Skiing vs cycling

[Linford]

Yes everyone is entitled to an opinion but there does come a time when we would all be better off if they chose not to express it. Especially when it is just nonsense.

There always ca&d if you don't like it out here

 

[Linford]

[QUOTE 2851065, member: 45"]Did he bang his head?[/quote]
He hurt ribs and his leg. No idea about his head. Perhaps the lid turned it into a non event in that respect. ?.. do you wear a lid ?

 

[Linford]

Do you know, I don't you have come up with that straight answer yet. Cycling needs a helmet, ordinary everyday driving and walking don't. Why and what basis for your thinking? Are you going to think about this and attempt to answer properly or are you merely an irritant?

Because you as a cyclist may run out of talent, you may find yourself surrounded by drivers who disrespect your right to occupy your space on the road with them....or both. You are afforded some protection in a car , and as a pedestrian usually don't share your personal space with inconsiderate drivers who by and large don't treat your mode with contempt.

 

[Linford]

Are you missing the point or ignoring it? As a pedestrian and as a driver you can acquire a head injury, with a risk level that is not significantly different. You ignore the risks for those two though.

You mean that the risks are similar given the amount of time which each mode spends in the environment covering the billions of miles between major incidents or the amount of miles between incidents as I do consider that the stats are being misrepresented. A pedestrian has to spend 3 or 4 times as many hours in the road environment to be exposed to the same degree of risk as a cyclist is...if you consider the average speed of a pedestrian versus the average speed of a cyclist

 

[Linford]

You mean that you are clutching at straws in order to find some justification for an illogical stance.

That is the sum total of your assertion ?

 

[Linford]

I am sorry Linford but I really don't understand what you are trying to say here.

You call my assertion illogical without making any effort to explore it....that seems to me to be a bit too convenient.

Let me put it another way to simplify the assertion:-

25 Hours spent walking in a risky environment (walking on the road) = 100 miles walking @ 4mph
8.3 Hours spent cycling in a risky environment (cycling on the road)= 100 miles walking @ 12mph
or in other words you have to spend 3 times as long in hours exposed to the risk as a pedestrian on the road to be exposed to a similar degree per billion KM as a cyclist.

It doesn't get any simpler than that !

 

[swansonj]

I "know" that cycling is dangerous because I broke my leg doing it. That pretty well proves that cycling is dangerous, doesn't it, anything that results in broken bones sounds pretty dangerous to me.

Of course, I also broke my arm when walking once. But that doesn't count, does it, because slipping over on an icy pavement and breaking an arm is something that could happen to anyone, it's all part and parcel of everyday life, an unavoidable but low risk, an acceptable risk that we just put up with and no reasonable person would think it necessary to wear protective equipment to mitigate against.

But breaking a leg through ... err ... slipping over on an icy road ... that's clearly different to breaking an arm through slipping over on an icy road. There's no two ways about it, walking is clearly an everyday activity that needs no special safety equipment, cycling must be an abnormal pursuit, indulged in by abnormal people, with completely different risks.

 

[davefb]

err okay..

I do find it weird the news is generally talking about 'offpiste' for schumacher then rambling about him having to take risks ... it really isn't (as currently reported), it's non groomed between marked pistes on I thought a fairly open area? ( okay its ten years since i've been there..) .. from later reports, he'd stopped, set off again , caught a rock, smacked his head.

as for the helmet,, I used to ski that area (trois vallees) fairly often , well maybe about 4 holidays ( we knew some friends who had a chalet).. sometimes we'd ask "do people have helmets", generally, boarders did ( more likely to smack their heads) , skiiers didn't bother, unless going really off piste or were 'good' ( ie faster than us and doing more extreme stuff)
on our last trip, their advice had changed, our friends had started wearing helmets, because there'd been two deaths, iirc both had been 'on easy slopes'..

lets face it, we only went once a year, so we didnt buy them... apart from one lad, he tried one day to get one in courcheval, couldn't get one in his size so gave up... went out boarding... he fell, we think he'd been concussed ( head slap onto snow)... he went to the next town next day to get a helmet....

 

[Linford]

Yes, that is understood. Taking all that into account, ordinary everyday walking and ordinary everyday driving carry risks of acquiring head injuries that are not that dissimilar from the risk in cycling. You discount the risks some of the time and play them up others.

There is risk in everything we do...life is risk, however you need to prove to me that my assertion is flawed as I am not buying your side at the moment.

Here are the EU stats on the different modes. Now it doesn't quite work out to 3 times, but cyclists are more than twice as likely to be seen in the stats as pedestrians, and 5 times as likely as a car driver...which kinds of blows your 'cycling is as safe as houses,we are all experiencing the same risks as everyone else' mantra out of the water. Notable is how exposed motorcyclists are to the risk, but very much less money is spent on the infrastructure for helping to improve motorcyclists safety than cyclists. Motorbikes can't even use bus lanes in most places.

