Nuxx:C98c7d72-8dd8-4d83-8f42-1b01a84aba5b@j9g2000prj.googlegroups.com

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!j9g2000prj.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: How can the roads be made safer for cyclists? BBC R4 12 middday Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:12:16 -0700 (PDT) References: <209411a7-c43a-47e7-aaed-6cc6ce190724@b13g2000prf.googlegroups.com> Lines: 49 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.71.49.124 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1303229537 15009 127.0.0.1 (19 Apr 2011 16:12:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:12:17 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: j9g2000prj.googlegroups.com; posting-host=82.71.49.124; posting-account=WrLs9woAAAD151hWKA9yknAtxFHW4kE4 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.16) Gecko/20110319 Firefox/3.6.16,gzip(gfe) Bytes: 4049 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:806824

On Apr 19, 10:10=A0am, Squashme  wrote: > How can we make our roads safer for cyclists?

I think that Guyana Chaddington, Road Safety Expert with the Biased Helmet Research Foundation, has the right idea here. We make the roads safer for cyclists by putting in more and more speed cameras and recommending that cyclists don't use helmets. It's true that cameras won't actually make things safer for cyclists directly (in fact, they make things more dangerous by distracting drivers from the important safety factors), but what they will do is force drivers out of their cars (and onto their bikes) by banning them and making driving ever more difficult and unpleasant. The resulting fall in the number of cars on the road will eventually make things safer for cyclists, even if they become temporarily more dangerous. A few deaths is fine if those deaths are eventually balanced out, and I'm sure the families of the deceased would agree. If the deaths are in a good cause then there's no problem.

Of course, it's the same "logic" with helmets: saying it's not necessary to wear a helmet makes things more dangerous by increasing the likelihood of head injuries, but it also makes cycling more attractive, which once again means that we'll eventually get more people cycling and therefore fewer killer cagers. With both helmets and speed cameras, the plan is simple but effective: tell lies about road safety, kill people in the short term by telling those lies, but in the longer term, more lives will be saved than lost thanks to the reduction in car journeys that the lies will bring about.

In the end it's just a simple numbers game: a mother would be happier at hearing that her own child had died, but two other people who she didn't know had had their lives saved, then she would at hearing that her child had had their life saved but the two other people had died. Any mother would choose the first scenario over the second, and cameras and anti-helmet propaganda allow her to have that: they allow her to sacrifice her child in the short term, so that the two random people who she doesn't know can have their lives saved in the longer term, thanks to there eventually being fewer killer cagers zooming around in their tons of metal.

(PS: the bit about the eventual reduction in car journeys and the consequent saving of lives contains a load of unverified assumptions, e.g. that every car journey can and will be readily replaced by a combination of cycling and public transport, but we'll worry about that when we come to it, i.e. after we've already had all the thousands of short-term deaths caused by speed cameras and the lack of helmet use.)

Apologies to Mr Chaddington for stealing his excellent ideas but I'm sure he won't mind them being promoted.