walking more dangerous than cycling?

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mrjemm
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by mrjemm »

Being diverted as ever here... but it has confused me in the past, when driving and wanting to go south (to Merlin perhaps) and facing the markings on the ground, one lane saying M65, and another saying M6S... Takes more than a glance, and knowing where the spaghetti of motorways around there go!
Bicycler
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by Bicycler »

I sympathise, I do. I wondered why everybody from further north had suddenly started getting lost after I'd given them directions to just get off at the A6 junction. Turned out they signed it "M65" and removed all mention of the road the junction is actually with :roll:

Back on topic(ish), another common feature of not quite motorway a-roads is a lack of any pedestrian pavements or facilities despite them being entitled to use the road. Should adding paths (probably shared use) be a priority for these roads?
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by [XAP]Bob »

Cunobelin wrote:
TonyR wrote:
Cunobelin wrote:According to most of the literature cycling and walking come up at about the same risk, or with cycling being slightly less dangerous.


You need to be wary of those figures. The official statistics in the UK are limited to accidents involving a vehicle. So a cyclist or pedestrian hit by a car would both be included but a cyclist falling off their bike would while a pedestrian tripping over would not. If you look at what data there is on ksi from pedestrian trips and falls on the highway its about six times the ksi from being hit by a motor vehicle. So overall that makes cycling a lot safer per km than walking by about a factor six.


That is why I used the word "most". If you measure by distance or by time then the figures can change dramatically by changing the parameter.


Absolutely - there is a difference between walking/cycling as a transport choice (fixed distance) and a leisure choice (probably fixed time)...
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
TonyR
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by TonyR »

Cunobelin wrote:
TonyR wrote:
Cunobelin wrote:According to most of the literature cycling and walking come up at about the same risk, or with cycling being slightly less dangerous.


You need to be wary of those figures. The official statistics in the UK are limited to accidents involving a vehicle. So a cyclist or pedestrian hit by a car would both be included but a cyclist falling off their bike would while a pedestrian tripping over would not. If you look at what data there is on ksi from pedestrian trips and falls on the highway its about six times the ksi from being hit by a motor vehicle. So overall that makes cycling a lot safer per km than walking by about a factor six.


That is why I used the word "most". If you measure by distance or by time then the figures can change dramatically by changing the parameter.


Not by that much. If you look at the average speed of pedestrians and cyclists from the national statistics there is not a six fold difference. So on a time basis its a little safer for pedestrians but still much less safe than cycling.
Malaconotus
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by Malaconotus »

Bicycler wrote:Well it's an American term (and not a particularly old one). Obviously they have laws on the subject which we don't. It's not a phrase I like to hear, firstly because people then get the impression that we do have such a law restricting where people may cross roads but mainly because I think it encourages a dismissive/hostile attitude to the most vulnerable on our roads.


Jaywalking as a phrase is pretty much exactly 100 years old. It was conscious and deliberate propaganda from the fledgling US motor industry as documented here... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26073797
Bicycler
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by Bicycler »

Brilliant. Thanks.

For some reason this sounded strangely familiar
A key moment, says Norton, was a petition signed by 42,000 people in Cincinnati in 1923 to limit the speed of cars mechanically to 25mph (40kph). Though the petition failed, an alarmed auto industry scrambled to shift the blame for pedestrian casualties from drivers to walkers.
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Cunobelin
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by Cunobelin »

Now we have:

Image

Image
Ellieb
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by Ellieb »

I always treat the stats with a huge amount of scepticism. For a start, if you roll out of the pub drunk and fall under a passing bus then you end up as a pedestrian stat, but your mileage is minimal (& won't count in any case). Have a look at how many pedestrian KSI's occur after pub closing time.
iviehoff
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by iviehoff »

Cunobelin wrote:That is why I used the word "most". If you measure by distance or by time then the figures can change dramatically by changing the parameter.

Given that we usually choose modes of transport in part having regard to the distance of the journey, per hour is usually a more sensible measure to compare the risk of different modes of transport than per km. At the extreme, eg aeroplane vs walking, it makes no sense to compare it per km.

When I last looked at some bike/ped stats, which were the ones collated on the CTC website itself over a 10 year period, I thought that peds came out slightly safer per hour. Though as has been pointed out, ped's solo accidents aren't counted as road accidents.

But another factor to be taken into account is that a lot of ped accidents occur while intoxicated, and are really risks of intoxication rather than the mode of locomotion.
axel_knutt
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by axel_knutt »

Bicycler wrote:Fundamental rule: If they can't take in all the necessary information as they are travelling along they are either travelling too fast for the conditions or they are incapable of operating their machines to an acceptable standard. Accordingly they need to either slow down or stop driving dangerous machinery.


