Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

Guardian article: Sabotage and hatred: what have people got against cyclists?

Comments

  • #2
    tomasrojo
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,853 ✭✭✭✭tomasrojo


    Has anyone looked at the methodology of the "near pass" study mentioned here? I've seen it mentioned by Peter Walker a few times, but from the little I've gleaned, it sounds as if you ask people to come to you and report on close passes. Since that would be self-reporting, it doesn't seem likely to get an objective take on how common close passes are -- or how close they are. Anyone got a good, concise summary of what they did? Short of time to read anything long.


  • #3
    buffalo
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,138 ✭✭✭buffalo


    tomasrojo wrote: »
    Has anyone looked at the methodology of the "near pass" study mentioned here? I've seen it mentioned by Peter Walker a few times, but from the little I've gleaned, it sounds as if you ask people to come to you and report on close passes. Since that would be self-reporting, it doesn't seem likely to get an objective take on how common close passes are -- or how close they are. Anyone got a good, concise summary of what they did? Short of time to read anything long.

    This one? http://opus.bath.ac.uk/37890/


  • #4
    tomasrojo
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,853 ✭✭✭✭tomasrojo


    Ta, but not that one. (That one I'm ok with; it has its shortcomings -- number of participants:1, I think -- but he did record everyone who passed him and analysed the lot. This recent one, I think, is a website where people can report close passes they've had. I'll check it out properly. I'm basing this just on what I heard and half-remember on The Bike Show podcast.)


  • #5
    odyssey06
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 33,962 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Hmm dubious about sabotage aspect of the story ... cars are vandalised, eggs thrown at windscreens, sometimes even traffic cones are dropped, tyres slashed ... is it a vendetta against cars, or just the fact that there are evil people out there and cyclists are even more vulnerable to them?

    Cats are hardly demonised in our society, yet someone is going round Drumcondra leaving out poison for them.... Someone as deranged as that who has taken a dislike to cyclists would resort to the underhand tactics described in the article.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • #6
    tomasrojo
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,853 ✭✭✭✭tomasrojo


    tomasrojo wrote: »
    This recent one, I think, is a website where people can report close passes they've had. I'll check it out properly. I'm basing this just on what I heard and half-remember on The Bike Show podcast.)

    I finally got a chance to have a quick look at this.

    This seems to be mostly what the Near Miss Project is:
    The One Day Diary. For 2 weeks from 20th October, cyclists in the UK are asked to record any incidents they experience during one day’s cycling. This will include information about what happened during the incident, who was involved, what the outcome was, and the emotional impacts of the incident. We will be able to draw some conclusions about how frequent such events are, which are the most common types, any variations (e.g. different parts of the country) and how we might prevent these and more serious incidents.
    http://www.nearmiss.bike/project/

    It's good that they get people to do one day thoroughly, but the data is very subjective, it seems to me, for two reasons:
    1. How close you think something came to you is not entirely subjective, but whether you think it's dangerous or not can be very subjective. Novices find some passes much more intimidating than people who've cycled for years. Some people are outraged by relatively innocuous manoeuvres. A way to objectively measure passes, such as Ian Walker's system, linked-to up-thread, would be much better, but prohibitively expensive to use for more than a handful of participants.
    2. Self-selecting participants. If you take part in a study such as this, you very probably feel pretty strongly about near misses, which maybe is because you are very sensitive to them, which makes you likely to over-report them. (Of course, you could also feel very strongly about them because they keep happening to you. That would be valuable information, which might show up in the study, especially the typical locations of close passes.)

    Not that near misses aren't a problem in the UK. I've got the distinct impression that it's worse than here.


  • Advertisement
Advertisement