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_...ristics_where_and_how/data_considerations.htm

 

[Linford]

Once again, you have things arse about face. I am not claiming that cycling is safe. I am claiming that it is not significantly more dangerous than walking or driving.
If the figures you quote are accurate, then a relative level of risk within one order of magnitude bears this out. The cliff edge decision that one activity requires a helmet and the other two don't is not justifiable on this basis.

Sorry, you need to clarify this with some numbers as your assertion is coming across as incoherent. They are not my figures, I just googled for them, and they were top of the list..follow the link. They are from the EU commission in the road safety section on cycling and walking.

 

[davefb]

'walking'..
won't most of those pedestrians be being killed during interaction with roads, ie cars hit them ?
Just saying.... same with the cycling, most cycle deaths will be interaction with roads not the actual 'pursuit'...

 

[Linford]

Oh yes, thanks @davefb for reminding us that this thread was originally about skiing vs cycling!

I wonder if you clicked on srw's original link and read the NYT article? (I have to declare here that I have never been skiing, so all I can do is refer to that article and others about Schumacher's accident, as well as drawing on what I know about traumatic brain injuries through my work.) The article is pretty definite about the fact that skiing helmets offer little or no protection against concussion, closed head injuries, traumatic brain injuries, or rotational neck/brain injuries (although the last one seems more speculative than the others). They offer some protection against scalp lacerations and skull fractures, but these are not brain injuries and are less likely to be serious or life-threatening. The 'perception of risk' factor seems to be crucial in that, among a certain population who are already risk-seekers, wearing a helmet might be leading them to be more reckless with regard to their own safety. That applies to other realms of behaviour and other alleged safety equipment as well of course.

The article's summing-up is interesting:
"Seventy percent of snow-sports fatalities involve men in their late teens to late 30s, according to the ski area association. That is the same population that most often engages in high-risk behaviors like driving fast. Head injuries remain the leading cause of deaths in skiing and snowboarding, Shealy said, with about 30 in the United States each year.
“The helmet does a very good job at protecting against skull lacerations and skull fractures, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect on concussions or T.B.I.’s,” Shealy said, referring to traumatic brain injuries. “Our guess is that this is due to the fact that those injuries are occurring at such a high magnitude of energy that they overwhelm what a helmet can do for you.”

So going by this if believed to be 100% true, isn't a fractured skull something worth mitigating against as well as a brain injury in the first instance ?

 

[Linford]

Why do you choose not to do so when walking and driving?

Already been there Adrian http://www.cyclechat.net/threads/skiing-vs-cycling.146520/post-2850441

Any chance of answering this one ? http://www.cyclechat.net/threads/skiing-vs-cycling.146520/post-2851396

 

[PK99]

You call my assertion illogical without making any effort to explore it....that seems to me to be a bit too convenient.

Let me put it another way to simplify the assertion:-

25 Hours spent walking in a risky environment (walking on the road) = 100 miles walking @ 4mph
8.3 Hours spent cycling in a risky environment (cycling on the road)= 100 miles walking @ 12mph
or in other words you have to spend 3 times as long in hours exposed to the risk as a pedestrian on the road to be exposed to a similar degree per billion KM as a cyclist.

It doesn't get any simpler than that !

Such population level comparisons are meaningless in assessing or comparing the risk faced by individuals.
eg an Oxford study found that ~30% of injured pedestrians admitted at the john Radcliffe has a blood alcohol concentration above the drink drive limit, a Scottish study found ~ 30% of pedestrian casualties had consumed alcohol, 5% drivers, 9% passengers
Pedestrian data include slips and trips on the pavement by elderly folk.
Failure to use, or use correctly, crossing facilities regularly show up in studies as significant factors

Whereas I'm interested in the comparable risk to me cycling or walking in town in the middle of a normal day
age 58
No alcohol consumption
Cross at designated crossings when available
Cycle assertively/defensively

Such data are not available but i do know that, for me, as a pedestrian the risks imposed on me as an individual by vehicles are much smaller than the population averages quoted, but that the risks imposed on me by vehicles when cycling are likely to be much closer to the population averages.

 

[swansonj]

Please bear in mind also, when looking at the figures which, as Adrian rightly points out, already show that the risks of cycling are actually pretty close to those for walking, that in at least some versions of these figures, pedestrians who injure or kill themselves without interaction with a motor vehicle are not included in these figures as they are not deemed "road" related, whereas cyclists who injure or kill themselves without interaction with a motor vehicle are included. This may not make a great deal of difference to the figures for fatalities, but it certainly would make a difference to the figures for serious injuries which are also available, meaning that on a proper like-for-like comparison, whatever gap does exist between cyclists and pedestrians would be even smaller.