[jyl]

You know what I don't like about these threads?

The complete absence of any rational, fact-based analysis.

Plenty of you have come on here and wrung your hands about how cycling on the street is so incredibly dangerous. Not one of you has posted any data supporting your statement, or shown any sign of possessing any such knowledge.

I did post data, above, showing the relative safety of cycling compared to other activities and specifically of cycling on the street. I doubt any of you even read the links.

Continue, please, thinking with your emotions, your fears, and your sample sizes of one. Supposedly a forum of educated, accomplished, thinking people, this seems to me more like a bunch of blind men feeling up an elephant.

I see this behaviour all the time. Not just in this thread. When we talk about an economic issue, a public policy issue, pretty much any serious question, all that this forum can usually come up with is, at best, anecdotes.

People are simply not numerate, and have no inclination to do the work of thinking in numbers, probabilities, and real risk analysis.

And yet most of you will wail that we need to teach more math in school. Why bother? No-one seems to know what to do with numbers anyway.

For example, len , you - how many cyclists die in your town every year? Out of how many cyclists total? What probability of death is that? How does that compare with the probability of death from all the other commonplace activities that you see every day, and don't bat an eye at? Like driving a car, riding a motorcycle, living while obese, smoking a pack a day? Do you know? If you don't, what basis do you have to conclude that cycling is so dangerous that it should be banned?