Nuxx:MPG.271146b258ffa5df989811@news.zen.co.uk

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!goblin3!goblin.stu.neva.ru!nntp-feed.chiark.greenend.org.uk!ewrotcd!feeds.news.ox.ac.uk!news.ox.ac.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!shaftesbury.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling,uk.rec.driving Subject: Is It Ever OK to Tell Lies about Road Safety? Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2010 14:40:50 +0100 Lines: 58 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: MicroPlanet-Gravity/2.9.14 Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: 894814b2.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=n;b7OMHYDe]>i\PY=[Td;Vnok4Z\<mH4YhDU:2=XKPkXIkoQHn2kY<YEn<S9LLeaZ]6R0]a?QD^kP X-Complaints-To: abuse@zen.co.uk Bytes: 4406 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:782203

So it's well established by now that some people on uk.rec.cycling say things about road safety that they know (or at least suspect) aren't really true, the "reasoning" behind that approach being that telling those lies leads to us having measures that encourage cycling and/or discourage motoring, and doing that saves so many lives that its worth lying, even if that lie costs some (but fewer) lives in itself.

Prominent examples of this include:

- Cycle helmets: "If I tell lies about helmets and pretend that they don't save lives, and convince others of this through my lies, then it is less likely that helmets will become compulsory. Not having the inconvenience of helmet compulsion will encourage more people to cycle (and therefore fewer people to drive), and this will save far more lives than the helmets themselves would.  Therefore pretending that helmets don't save lives when they do is beneficial to society."

- Speed cameras: "If I tell lies about cameras and pretend that they save lives when they don't (and they probably actually kill people), and convince others of this through my lies, then it is more likely that we will have more cameras. The more cameras we have, the more people will stop driving (and maybe start cycling instead), because cameras (together with very low speed limits) make things so unpleasant for motorists.  This modal shift will save more lives than those that are lost by having the cameras.  Therefore pretending that cameras save lives when they arguably cost lives (and at the very least are frequently used instead of genuine life-saving measures) is beneficial to society."

The question is, is it OK to lie about road safety if you genuinely believe that doing so will have a net benefit to society in the way described? I firmly believe that it isn't, but clearly some people think it is, otherwise they wouldn't do it. I don't think people should be "playing God" like this, deciding who gets to live and who dies. Would the family of someone killed by not having a helmet (having swallowed the anti-helmet propaganda) be OK with being told "It's all right, his death is in a good cause as 1.8 other people who would have died will now not die due to the lies we've told your son"?

And anyway, where do these people get their figures from? The truth is that they can't be anywhere near 100% sure just how many lives (if any) would really be saved by modal shift from cars to bicycles...any conclusions are going to be highly speculative at best. I don't think people should be telling lies about a life-and-death subject like road safety when they don't even have any proper proof that those lies really will do any good whatsoever. I think there's a lot of wishful thinking involved here: these people want everyone out of their cars and on their bikes for all sorts of "reasons", and I think the "modal shift would save x lives a year" thing is just tacked on in an attempt to justify telling lies which will result in deaths.

Telling lies about road safety is not OK, and those who continually do it (we all know who they are by now) ought to hang their heads in shame. It is incompatible with being a responsible, decent member of society, which I'm sure a lot of these people see themselves as. If they do then they really should stop kidding themselves that propagating lies about something so important is in any way acceptable. It's time it stopped please.