Captain Blight

Anyone can act like an alpha. But there's only one alpha to a pack.


Well, two, counting the mate.

John Forester

As I wrote, it is well known that many car-bike collisions are not reported to the police. However, that does not demonstrate that the statistics, such as Cross's, derived from police reports are biased. That would be correct only if the bias consistently overreported or underreported particular types of car-bike collision, for which there is no evidence.

Bekologist

hmm, so using serious reported crashes to the police as the metric for crash reporting can actually yield valid, rigorous data points on crashes involving bicyclists then.

True that, john.

Sorry if i wasn't clear enough earlier about safety in numbers being an understood and utilized element of traffic engineering and roadway design that is, if not a tool, a result and element factored into planning for more diverse road use.

This phenomenon of safety in numbers, awareness in numbers is widely exhibited in cities and towns across Europe. Implementation of pedestrian squares open to delivery vehicles only, pedestrian priority home zones, woonerfs, TEMPO30 zones and the like are some of the diverse countermeasures of traffic planning that are inexorably wedded to enhancing safety by creating greater awareness of road users, by changing the makeup and emphasis of traffic to favor vulnerable road users.

Cities in North America have also been utilizing greater diversity in traffic makeup and road design/use to enhance traffic safety. Several cities in the USA are facilitating more equitable road use and exhibit a concurrent positive trend in the safety and declining crash rate for bicyclists, despite the data not being vigorous enough for the doubting thomases in the crowd.

Broadly speaking, greater safety from more diverse and equitable use of public roads and rights of way is widely observable, a universally recognizable and understood "reality of the commons".

note to invisiblehand: i put quotations around the neologism to make it easier for you to grasp -not that you were refuting the reality of the commons anyway, just taking issue with the artistic license of using 'reality' the way I did.

CBHI: again, i wasn't aware - nobody is - that's its actually the number of bicyclists in New York City, Minneapolis or Portland that's the factor that was remaining flat. interesting .....

CB HI

The dog is chasing it's tail again.

Bekologist

a far better explanation than the numbers of riders having stayed the same in the cities that are reporting declining trends in the crash rates for bicyclists.

CB HI

Which post are you even talking about?

Bekologist

da dum, da dum, the empty drum roll, please.......



in an alternate reality, perhaps, but NOT what has been happening in Minneapolis, New York, and Portland.

CB HI

Stop being foolish and read the entire EXAMPLE.

The example demonstrates how commuter count can increase while total cyclist numbers could have actually remained the same. Your out of context quote is pure BS on your part.

Captain Blight

I have read this entire thread through a couple-three times and Ai have no idea why you guys are bickering like this. 'Splainins plz.

Bekologist

i have no interest in bickering. my large post from tonight, and the entirety of my framing of the reality of the commons is fairly innocuous.

I do not understand the rancor directed by fellow bicyclists at a widespread and readily observable traffic dynamic.

RobertHurst

The Cross statistics may be "robust" for 1975, or whenever, but they should not be assumed to apply to today's situation, because the demographics of the cycling population have changed so drastically since then. The cycling population is completely, utterly different in its make-up, and will exhibit completely different characteristics.

Forester doesn't mention that Cross-Fisher is most useful for showing the vast differences in types of wrecks most often experienced by kids, versus those experienced by adults.

RobertHurst

If I have rancor it is for the non-scientific floundering. Still can't tell if you're pretending that it doesn't matter or if you really just don't get it.

Think about this: Even in cities with lots of adult commuters, only about half of the reported crashes will involve members of that group.

Let's say you wanted to know how many mountain bikes were in your shop, and if the number had grown or declined. Would you (a) count all the bikes in the shop and then try to guess if the number of mountain bikes had changed or (b) count the mountain bikes. Would it even be possible to determine how and if the number of mountain bikes had changed based on (a)?

To me, this seems pretty obvious, but I've studied the accidents stats enough to understand how they tend to be dominated by non-commuters in most cities.

Bekologist

robert, comparing crash rates to usage is sound methodology, albeit basic. you don't like accepted crash reporting methods or the manner in which cities and the US Census Bureau's American Community Surveys estimate ridership, sure, your position is apparent.

How about taking a step back from your numerology and take a look at on the ground reality.

Think about this:

The widely observed and even planned for traffic dynamic of "awareness in numbers" becomes self evident when applied on a grander scale in pedestrian squares, woonerf'd home zones and the like in cities across Europe. This is indisputable. A more elaborate explanation is not necessary. Dig into European traffic planning all you want, awareness in numbers is a genuine traffic dynamic.

New York City's reworking of public road space into public plazas and complete streets is also having a widely measurable, in your face and obvious positive effect on more equitable use of the public commons, ridership, overall safety and crash rates for all road users.

I have no idea why you continue to try and argue against this reality of the commons. I still can't tell if you're pretending that it doesn't exist, or if you really just don't get it. Oh, right, the Jacobson statistics don't exhibit enough rigor for you, American Community Survey data is so far off the mark its value in estimating american demographics is, what was it again, 'fundamentally bogus?'

The awareness in numbers phenomenon is bona fide.

Your overreaching smears of a hypothesis that is being proven in city after city, whose effects are being exhibited on the nascent rebirth of north america's equitable streetscapes, turns your criticism into curmudgeon.

(my apologies if i've embedded any sentence fragments that might sully any part time epistemology being applied to this thread topic. its 4 am and i'm up to take the GF to the airport.)

genec

No he doesn't... but many of us are aware of that anomaly.