The issue has absolutely nothing to do with speed, it's about the inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. When peoples attention has been captured by one hazard (eg: a child that looks as if he's about to run into the road), then they are very unlikely to spot another hazard (a car about to pull out, perhaps). The more things there are competing for attention the higher the risk that one will go unnoticed.

For example, if someone is checking in at a hotel reception it's possible to switch the receptionist for another person, and up to 70% of people won't notice the switch if they're sufficiently preoccupied with the registration. There are numerous similar psychological experiments that illustrate this effect, type selective attention test into google or you tube.

There was the case of a policeman who was prosecuted for perjury because he denied seeing two other police beating up a suspect. In fact he wasn't lying, he just hadn't noticed because he was preoccupied with the suspect he was chasing.
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Bicycler
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by Bicycler »

Are we into "did you spot the gorilla" territory? I never get those videos as I always see the thing i'm not meant to.

Speed has to be a factor as it increases the number of things which need to be considered. At double the speed you are going to have to be considering hazards more than twice as far away which means there is more chance of that situation occurring. At a higher speed there is also less time to consider each hazard which must increase the likelihood of one factor being considered at the expense of another. If speed is irrelevant we should be able to see this effect as frequently when cycling or walking (and we don't get too many pedestrians ending up in roadside ditches because they were distracted).

For all that, I do accept you are talking about a legitimate effect. The problem is where this puts us. Are road casualties to be accepted as an inevitability? Should we hazards be removed from the roads? Or is it simply not safe for humans to drive motor cars?
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by [XAP]Bob »

iviehoff wrote:
Cunobelin wrote:That is why I used the word "most". If you measure by distance or by time then the figures can change dramatically by changing the parameter.

Given that we usually choose modes of transport in part having regard to the distance of the journey, per hour is usually a more sensible measure to compare the risk of different modes of transport than per km. At the extreme, eg aeroplane vs walking, it makes no sense to compare it per km.

When I last looked at some bike/ped stats, which were the ones collated on the CTC website itself over a 10 year period, I thought that peds came out slightly safer per hour. Though as has been pointed out, ped's solo accidents aren't counted as road accidents.

But another factor to be taken into account is that a lot of ped accidents occur while intoxicated, and are really risks of intoxication rather than the mode of locomotion.

For transport per hour is not an appropriate measure. I don't cycle "15 minutes" to go to work, I cycle 5 miles.
I don't cycle 4 minutes to the shop, I cycle a mile.

If I walked I would cover the same distance, but in a different time.


For leisure I normally have "an hour" to spend, I might do 15-20 miles by cycle, or 3-4 on foot.

So: for transport use /mile; for leisure use /hour.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
TonyR
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by TonyR »

Ellieb wrote:I always treat the stats with a huge amount of scepticism. For a start, if you roll out of the pub drunk and fall under a passing bus then you end up as a pedestrian stat, but your mileage is minimal (& won't count in any case). Have a look at how many pedestrian KSI's occur after pub closing time.


Have a look at how many cyclists too. For 2011 the percentages of fatally injured cyclists and pedestrians over the drink drive limit were 19% and 37% respectively. Age profile differences don't help remove the gap either.

Be sceptical of stats for sure - there are a lot of poor ones out there - but if you are going to dismiss them at least present some evidential base to your assertions, not a general hand waving dismissal. Otherwise you start to fall into the tobacco company stats dismissal camp.
skicat
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by skicat »

Bicycler wrote:Are we into "did you spot the gorilla" territory? I never get those videos as I always see the thing i'm not meant to.

Isn't it the participants throwing the ball who are being tested in that experiment? Because they are concentrating so hard on their task, they miss the gorilla. As someone casually watching the video, you are not as engaged and therefore you would be expected to see it.
The hurrier I go, the behinder I get
Bicycler
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Re: walking more dangerous than cycling?

Post by Bicycler »

skicat wrote:
Bicycler wrote:Are we into "did you spot the gorilla" territory? I never get those videos as I always see the thing i'm not meant to.

Isn't it the participants throwing the ball who are being tested in that experiment? Because they are concentrating so hard on their task, they miss the gorilla. As someone casually watching the video, you are not as engaged and therefore you would be expected to see it.

I had a big moment of doubt when I read this, but no it's definitely the viewer being tested: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gori ... iment.html
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