Loz

LadyDeliah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What if drivers took responsibility for their > actions for once? What if cyclists did? They seem to want no rules applied to them. I note davidk's comment, "The rules on the highway are designed to restrict the movement of heavy and dangerous vehicles, not cyclists." Although this seems to be the attitude of may cyclists, it is patently wrong. The highway code specifically points out it applies to ALL users of the road.

LadyDeliah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Pedestrian deaths are nothing to do with cycle safety ... BREAKING NEWS: Scientists today discovered that the world does not revolve around cyclists. More in the main bulletin...

Trolling, done well, is an art form. Sadly, it is rarely done well and the word 'troll' is now rather extensively misused.

Nice find, Taper. Not entirely different to what I calculated, though I only did for deaths and for one year. Nice to see soemone has backed my back-of-a-fag-packet casualty calc with a bit more research. I used 2007 as another (pro-cycling poster) had quoted that year and with those concluded that cyclists were about 1.6 times as lethal per mile travelled as cars/vans. I'm not too surprised that, when you took a wider view as Taper's figures did, it came out more as parity between the modes of transport. But, as more cyclists take to the road, the figure for cycling is rising. Anyway... my calculation, as promised to davidk. In 2007, 6 pedestrians died as a result of colliding with a cycle. 275 died by being hit by a car/van. Sounds one-sided, but what this fails to take into account is the difference between the number of miles travelled by cars/vans/cycles. If you don't take this into account you can come to bizarre conclusions like the Ford Focus is thousands of times more dangerous than a Hummer, or even drunk drivers are safer than sober drivers. I can't find the 2007 'miles travelled per transport mode' figures to match year to year, but I have found the 2010 figures. But, as cycling is getting more popular, that probably helps the cyclists case. These show that car and light van traffic made up 285.6 billion miles travelled and cycles made up 3.1 billion miles that year. Simple maths show that on a per mile travelled basis, cyclists are roughly twice as deadly (2.98:6 actually) to pedestrians than cars and vans. Ah, I hear you say: but a lot of car/van mileage is on motorways, etc, where the chances of hitting a pedestrian is pretty small. Well, about 20% of traffic is motorway traffic, so even if you knock that off the car/van figures, you still have car/van pedestrian deaths at 3.73 for every 6 cycle caused deaths. So, at the moment, cyclist are only 'markedly less of a danger' to pedestrians because, like Hummers, there are less of them and they don't get used as much. But actually, by standardising on a per mile travelled basis, cycles are relatively more deadly to pedestrians than cars/vans.

El Pibe Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > is that 3 billion people who can't read it in English or their own language? > World adult literacy level is around 85%, youth literacy higher than that. > I suppose there's a certain percentage under the age of 5, do they count? > > aaagh, sorry with the pedantry, i agree with the sentiment underlined by unsubstantiated > figures.... Good point - I posted before checking the figures. Wiki says 84.1% of 15 years olds and over are literate. I've found a range of figures as regards world English literacy between 20% and 25%. So, neither seems to match.

LadyDeliah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Injuries and deaths to pedestrians per mile driven > is not particularly useful because huge amount of > miles are clocked up on motorways and other roads > where pedestrians are excluded. They are more useful than trying to compare absolute numbers when the number of cars and cycles on the road are so vastly different. Davidk - I'll dig them out in a bit.

I think this neatly puts things into perspective... http://s.quickmeme.com/img/a0/a0f901885f243a93fa41705f0b1e7ab6ad7aa4910a9ac54e6b0ca5593ccfee16.png

It is indeed a community sharing website - and when people share stuff like 'people dressed as clowns in ED abducting children in broad daylight' (as has been 'shared' in the past) then people will take the piss. Not a big surprise, really. But, if you are right (and that's BIG if), look at it this way - a professional burglar has told you your home security is crap. Think of those stickers as being a bit of free consulting from an expert. Do something about it.

Do I need to dig those stats I did showing cyclists are at least just as lethal to pedestrians as cars/vans per mile driven/cycled? Otherwise you could argue that white HGVs driven by women with nose piercings are safer than bicycles to pedestrians.

Is there usually crap on the floor in Clapham as well? I never knew that.

DaveR Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > "approximately 40 homes with on-site affordable housing" AKA - a shed.

I've given this a lot of thought and I think I have a solution. It's a bit complex, but I think it covers most situations.

Definitely the business section, IF you are East Dulwich based. Otherwise, I suspect it's and advertisement and should be deleted.

