Are Female Cyclist more at risk

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beardy
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by beardy »

Five out of six this year were women and didnt we have a similar run last year?

At what point does it become more indicative of an actual phenomenon rather than a statistical flutter?
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Si
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by Si »

beardy wrote:


No because Bikeability is not the only or even major influence on peoples' riding position.

I wonder if it is even a significant influence on the general cycling population, I dont know anybody (outside of this forum) who has undertaken a course.[/quote]

I guess that it depends where you are and I've no idea what it's like down in That London, where many of these incidents are reported. Up here there is a reasonable number of people electing to do bikeability, probably because of all of the opportunities to do it.
Vorpal
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by Vorpal »

axel_knutt wrote:
Vorpal wrote:There are two related and similar cultures in India where one is matrilineal and the other is patrilineal. Members of both cultures were given the same 3D puzzles to solve, across different villages, genders, ages, etc. In the Patrilineal culture, men solved the puzzles 36% faster. In the matrilineal culture there was no significant difference in the time it took for men and women to solve the puzzles.


This argument assumes that the patrilineal society is male biased, the matrilineal is neutral, and there is no gender difference in SA. Another possibility is that mat and pat societies are both biased, and that an SA gender difference adds to the pat bias, and cancels out the mat bias.
In the study, the differences in the cultures are discussed in detail. I was providing a very simplified summary.

axel_knutt wrote:
beardy wrote:It could be that the reason why more women cyclists die is because of how the HGV drivers react to them.


But they don't, the casualty rate is higher among males.

"even when allowing for greater exposure, the males are somewhat over-represented, particularly among fatal casualties"

Knowles et al: Collisions involving pedal cyclists on Britain's roads: establishing the causes. TRL PPR445 2009.

Even random data exhibit runs, and when they do, people invariably think they've found something non-random. Tossing a coin produces long runs of consecutive heads and tails, it wouldn't be random if it didn't. The brain is programmed to look for patterns, and it's so good at it that it even finds patterns where none exist, like in the clouds or the flames of a fire, or cancer clusters around power stations, or cyclist deaths. You can even find your birthday in the digits of pi if you look hard enough. There's a section on the subject here.

That study is for the whole of the UK. In London, however, the picture is somewhat different. And the trend has worsened considerably since the TRL report.
http://road.cc/content/news/142395-anot ... y-involved
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/may/ ... -accidents
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... ths-report

So, this is something that has been obvious for years, and TfL and the government are doing nothing about it.

IMO, while the reasons for the disproportionate representation of women in the statistics are interesting, the solutions ultimately have to focus on engineering and/or limiting the use of lorries, at least for some places and times.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Psamathe
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by Psamathe »

Has anybody established that it is an issue of gender ?

Best way to solve a problem is to identify the real cause of the problem. Remembering that a correlation does not demonstrate/prove a causal relationship. So, whilst I would not suggest it is the cause, but what about temporal effects. Maybe all the aggressive MAMILs are charging around early trying to get to work, whilst the skip drivers have not yet collected any loads and are awake and alert. Maybe things deteriorate later in the day when maybe there are a higher proportion of female cyclists, skip lorry drivers are all out on the roads and getting fatigued, etc. I'm not suggesting this is the cause of anything, just that the debate seems centred around solving a correlation rather than a causal relationship.

Ian
thirdcrank
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by thirdcrank »

It's been suggested that there's been some sort of official study which has been leaked but not published. Isn't this the type of thing the CTC's Campaigns Department chases up with FoI request etc? If there hasn't been anything with a proper methodology undertaken, isn't that something that the CTC's Campaigns Department chases up? Having said that, I'm aware that the CTC doesn't like to say anything which links cycling to danger.

It wouldn't be much of a labour to look at all the investigation reports of these deaths to consider all the possible links to see what common features if any there were beyond the obvious ones which have already been highlighted.

