Safe Speed Forums

I think you've misread what Paul said:



notice that bold bit? So he's said that cyclists are very safe but wvm is safer still. How does that demonise cyclists?

Would you prefer to be killed by a cyclist than a white van?

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I think B Cyclist would like an answer to his/her question ...

to which I will add my request:
How many people have been killed by a cyclist in the last 4 years.

[edit]
I'll clarify that ... killed by a white van man or cyclist through their respective modes of transport, not just killed in general. I mean, just because a murderer used a getaway bike rather than a car you wouldn't give them an easier time. Although there was a humorous passage in the Ben Elton book 'Gridlock' about hazard lights (or 'do anything lights') being used as a defence in bank robbery criminal cases
[/edit]

_________________
COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

It's on the front page of this thread...


johnsher, people don't always read ALL the words in a PR, and quite often there are words in PRs that could be taken to be a bit 'weaselly'...

Given the way that the media use PRs and the way that the public 'hear' the media, PRs should be very carefully worded so that they cannot be read in different ways.

Unless of course, that is what is wanted...

There are no 'weaselly' words in Safe Speed PRs. There's simply no need - we can win the arguments on bare facts and logic.

As I wrote earlier, responsibility stops once ambiguity has been removed.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

So can we get an answer to
"how many people have been killed by white van drivers [driving their vans] in the last 4 years" please?

_________________
COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

and to put it back into context you need to know the number of vans and their annual miles and then compare that to the number of bikes and their annual miles - which I believe is what Paul has already done for us.

This: http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 041147.pdf has it as 39 in 2004. But I'm not sure that it doesn't include non-pedestrian fatalities.

The real figures should be here:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... =14459&l=4
but I'm not sure it is - if it is, I can't find it right now.

edited to add - Oh, sorry, that's just ONE year. The DfT removes earlier data for some reason. I have just issued an FoI to have earlier years' data republished.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Surely the risk is actually the number of pedestrians overall and the number killed by each method. If there is any relevance to miles travelled it is for the pedestrian, not the vehicle that hits the pedestrian.

We'll be back to apples and oranges in a minute.

Or let's try tigers and stairs. Stairs kill far more people in a year, but tigers are more dangerous.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

More people (worldwide) die in revolving door accidents than are killed by sharks each year. FACT. Apparently Spielberg felt that 'Doors' wouldn't make such a good movie.

obfuscation obfuscation obfuscation

_________________
COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

obfuscation? I don't think so!

risk of death * exposure to risk = deaths.

Looks pretty basic to me.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Going on from the phone mast idea - we could say that vehicle occupants(and drivers) are at greater risk of cancer from radar emmisions from Gatso's

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Or could we just spread the rumour that Gatsos cause cancer?

You are looking at the van driver's chance of killing a pedestrian over miles travelled compared with a cyclist's chance of killing a pedestrian over miles travelled.

I am looking at the pedestrians chance of being killed by a van compared with the chance of being killed by a cyclist.

These are very different statistics, and they will show that a pedestrian has more chance of being killed by a van than by a cycle.

Or is that not what the figures are showing? I'm confused!

Yes, I think that's what the figures are showing and you're right that there are two different measures. Both are important to a wide scheme of risk management.

BUT - and this is where we came in - a training initiative can only plan to change the 'risk posed' figure, so it was the correct figure to use in the original context.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

And this is what was in the PR:

"White van man poses less risk to pedestrians than even cyclists"

So it's the risk to the pedestrian that is the important figure, and that is greater for a van than a cyclist.

Nope. I'm talking about risk given (= posed) you're talking about risk received (which is affected by exposure).

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Well, your sentence can be read both ways.

Try it.

I agree that's not a good way of comparing the relative risk posed to pedestrians by vans and cyclists in the same way as comparing the safety of air travel to trains/cars/buses by reference to deaths per million passenger miles is not a good comparison. A better way, in both cases, would be to use time based measures - pedestrian deaths per van/cycle hour travelled and similarly passenger deaths per aircraft/train/car/bus hour travelled.

However, it's still fair to make the comparison between like modes of transport so the WVM risk is still less than cars/buses on a true like for like comparison.