Monday’s Friday Reads – 13 July 2020

1. This article appears to be ‘timestamped’ 29th June, and shows in the index under that date.
   [Fixed, thanks for letting us know. LBM]

2. FYI, this is showing up in the wrong place on the homepage. It’s marked as 29th June there.

   (The same thing happened to last Monday’s as well. It’s down as 12th June.)

   [Fixed, thanks for letting us know. LBM]

3. Gare du Nord: But the Gare du Nord should be a railway station before all else, not a shopping centre before it is a station. Quite ….

   Cyclists ..
   As one myself, I must nevertheless say REALLY?
   The lycra louts are a minority, but they are damned dangerous.

4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-53261402/cars-mount-pavement-to-avoid-lewisham-road-barrier

5. I believe the headline in the Forbes article, but only because it is highly misleading – and I believe deliberately so. I think the explanation is:
   – most car offences are speeding
   – on the whole cyclists find it difficult to speed so don’t commit speeding offences
   – so it is not surprising that cyclists commit fewer offences than car drivers
   – but nothing in the article says that cyclists are less likely than car drivers to commit any other offences (eg jumping red lights) – although the writer of the article tries very hard to leave that impression

   As in many areas, it is important to consider from what perspective the author is writing, and what biases he/she may be consciously or unconsciously bringing to the writing.

   The original research paper was in Danish so it is difficult to see what the source data says. As a cynic, I would not be surprised if the author of this Forbes article found this convenient, making it easier to imply something at variance with the underlying paper by extracting a subset of data out of context.

6. As @ML says, there is a “so what” issue in bicycle operators vs motor vehicle operators breaking laws.

   Most road laws are written with motor vehicles in mind. That’s because motor vehicles present a greater safety risk and greater management requirements, so are more important to regulate. What bicycles do when assessed against these laws is doubly uninteresting, first, as ML said, those are laws are calibrated for motor vehicles, but also because those laws aren’t even of the right kind for regulating the specific risks presented by bicycles.

   The government put out a consultation which closed in November 2018, on whether laws on causing death/serious injury by dangerous/careless cycling should be brought in, paralleling the motor vehicle laws. This, once again, treated bicycles as if they were motor vehicles and failed to regulate them in a way that was related to the risks that bicycles present. The existing methods aren’t even very effective at regulating motor vehicles, since much negligent driving can’t in practice be prosecuted, despite the proliferation of (poorly defined) offences with ever harsher sentences. The government has never responded to or drawn conclusions from that consultation. I suppose it only took place to pander to a particular constituency, a way of burying the issue.

7. As ML notes, we have to be aware of author bias, Naturally, the same applies with respect to those who comment.

   The study reported in Forbes (a journal of some repute) was done with cameras at intersections, so would have picked up offences there. Unless the cameras were sophisticated or linked, they would not have picked up speeding offenders – since the purpose of the study appears to have been to pick up difference in offending rates between cyclists and drivers, it seems likely that the study would not go to the trouble and offence of tracking offences rarely committed by cyclists (as ML notes).

   As for language, there is nothing in the item that says the paper was in Danish: a paper from an international company dealing with a polyglot multilingual client could well have been in English – and translation from the Danish is hardly a difficult task nowadays, anyway.

   All in all, the grounds for believing that the Forbes article is misleading – let alone highly misleading, and deliberately so – seem remarkably slim.

8. I agree that Forbes is reputable. Although GT was sceptical of the claims made in the article, I was pointing out they were plausible.

   If you look at Carlton Reid’s body of past work, it is clear he is a lobbyist for cycling.

   If you follow the link in the Forbes’ article, you find that the original paper is indeed in Danish.

   If you read the Forbes’ article, it is also clear that it is comparing
   – the number of cycling offences observed in the study divided by the number of times a cyclist passed the camera
   against
   – proportion of motorists who break the law at some time

   The Forbes’ article is (to give it its due) transparent that it is not comparing against the number of motoring offences observed in the study divided by the number of times a car passed the camera

   If a motorist breaks the law 0.1% of times he crosses a junction, and passes 200 junctions in a day, he typically breaks the law twice a day, qualifying as someone who routinely breaks the law. Even though his transgression rate would be tiny compared to that of cyclists in the study

   The comparison is not like for like. The impact of this is not obvious to the average reader, unused to analysing the use and abuse of statistics taken out of context. I assert this is deliberate on the part of the author, with the intention of misleading readers.

   All I am saying is that this article and the out of context data it refers to do not say anything one way or the other about the relative lawbreaking of cyclists and motorists. Even in Denmark. Before trying to imply that it might be applicable in other countries with a different demographic of cyclists due to different historic cycling take up.

   I am making this point because when the article was first linked on London Reconnections last year, it was posted with a comment that the article introduced actual data to challenge the anecdata that is all too common in the arguments between cyclists and motorists. I am just pointing out that as it does not attempt a like for comparison, it is no more justified than our individual anecdata.

9. @ML
   “If a motorist breaks the law 0.1% of times he crosses a junction, and passes 200 junctions in a day, he typically breaks the law twice a day”.
   0.1% of 200 is 0.2, not 2.

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