With regard to the dating of the data, there are also new devices called cell phones which may be causing a distraction factor that may not have occurred at the same frequency back in 1975. While cell phones and other new distractions won't change the specific types of collisions that were cataloged, such distractions may have changed which types of collisions occur how often and the severity of the collision.

genec

Well Bek, it may not be a safety in numbers thing... it could be a safety in novelty thing. It could be that the changes in the environment in those particular cities is giving rise to motorists to pay attention to the changes, to the cyclists how ever many or few, and note these changes and subtly react to the changes until they are again familiar and the motorists again become complacent.

Bekologist

by changes you mean a combination of changes in traffic modality - more bicyclists and pedestrians - coupled to physical changes in the environment that influence greater safety?

okay.

That's a reiteration of the awareness in numbers traffic dynamic. Plan for safer and more diverse road use, see safety and modality sway in favor of the vulnerable road user.

I agree, combating motorist complacency towards standards of road safety is a sticky wicket.

mnemia

I think you're thinking about this in a fundamentally incorrect way. "Safety in numbers", even if it's a real thing, is a STATISTICAL phenomenon, not an explanation. It's an observation, not a mechanism. I'll grant you, for the sake of argument, that there is likely a correlation, as I said. But it's speculation to try to explain WHY that correlation might exist. It's speculation to claim that it comes from greater "awareness", etc.

As I said, my guess is that what happens is that as the number of bicyclists rise in an area, a whole range of changes take place. It is these concrete changes that cause the change in safety. The discussion has gone over many of these possible explanations in this thread. But constantly talking about the "safety in numbers" thing is just like saying "as Americans get older, they get fatter; therefore, aging causes obesity". It's overly reductive, because it's not a mechanism.

genec

No this is not a reiteration of safety in numbers. In the scenario I suggest the numbers don't matter... it is the change that matters... new stripes on the road, new barriers, even new pavement... any and all of which strike the motorist as different, so they respond differently... but then become complacent in a short while and return to old habits.

While this phenomena could increase safety, (due to heightened awareness) for a short while, merely due to the fact that motorists awareness will increase due to these changes... to keep that awareness level up, more changes would have to occur. A constantly changing environment will cause heightened awareness... but how to keep the environment constantly changing is the question. This same sort of phenomena also occurs when new construction occurs... so this is not merely due to the introduction of "numbers of cyclists."

Now safety in numbers may occur if the numbers of cyclists are enough to present that ever changing environment situation. Or if motorists are moving from an area of no cyclists to many cyclists and thus react in kind to the change.

Bekologist

may occur?

Again, you are reiterating the elements buttressing the awareness in numbers phenomenon.

Bekologist

European application of the safety in numbers mechanism is pretty clear-cut, albeit thru a grand variety of local interventions that support more equitable use of the public commons.

Think homezones and woonerfs, European extreme traffic calmed, pedestrian priority 7km/hr streets and neighborhoods. By fundamentally altering the nature of the traffic mix, homezones create an obvious safety in numbers phenomenon. Home zones predicate more equitable or even predominate use, greater awareness and safety in the numbers of vulnerable road users.

New York City and its rework of many streets into more equitable public commons are also telling examples.

RobertHurst

So, Bek, if you were going to count the mountain bikes in your shop, you would do it by counting all the bikes, then guessing at the number of mountain bikes? Or would you ... count the dang mountain bikes?

Which is 'sound methodology?' Which is 'fundamentally bogus?'

John Forester

This is false. I show the age ranges typical of different types of car-bike collision, I discuss the types of errors that most likely cause these, as associated with age, I roughly classify the significant age ranges, by their different collision patterns, as child, adolescent, and adult.

John Forester

There have been two attempts to crudely replicate the Cross study in recent years, and they both concluded that the collision patterns had not changed significantly.

mnemia

All of those things could possibly have an effect on safety. My point is that we shouldn't confuse things that actually have an effect on safety with the idea that is the "numbers" themselves, in some intrinsic way, that cause the greater safety.

I also am not a fan of comparisons between Europe and the U.S., or Asia and the U.S. when it comes to the cycling environment. I believe that the primary difference is cultural, rather than based on what programs and infrastructure are in place. Europeans build all that fancy bike infrastructure because they have a culture that respects bicycling as a valid form of transportation, and their cycling culture was never knocked back to the degree ours was over on this side of the pond. I believe a large part of the reason for this is simply rooted in the differences in history between our countries. Places like Europe and Japan endured long periods of war and post-war deprivation and rebuilding during the period in which U.S. car culture was growing dramatically. It is CAR infrastructure and cars themselves that are expensive and unaffordable for many countries (including many Europeans during large parts of the last century), not bicycle infrastructure. So the fact that we were so rich in the U.S. in relative terms allowed our car culture to supplant bicycle and pedestrian culture to an unparalleled degree. Bike advocacy needs to reflect this cultural difference. The reason Europe has all this enviable bike infrastructure and awareness is because many places in Europe have a longer history as a real bike culture, not the other way around. In the U.S. we are having to start from a point decades behind them in most areas, because we killed our bike culture off.

genec

Sure, but in any situation where more than one is acting like the alpha there are usually fights or struggles to finally determine the alpha... you wanna take on a 6000 lb SUV with a billy bad azz that thinks he is the alpha? Good luck with that situation!