The possibility of digging out the files raises the issue of other crashes where the rider was injured but survived. For obvious reasons, there is generally more publicity surrounding fatal crashes than those where the casualty is gravely injured but survives. In these cases, the difference between death and survival may be as much a combination of luck and the skills of the medical people as the exact cause of the crash. So, if all so-called KSI crashes involving cyclists were looked at it may be that the numbers of male casualties would be found to be higher. To make this clear, I'm not suggesting that men are more likely to survive being run over by a truck than women, just that in this set of events, men have been less unlucky.

That line then raises the countless near misses, "damage only" crashes and the apparently increasing number of injury crashes which are recorded but not investigated.

"When I was a lad" I was knocked off my bike by an overtaking lorry on North Street, Wetherby, when it formed part of the Great North Road AKA the A1. I was uninjured other than minor bumps, but the wheels crushed my rear wheel. It was purely by my good luck that this forum was not spared 20,000+ posts. The police took a report but even in those days it will not have been recorded for the stats.
ferdinand
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by ferdinand »

Do men have more opportunities to pick up the habits that make them safer?

I wonder (speculate) whether there is a factor of men being more around construction vehicles, building projects, goods wagons and DIY, so picking up habits to be cautious around them by 'osmosis'.

eg Spend 2 hours at a Travis-Perkins seeing who are the customers in the materials' yard.

Breeze rides would be one of the ways to communicate this, perhaps, being aimed at more timid female cyclists. Do they do this?

Ferdinand
ferdinand
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by ferdinand »

axel_knutt wrote:But they don't, the casualty rate is higher among males.

"even when allowing for greater exposure, the males are somewhat over-represented, particularly among fatal casualties"

Knowles et al: Collisions involving pedal cyclists on Britain's roads: establishing the causes. TRL PPR445 2009.



Two further speculations:

1 - Is it a media visibility thing in part? eg Feminists are hugely embedded everywhere now, and anything that they get cross about generates huge media attention.

2 - Bikeability being 8:1 female:male.

Is there a difference between groups and 1 on 1 Bikeability?

The reason I ask is that one of my current projects is helping 2 lads start up a Crossfit gym. It is class-based workouts plus some personal coaching.

One observation that took me completely by surprise was that they expected a 70% female membership. The reason given - and these are trainers of 5 or more years experience in various gyms - was that men wouldn't do classes, as they didn't like being seen to be being instructed.

Purer class based settings (eg Pilates) were cited as more like 9:1, and men tended to go to individual-based environments.

Ferdinand
thirdcrank
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by thirdcrank »

I'd have taken it for granted that the violent death of a woman would tend to attract more publicity than it would if the deceased had been a man. I'd not pretend to speak for feminists but I suspect that they would prefer it if it were not so, except in cases involving violence against a woman or women as such.
Vorpal
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by Vorpal »

ferdinand wrote:Do men have more opportunities to pick up the habits that make them safer?

I wonder (speculate) whether there is a factor of men being more around construction vehicles, building projects, goods wagons and DIY, so picking up habits to be cautious around them by 'osmosis'.

eg Spend 2 hours at a Travis-Perkins seeing who are the customers in the materials' yard.

Breeze rides would be one of the ways to communicate this, perhaps, being aimed at more timid female cyclists. Do they do this?

Ferdinand

Maybe men do have more opportunities to pick up habits that make them safer, but is that really where the solution lies?
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
ferdinand
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by ferdinand »

Vorpal wrote:
ferdinand wrote:Do men have more opportunities to pick up the habits that make them safer?


Maybe men do have more opportunities to pick up habits that make them safer, but is that really where the solution lies?


I really don't know. As I said, I'm speculating about causes for a possible problem that hasn't been clearly demonstrated to exist (or not) yet.

I think that given that cycling rates are so relatively low, the way to have the biggest impact on this is to work to make cycling an attractive option option for everyone rather than put major effort into gender specific thinking.

And that means more hard graft along the lines that is already the mainstay - in particular improvement of infrastructure and all the rest. But perhaps that is only the main strategic answer (10-30 year timespan).

I'd advocate for an improved Bikeability for Adults (or whatever it is called) to be available everywhere, and to be done to a sufficiently high quality to last a long time. If that includes women-only group session or projects, that's fine by me as long as that is one element of an overall programme. Around here, I had to go 20 miles to find any Bikeability without engaging a private tutor, and that's because I happen to own a parking space affected by the Nottingham Workplace Parking Levy.