Millhaven Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I just conducted a reconstruction of Friday's > diabolical EDT incident in the staff loo here at > work. For the sake of decency I only *pretended* > to take a dump on the toilet floor. I can't be the only one here hoping this story would end, "... and someone walked in on me."

> My initial thought is what a shame some of the site couldnt be used to extend the Dulwich Leisure Centre. That would involve the council purchasing the land and building the extension, wouldn't it? Maybe a local Councillor could make such a thing happen?

There seems to be a lot of reasonable, sensible, intelligent cyclists on here that understand safety. And there's davidk. ETA - fixed as per below. He might be unreasonable 99.9% of the time, but he can recognise his own moniker spelt incorrectly.

Hmmm. In this digital age, are they going to SMS/email addresses to each other (maybe in coded form for protection from later investigations) or are the going to play hunt the tiny sticker all around the neighbourhood? As for the chalk marks, anyone would think the Mail had run out of stories and had started recycling them. Four years would normally be a same time, had the internet not been invented. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/03/burglars-code-chalk-marks-wall

PeckhamRose Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > But a helmet does not save a head that is going to smash on a road. It's a bit of plastic. They don't do > much for motorcyclists either. They're actually built the wrong way in, the hard bit should be touching the > skull; the soft bit on the outside. Hmm - all those helmet making experts are wrong? As I said in another thread, I am on my second (similarly constructed) snowboard helmet and I have a pretty good idea what would have happened to my skull had I not been wearing the first, now rather broken, one. Catching a back edge at 40-odd kmh and being slammed into the icy piste, I certainly wouldn't have stood up, albeit rather dazed, and went home. Helmets are made to disperse force, not pad the head, like a martial arts expert slaps the floor hard with their hand when they are thrown. It's similar to the old 'how to drop an egg off the roof' experiment. Wrap it lots of soft bubble wrap - broken egg. Give it a harder force dispersing crumple zone, like a cone of paper, pointy end first, and you have a chance of saving the egg. > What about all the pedestrians who have been killed. And dare we suggest that in SOME cases > Some people who ride bicycles / pedestrians / others who die in road accidents were to blame? Just because you come out worst in an incident, PR, doesn't mean you aren't possibly responsible for the incident happening. If I run out onto the road without looking, then I would be the one to blame for my own demise.

> But someone did it. And did it without getting rumbled. Which being a Friday night and a busy > session can only mean the villian had help. Or was really really lucky. ... or can curl one out really quickly...

Sue Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Well, we've got no idea why this particular person scratched these cars, unless somebody posting on > here knows otherwise. Unless it was an accident, I don't frankly care why the little scrote scratched the cars. He needs to be punished and/or treated/helped and/or make retributions. If he has problems at home, then at the very least he needs to be sent around to the victims and apologise and see if they are willing to accept it. I know it is a little reductio ad absurdum, but would you be willing to give him the same leeway if he'd raped someone?

peckhambog Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Separately, is anyone interested on my take on > helmets, or is that a separate thread? Personally, I think it's a no-brainer (all puns intended). But apparently there is some research that says wearing a helmet makes you act/ride like more of a dick, so the anti-helmet brigade somehow cling to that. The other (rather poor) argument is that if you make people wear a helmet, they might not cycle so much. They might not get as many head injuries and/or die either, but hey! at least they are dying on a bike. Skiing/snowboarding had a similar debate. The no-helmets argument held sway for a while, but common sense reined and these days helmets are more usual than not. Having smashed my first helmet, I can rather see their value. Personally, I'd like to se helmets mandated on a slope. This will probably happen informally as insurance companies are just starting to put it in the fine print.

Whilst it is nice if people offer, if they don't ASK nicely. You will almost certainly get a friendly response. Besides, in winter, with all the extra coats being worn, the dreaded fat/pregnant question becomes even harder.

ED - NAGAIUTB Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I guess the staff of the EDT don't deserve your protection, lowly > bar types that they are... Because moaning "oooh that's disgusting" about it on the local forum is such a brilliant way to protect the local bar staff. Since that was such a success, let's moan about Syria for a while. We could have the whole situation sorted out by Tuesday.

green ranger Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > When??? Is some action going to be taken against all the maniac drivers blithely ignoring 20 mph > speed limits? > > How many more pedestrians and cyclists have to be seriously injured before some tough action is > taken to crack down on these driver louts? It will probably never happen. Why? Because the number of speeding drivers on any one side street is not enough to warrant the time and effort to stop them. If they are lucky, they might catch one or two an hour at a speed check point. If there was a high number of incidents at a particular place then I'm sure something would be done. But it is too spread out.

Not too relevant in an architecture piece, though, is it?