Dad stops kid from crashing bike into parked car (+ link to video)

Well, that was a stupid goal to give away...

#WBAMUN

300. THIS IS SPARTA!!!!!

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It's because he's a moron.

As said below, I am 'pro helmet's, well I wear one and it helped me in a collision. Rich doesn't even need to make an argument; people have choice and can make a judgement. The bigger pictures are:

1. The focus on helmets takes away from the piss poor infrastructure and driving standards

2. Rich's understanding of data is laughable!

Okay, can we all get together like reasonable adults and agree on just ONE thing?

The person who makes the 500th post wins.

I think Rich conceded he is wrong which suggests we won't hit the 500 post mark, shame that.

As an aside, I think disc brakes should be made mandatory...

You've just said you don't have a statistically valid sample, what is there to critique?

Come on, just 150 more comments and we're there.

No

I shall not be involved in this

What would you say to a cup?

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I refuse to be drawn into commenting just for the sake of it.

Here we go...

OMG is this still going??? - 349 comments and counting...

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The Case of Crown vs Brick Wall

The Charge: Gross negligence of personal safety and endangerment to motorised traffic

The Accused: Any cyclist who chooses not to wear a helmet, or argues that other cyclists should be free to choose – Since there’s not enough room for them all, we’ll put BTBS in the dock as the most helmet-sceptical of the road.cc commenters.   

The Judge: The Hon. Mr. Rich_cb

The Jury: 12 good Rich_cb’s and true

Counsel for the prosecution: Rich_cb QC

The prosecution expert witnesses:  Rich_cb, Rich_cb & Rich_cb

The defence team: davel, ClubSmed, BlueBug, alansmurphy etc. etc.

The hecklers in the public gallery: hawkinspeter and Don Simon (are there any more circular argument gifs left out in the interweb?)

Evidence so far submitted do the court:

Exhibit A. Percentage cycle helmet wear on UK major roads (1994 - 2008) 

Exhibit B. Cyclist & Pedestrian deaths per million km (1980 - 2008)

Exhibit C. Some other graph to do with head injury rates that got wheeled out that I can’t be arsed to hunt down in the hundreds of posts.

Exhibits D to W: Various charts showing a correlation between cyclist deaths/casualties and miscellaneous other statistics (mobile phone use, LED lighting, age of Miss America, sharks, ice cream) -- all ruled as inadmissible by the judge presiding (Yawn!)

Transcript of the case arguments thus far: Read through the 350 or so post prior to this one, or, look for the abridged version by ClubSmed in the low 300s.

But let’s go back to the opening statements for the defence and prosecution (my emphasis):

Rich_cb wrote:

davel wrote:

You're the one with the hypothesis as follows:

Cyclist death rates fell.

Helmet usage rose.

Therefore, helmet usage causes a reduction in cyclist deaths.

The burden of proof is all yours, dear; I don't have to prove a thing. You're getting very unscientific in your complaints. 

As has been said - your hypothesis might be entirely correct. But you're sure as shit not proving it via those pictures you keep wheeling out.

Yawn. The graphs show a clear correlation between increasing helmet usage and decreasing cyclist fatalities.

 

That's evidence.

 

In this context it's likely to be the highest quality evidence available for the period in question.

 

The onus is now on you to provide evidence to the contrary. You never have.

This argument is central to the prosecution’s case – it’s the same argument Rich_cb used on an earlier (thankfully much shorter thread):

Rich_cb wrote:

You've just failed to interpret the graph correctly.

The pedestrian rate starts falling earlier and approaches parity in the early 90s.

From 1995 onwards the cycling rate starts to fall faster than the pedestrian rate.

So there is clearly a cycling specific factor that becomes significant after 1995.

The pattern fits perfectly with the increasing use of helmets disproving the initial point I was replying to.

http://road.cc/content/news/233754-cycling-uk-urges-%E2%80%9Cstop-making...

(again my emphasis, not Rich_cb’s).

So here’s my critique… (follows)

Let's start with Exhibit A

1. This is a line graph, however it’s quite clear that it shows a linear increasing trend (except for children). So far, no controversy.

2. The data is only for “major built up roads” – how are these defined?  Is it safe to assume similar increase in helmet use on other road types? (Hint: no).

3. How was the data gathered? Was the sample size statistically significant?

None of this is new - these things have been pointed out before.

FFS!

Who is trying to convince who, of what?

Now moving on to Exhibit B

1. This is another line graph (joining dot to dot) with time-series for both pedestrians and cyclists.  Unlike the helmet wear graph (Ex. A) the data is quite “noisy”

2. The y-axis is Deaths per Billion km – there are two measures here combined:

                a) Deaths (by road user type)

                b) Total journey distance (by road user type)

3. Deaths – taken from police/coroner reports - will be accurate reflection of a sad reality, but these numbers will fluctuate due to a myriad of factors (weather, location, emergency medical response times, etc).

4. Total distance travelled by road user type – this has to be an estimate for both pedestrians and cyclists (unless the goverment has microchipped us all and can track our every movement - one for another Illuminati style thread). Motorised vehicular travel figures are  likely to be more accurate - MOT tests record the odometer readings so the difference from year to year can be determined and aggregated up with similar vehicle types.

5. So how are the estimated travel distances for cyclists and peds determined?  Are they based on safe assumptions? Are the sample datsets sufficient? Do they account for differences due to particularly  inclement weather  one year versus another , economic factors (walking/cycling because cheaper than car or public transport)?

6. Even if we accept at face value that the travel distance estimates are pretty accurate, they are still a guess and add more uncertainty into where the points on the chart should be - ideally we should be looking at a scatter plot with error bars, not this oversimplified  graph...