I'd also advocate for specific measures such as removing "crush hazards" where possible such as railings on road corners.

And I'd also advocate (and some won't like me making the argument) for measures to help cyclists not get ourselves killed. The data (CTC, 2012) shows that a significant proportion - 40% iirc - of cyclists killed on the roads are found to be the authors of their own destruction.

Ferdinand
kwackers
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by kwackers »

ferdinand wrote:And I'd also advocate (and some won't like me making the argument) for measures to help cyclists not get ourselves killed. The data (CTC, 2012) shows that a significant proportion - 40% iirc - of cyclists killed on the roads are found to be the authors of their own destruction.

Have you got a link to that? Last time I looked at data on the TRL website the numbers were considerably smaller - more in the order of 10% (iirc).
beardy
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by beardy »

40% iirc - of cyclists killed on the roads are found to be the authors of their own destruction.


I wonder if in any other aspect of life the blame would go to the person who fell foul of heavy machinery just for failing to act perfectly in its presence? Especially when the machinery was under the control of another.
nez
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by nez »

The trouble with moving the crush hazard is that pour drivers will be using the pavement add if it's part of the road. Look on sharp corners with no railings and you'll see the tyre marks on the slabs. Then where does that leave pedestrians?
nez
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by nez »

Poor... I'll have to give up tapatalk
Mike Sales
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Re: Are Female Cyclist more at risk

Post by Mike Sales »

ferdinand wrote:
And I'd also advocate (and some won't like me making the argument) for measures to help cyclists not get ourselves killed. The data (CTC, 2012) shows that a significant proportion - 40% iirc - of cyclists killed on the roads are found to be the authors of their own destruction.

Ferdinand


I certainly don't like the argument, and I don't agree with your data. Here are some reports of studies which show, roughly speaking, that three out of four bike car collisions are down to the driver. Sure cyclists make mistakes, but drivers make more.

A tiny proportion of accidents involving cyclists are caused by riders jumping red lights or stop signs, or failing to wear high-visibility clothing and use lights, a government-commissioned study has discovered.


he study, carried out for the Department for Transport, found that in 2% of cases where cyclists were seriously injured in collisions with other road users police said that the rider disobeying a stop sign or traffic light was a likely contributing factor. Wearing dark clothing at night was seen as a potential cause in about 2.5% of cases, and failure to use lights was mentioned 2% of the time.


With adult cyclists, police found the driver solely responsible in about 60%-75% of all cases, and riders solely at fault 17%-25% of the time.


http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/15/cycling-bike-accidents-study

Here is another.

The City of Westminster has revealed that more than two thirds of collisions between motor vehicles and cyclists within its boundaries in the past year that resulted in injury to the rider were due to some factor associated with the driver, compared to one in five cases where the cause was attributed to the rider. It has also disclosed that in three in five incidents involving a cyclist and a pedestrian, it’s the latter to whom responsibility is apportioned.


http://road.cc/content/news/83104-two-thirds-cyclist-injuries-following-collisions-motor-vehicle-due-driver-says

For variety here is one from Australia. It has a completely different method, and I don't think Aussies are too different from us.

Drivers were at fault in 87 per cent of incidents with cyclists and most did not realise they had behaved in a reckless or unsafe manner, according to the Monash University Accident Research Centre and The Amy Gillett Foundation.

The three-year study into cyclist safety on the roads used mounted video camera footage, as well as helmet-mounted cameras worn by cyclists, to determine the main causes of road accidents between cyclists and motorists.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/cars-to-blame-in-most-accidents-involving-bicycles-says-research-calling-for-new-passing-rules/story-e6frg6nf-1225958334292

I have more including one by the AA.

I think these studies show that there is most room for improvement in drivers' behaviour.

We cycle in a road environment which has been designed for motors, and to minimise their problems, but which pays little attention to our difficulties, and usually makes it harder for us to be safe. It is little wonder we sometimes get things wrong.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
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