nervously anticipated that annual safety check the local police would perform at the Tisdale Elementary School before they would trade our registration card for a brand new, shiny reflective registration decal.
As I leafed through and pre-scanned my Spring '09 Bicycle Quarterly I saw several photos of tandems from the 30's that reinforced my recollection of cycling in Europe and urban centers in the Northeast US... Yes, people rode bikes! Cyclists were, in fact, the exception and not the rule as it was rare to see someone training on a bicycle outside the confines of a velodrome. In fact, and with this in mind, I did a Google image search on the phrase, people riding bicycles and found images of, well, people riding bikes. These were all kinds of people riding all kinds of bike and for a variety of different reasons but most in street clothes and not wearing helmets with a few helmeted cyclists dotted about and, yes, even a photo of naked people riding bikes (be forewarned). However, when I searched on images using just the term cyclists I was both shocked and surprised to find the results were dominated by helmeted racers, club riders and naked people riding bikes with just a few 'civilian cyclists' represented. There were far more cartoons and, well, just a lot of naked people riding bikes.
In an effort to shake off both the images of body-painted and nude cyclists and as well as the packs of helmet-clad cyclists, I sought refuge at You Tube with a two-part video reproduction of a 1955 movie produced by the British Rail film board entitled "Cyclists Special." What would it be like to hold a tandem rally like this!?
Give the martyr thing a rest.... really... and don't presume to know what's in my mind or tell me how to write.