Nuxx:37eae3f4-cb9f-4dd5-b419-99add2992aea@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <37eae3f4-cb9f-4dd5-b419-99add2992aea@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: The 85th Percentile Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 07:49:08 -0700 (PDT) Lines: 73 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.206.99 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1222613349 28095 127.0.0.1 (28 Sep 2008 14:49:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:49:09 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.206.99; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008091620 Firefox/3.0.2,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 5612 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:669391

("_": if you attempt to scupper any more threads of mine in the way that you have taken to doing recently, then I will start doing the same to all your threads *and* posts, except that it won't just be "Don't feed the troll", and I'll be unlikely to stop before you're way past the "heartily sick of it" mark. First and last warning.  If you really think I'm such an intolerable troll (i.e. you didn't post "Don't feed the troll" simply because you were showing off or trying to get a rise out of me), you won't want that to happen, will you? Imagine never being able to participate in a thread free of my messages again! It's a lying motorist-hating troll's worst nightmare (along with a world without cameras)!  So better stop this nonsense, eh?  Or if you don't believe that I'm going to keep to my word on this one, try me.  I'd rather not bother doing it (especially since any time spent dealing with you is completely wasted), but if I have to, I will.)

Do any of you camera-lovers actually have any basis for believing that the safest drivers *aren't* usually travelling at the 85th to 90th percentiles? To me, it seems awfully like yet another thing which you all *want* to be true, so you behave as if it is actually the case. After all, accepting the 85th %ile stuff means accepting that at least 85% of motorists are below the safe speed for the conditions, and it also means accepting that the vast majority of cameras are put in places and speed limits where they are set to fine people who are at the 85th %ile (i.e., on average, the safest drivers). It seems that you would much rather reject the "crash risk falls with speed until the 85th %ile" statement in favour of "crash risk rises with speed right from the 0th percentile until the 100th", despite the first statement having been supported by lots of research, and the second having been supported by nothing but the wishful thinking of camera supporters.

It's things like this which make me so convinced that you're all anti- motorist. *Any* time that there's a hypothesis or theory where accepting it would be in motorists' favour, you seem absolutely determined to believe (or purport to believe) that it's not true, even when you appear to have little or no evidence to support that stance. You just seem to *want* it not to be true, and you're apparently not remotely interested in any amount or quality of evidence or proof that it is actually true. In fact, many times you've attacked and launched hate campaigns against those who attempt to utter such evidence and proof, be it on here or further afield (e.g. the national media). That kind of behaviour would appear to be driven by something emotional rather than logical, and in this case, the "something emotional" is you badly wanting the pro-motorist theory/hypothesis/etc not to be true, as a result of not wanting motorists to get *anything* good.

No explanation for this behaviour, other than "You're anti-motorist", remotely stacks up. Therefore, what exactly am I (and other non- motorist-haters, commonly referred to as "trolls" round here) supposed to think but the "obvious" thing? No-one has even attempted to account in any other way for the unbelievable tirade of abuse towards the likes of Paul Smith. That kind of thing is not borne out of a scientific disagreement: it's borne out of emotion and nothing else, in this case the huge level of anger towards Paul for daring to speak the truth when you so desperately want something other than the truth to be the case. The archive of posts to this newsgroup provide ample, irrefutable evidence of this (in fact it's somewhat ironic that the trolls see this newsgroup as a resource in their clandestine fight against motorists, when all it really does is expose their anti- motorist agenda in the most emphatic and undeniable way).

If you all started to accept things such as the 85th %ile, instead of flaming anyone who even mentions them, and choosing to believe otherwise despite there being no evidence for doing so, you might actually begin to convince those outside this nest of vipers that you really are about road safety, and not just a bunch of lying motorist- haters. But as long as you continue to go about things in the thoroughly unscientific way that you have done to date, no-one will take you remotely seriously, and you'll be giving cyclists a bad name into the bargain. Is that what you want to continue to do? It's your call.